The second preacher that made a major shift in my preaching is Andy Stanley. I first heard Andy Stanely in 2003 at a C3 conference in Dallas, and I immediately connected with his style. Since then I have learned much about preaching from Andy by listening to his messages online, hearing him speak at several conferences and reading his book on preaching, "Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication
What I like most about Andy's preaching style is his incredible focus, his clarity, and his intentionality (which is the result of his having a very clear, predeterminded goal for preaching). Most would agree that whether you agree with Andy or not, you will always walk away from his messages with a clear understanding of what he was talking about, what he wants you to do about it, and why he thinks you should do it. I'm sort of embarassed to admit that when I first planted Calvary Fellowship I (like many other preachers) mimmicked him by using his signature coffee table and stool. I have long since moved on from that, but there are some very valuable things I learned about preaching from him that I have retained.
Shifts he made in my preaching:
- To begin with a goal in mind when preaching (ex: if your goal is information transfer you have an easy target, but if it is life transformation that takes a lot more work).
- To narrow my focus -too often I used to teach on a topic and try to dump every single thing I knew aout that topic into one message; the result was info overload and chaos. Andy observes, "I hear a lot of messages that make me think he just preached a whole series in one message."
- If my message is to be clear to others it must first be clear to me -Andy is famous for summarizing his messages into a simple, catchy phrase that he repeats throughout his talks. I did that for awhile, but I often don't anymore. I do however regularly challenge myself to summarize my message in a sentence. If I cannot, I'm not ready to preach it yet.
- Message should be memorized -Andy teaches without notes (or without a lot of notes). I'm not there. I teach with a full manuscript of notes with a few spaces earmarked for "riffing." However, I do spend a lot of time after the message is written reading and re-reading the notes so that I'm intimately familiar with the message which allows me a greater independence from my notes and a great conversational style with our church.
Andy, I've never met you (and you're never going to read this) but nonetheless, thanks for all you've taught me from afar and I'll see you at Drive!
Yesterday: Part 1. Bob Coy
Tomorrow: Part 3. Tim Keller
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