Is Anybody Listening?
Rob Wegner
Since 1992, Rob has passionately communicated the message of Christ at Granger’s midweek and weekend services and Core Class 401 – the final class in the church membership series. He has taught Purpose-Driven ® Church to church leaders throughout the world, including Sudan, India, and Slovakia. He’s also been a main session speaker at Saddleback’s Purpose-Driven Church Conference.
At Granger, he also oversees outreach ministries, which are expanding rapidly under his leadership and teaching. Since 2001, more than 150,000 people in India have come to know Jesus Christ as a result of church planting and growth training curricula that Rob has delivered to Indian pastors.
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There’s a tension we live with when it comes to communication. We know that communication matters. There’s a sense that we get our people at one hour, at most two, per week, and we have those important moments to communicate the message of Jesus to our culture – and there’s a lot of competition. Our competition is not each other. Our people are being bombarded every day with different messages.
Texas A& M Study: average American encounters 800 multimedia messages a day… email, snail mail, bumper sticker, magazines, radio, TV, news – all day, everyday. People are spending millions of dollars to get their messages into our people, and its working very well (i.e. kids and McDonald’s). They are working to get these messages that are counter to the Kingdom – how do we cut through the noise?
The stakes are so high. Every time we program a service or craft a message we need to realize we are up to bat and it’s the 9th inning for someone.
The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation – the question is, how do we cooperate with God in the church when it comes to communication.
There’s a shift in how we do communication. Maybe there’s some things that need to change.
Story causes people to lean in and listen. It’s a primary shaping-force when we are coming up with services and sermons.
Shifting from a linear presentation to an engaging conversation.
When we come to a message we need to make a shift from a linear presentation to an engaging conversation.
>> What’s your relationship with the audience?
One is content driven, the other is relationship oriented. There’s a big difference.
Our messages are a series of moves in a conversation. We don’t have a linear series of points in our conversations – it’s organic. We go from block of thought to block of thought.
Conversations are not linear. There’s a natural flow… you can go on for hours and hours.
>> What if instead of thinking how we can get from point a to point b, but we rather think about how we can move our people in symphony?
There’s a natural flow to moves.
A lot of us learned to think of communication in a linear way…
>> Engaging Conversations Happen When Three Stories Intersect.
My story – everyone’s story – God’s story
The goal is to bring three stories together – and the more they intersect, you create a catalytic moment.
1. My story. As a communicator, you are telling your story. That’s what makes it authentic and real. When it comes to telling your story you need vulnerability and humor.
Most people think the church is where people come and pretend they are better than they really are. They think we are fake or hypocrites. With humor and vulnerability, they learn there is permission to be a human being in church. There has been a disconnect from the ‘people on the stage’ and the people in the audience. Stories lend authenticity to make your stories real.
Vulnerability can make people uncomfortable, but we need to be open about our weaknesses because it celebrates God’s grace in our lives.
Stories endear the audience to the speaker.
2 – Their Story
This is where we find common ground with the issue, we find where the stories overlap.
Taper the story to your focus audience – Jesus was the master of this. Women at the well, He talked about water. Fisherman, fish. Farmers, seed. He looked at his audience, He paid attention to who he was talking to and he adjusted his message to the audience. He connected to the person who was immediately in front of him and told the story in a way that they could get it.
We need to get into our people’s lives. It can be hard. It’s easy to stay inside the holy huddle… and building relationships with unchurched can be difficult.
Your degree of relevancy is dependant on how invested you are in relationships with unchurched people.
When you are programming your services, put the name of a person on your whiteboard, describe the person you are trying to reach and do all that you can do to connect to them.
Let your people tell their stories. Real life people. Real stories.
Sometimes we need to get dirty to know the joy of being clean.
When new people walking into GCC, one of the first questions that they ask is, “is there anyone like me?”
We tell our story – we connect with their story and we connect with…
3 – God’s story.
There are three dimension’s to God’s story:
The historical dimension
We swim in a very deep, historical stream. We are a part of a historical movement of people who said, “Yes!” to the revolution. We need to help people get that God’s Story (the Bible) is a real story, with real people… it’s not just a self-help book, it’s real people who met with a real God in a real place and a real time.
Tell the Scripture as Story. We need to start with God’s story and see where it intersects with where we are it. How can it be communicated? Story? Video? Etc.
Many people have a systematic theological background, which is great, but we need to tell the Scripture as a story. Instead of being an esoteric thing, it’s a historical reality that we find beautiful enough that we orient our life around it and invite people to join in on it.
Begin the conversation, don’t end it. In the past, a good communicator was someone who ended the conversation. The pastor had the final word. Great teaching leads to great questions. It leads to answers and questions.
Sean Penn, “When everything gets answered it’s fake. The mystery IS the truth.”
There are huge parts of life that go unresolved.
When you give the cliché and the pat answer, and boil it down, there is a sense that things really aren’t like it. When you have an infinite God… there are infinite answers.
Become a story collector! Find stories in metaphor. Find stories in other communicators. Find stories in culture – this is what Jesus did.
The framework of all that Jesus taught on was the Kingdom of God. When he taught He used examples from everyday culture. He used things that people see.
We’ve got to find a way to let people know that the applause of Heaven is for them – when their lives are transformed by amazing grace. Jesus is inviting us to join… because we matter to God. No matter who you are, where you are, where you’ve been or what you’ve done… you matter to God. That’s our story. That’s their story. That’s God’s story.
