02/05
2010
Posted in Uncategorized
From the Crossway blog and Joe Carter, who writes for First Things, among many other places.
Whether you are defending your faith, telling someone about God, or simply in a discussion—these simple tips can help you communicate effectively without high blood pressure or raising your voice:
- Start with examples your audience will understand: Always start with an example or concept your audience knows, understands, or finds interesting, and connect it to your core message.
- Speak your audience’s language: When you speak to an audience, to the extent possible, you must speak their language.
- Use witness: Consider the use of witnesses essential to the construction of an effective message based on narrative and ethos. Wherever possible, elicit testimonies.
- Know when to speak: There are a lot of important topics in the world, and it is not necessary that you have something to say about all of them—particularly if speaking on the topic would hurt your credibility or detract from your primary goal.
- And know when to be silent: Silence is one of the most powerful forms of communication. It shows that you are in control and gives the person or people a moment to think for themselves and consider how they will respond to your message
Read full article from Relevant Magazine here. Adapted from How to Argue Like Jesus.
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02/02
2010
Posted in Church Planting, Faith
Among the many admirable attributes of Bethlehem Baptist Church is its commitment to church planting. On January 31, 2010 Pastor John Piper preached on the necessity of church planting and that God alone will build the church. Pastor John opened with statistics that demonstrate the necessity of planting churches
- There are about 200 million non-churched people in America, making America one of the four largest “unchurched” nations in the world.
- Each year about 3,500 churches close their doors permanently.
- Today, of the approximately 350,000 churches in America, four out of five are either plateaued or declining.
- One American denomination recently found that 80% of its converts came to Christ in churches less than two years old.
He followed with a discussion of Bethlehem’s past, and future, church planting efforts and an exposition of Matthew 16:18. You can read the manuscript here and watch the video here.
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02/02
2010
Posted in Faith, Preaching
Summarized from his blog post on the 9Marks blog
When you come to a passage there are four things you can do:
Illustrate – this is one of the two most difficult to do. “It requires a different part of your brain. You need to think creatively. You need to imagine what your people are or might be going through”
Defend – “it is rarely wise to spend a lot of time defending what your people don’t need defended”
Explain – “If the passage is especially obscure or controversial, it makes sense to land heavy on the E. But sometimes the passage is relatively simple. In this case, don’t spin your wheels on endless word studies that basically repeat with synonyms what everyone can see immediately in the text”
Apply – his is one of the two most difficult to do. “It requires a different part of your brain. You need to think creatively. You need to imagine what your people are or might be going through”
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