Part 3 of 4 - If thePeople Don’t Say It, They Don’t Know It

We’ve looked at the importance of good theology that is grounded in the God we encounter in Jesus and who is actively engaged in the world, committed to the reign of God, and on a mission to love and bless the world that God has made. We’ve also looked at how important it is for those of us who lead to have consistent messaging and even redundant vocabulary as we talk about this. People learn by repetition in both hearing and doing.

This third post is about giving people space to practice this. Hearing is important but less than half of equipping. In fact, even learning is less than 50% effective if hearing is the only tool utilized. Research shows that if you want people to truly learn information, they have to not only hear it, but be able to say it. And if you want people to be able to access it for use in the flow of life, they need to practice accessing it more than once to develop the kind of muscle memory needed for engaging faith and life on the go.

This means that one huge change in the life of the church is that we need to change who speaks!

Pastors and leaders who speak as the primary voice in their congregation when it gathers, are likely not effective at equipping people. This is not to say that the voices of leaders are unimportant! Just go back to the second blog in this series – what you say matters! But it can’t stop there.

When I did my Doctor of Ministry in Preaching, one of the lecturers I had was Walter Brueggemann. A brilliant teacher, Dr. Brueggemann said something that changed my entire understanding of the connection between preaching and mission. He said, “It starts with utterance (of the Word) which invokes real conversations among the faithful and that leads to mission.” Note that the preaching work STARTS something and the process ends with mission but there is a critical stage in the middle – “conversations among the faithful.” My doctoral project tested this – and it is true. Getting people to talk is essential to engaging life in missional ways!

So here are some tips to help leaders do this:

* Make sermons dialogical sometimes – ask questions and let people answer them and tell stories. This can work well in smaller worship settings. Be conscious that if you stream the service, be sure to have a handheld microphone so people in the sanctuary and online can hear.
* Make every sermon a conscious effort to get people to reflect on something(s) and develop a question for implementation in life. Have the question on a board by refreshments after worship (we call ours “food for thought”) and encourage people to talk about it over fellowship time.
* Ask a simple question of people: “If we took the theme of today’s message seriously, what could you do personally to implement it?” “What could we do together as a congregation to implement it?” Listen to these ideas and put them in place!
* Think of the faith language you are trying to get people to own and that you are redundantly using as you teach/preach. Ask people questions that utilize the language and apply them to their vocation(s) in life. Let them discuss the answers as this will internalize them for longer-term use.
* When you preach, set the table to people using good theology and language and then invite a member of the congregation up and let them tell a story from their life to illustrate it (try not to tell stories for people - equip and support them to join you in the sermon and tell their own!)

There are lots more things you can do (Beyond Chit-Chat has a bunch more ideas in the appendix), and you can think of your own. Intentionality is the key. Focus on this and you can do it!

Note: If you missed parts one and two of this series, you can see part one here and part two here.