Comments on: A Great Communicator -part 3

By: Becoming a Better Church: Building An Active Atmosphere « Matt’s Musings and Meanderings

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 22:06:17 +0000

[...] of course, is all a response to a post by Ryan about being better communicators. I responded that church leaders need to learn educational theory to be better communicators. [...]

By: Matt’s Response @ Come on in

Matt’s Response @ Come on in — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 05:47:10 +0000

[...] left a challenge for Matt Crosslin in the comments of one of my recent blog series. He has posted a response to my challenge on his blog at grandeped.wordpress.com. Read it and [...]

By: Becoming a Better Church: Start With the Blueprint « Matt’s Musings and Meanderings

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 22:30:08 +0000

[...] Church of today could do a better job at… well… being a church. My friend Ryan was blogging about being better communicators at church. I commented that if pastors want people to actually do what is preached on Sunday [...]

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:15:20 +0000

Hmmmm…. don’t pass out or anything. The world of educational theory isn’t that glamorous at all. My boss’s boss is always joking with me about putting people to death by sleep with this stuff.

(I work for the state – every two people have to have a manager, so it is possible to have daily contact with people several steps above you on the food chain…)

By: admin

admin — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 19:08:56 +0000

My breath is bated.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 18:28:15 +0000

Wow – that is kind of a tall order to lay it out like that. It’s kind of like asking what is the best way to teach a class… the answer would depend all on the age of the class, the size of the class, the topic, etc. For example, when I taught Junior High, it was at an urban inner city school. All of the techniques that I was taught at a mostly-white college just didn’t work there from day one!

I can give it a shot, but there are lots of different ways to go about it, lots of different theories out there. I personally subscribe to a school of thought called social constructivism, which larger churches would have a hard time to use in any way. But I will collect my thoughts and revive my dead blog…

By: admin

admin — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 22:49:59 +0000

I agree with you here. My prime directive in preaching is to have people somehow be different on Monday and going in a direction. Billy Joel has a great lyric that goes, “I still don’t have this all worked out, but I’m getting closer, getting closer. I still have far to go no doubt, but I’m getting closer, getting closer.”

I want people who sit in the seats on Sunday to be able to say that about their lives. Christianity must by nature be pragmatic, in a sense. I am no proponent of “Pragmatism” as a philosophy, but Jesus calls us all to be incarnational.

Sometimes I fail at this in preaching. I believe part of it is that we become so programmed to not having sermons be impacting. In some sense familiarity breeds contempt (or at least a lack of perceived value). However, sometimes my sermons aren’t as impacting as they should be.

I want to make that percentage of life-altering sermons as high as possible.
Um…so lay it out! What in layman’s terms would you have us do? Step by step? If you blog it on your wordpress, I’ll cut and paste (with permission, of course) or I’ll give you an account on here to post your thoughts on this. Part of the whole point is to teach us (the Church) to be good communicators.

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:38:24 +0000

Well, that is thing – I would have us as the Church teach EVERYTHING instead of preach and announce.

There are textbooks full of this theory stuff, good for one long nap if you are in need I think most preachers want people to apply what they preach on, to synthesize it and make it a part of their life. Those are all higher order educational concepts, above communication of facts on Bloom’s taxonomy scale. But to go from communication of facts to application and synthesis would require a major change in the structure of the way we do things (we as in the Church in general).

By: admin

admin — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 06:40:47 +0000

So, what would you teach us? Lay it all out.

By: Matt

Matt — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:37:14 +0000

Studies have show for a while now that people remember less than 5-10% of what they hear (even if it is repeated week after week after week). I’ve been trying to get people in churches for decades now to realize that we need to be teaching people what we want them to remember, not just announcing and preaching. If only I could some day convince the Church to take educational theory seriously!