Jud Wilhite lives in the Las Vegas area where he serves as the senior pastor of Central Christian Church. Thousands attend services at Central’s campuses each weekend, along with a global community who attend online (centralonlinecampus.com). Jud is the author of several books, including Eyes Wide Open: See and Live the Real You and Deadly Viper Character Assassinswith Mike Foster. The Wilhite’s have two children and a slobbery bulldog.
- What is the end result of communication? Not the “Big Idea” or the nugget you want people to walk away with… what’s the goal of communication?
- Success is people being in awe and in the wonder and the glory of God.
- The end for all communication is that God is glorified.
- Opportunistic Challenges in Communication…
- We live in an entertainment-driven culture.
- “Hollywood can’t compete with the Holy.” – Leonard Sweet
- We have the opportunity to connect people with the holy and transcendent God.
- “Church is the only real place I can go in a fake city…” - someone @ Central
- Busy schedules.
- Avg person @ Central attends every 3-4 weekends.
- Sports, parties, family issues, travel, work, etc.
- We have the opportunity to get an audience and talk to them for 30-45 minutes.
- Brokenness
- Families are broken.
- When people are broken, they are open to hope and healing.
- Cultural assumptions.
- Negative perceptions of the church/Christianity.
- Personal assumptions: “I can NEVER be healed…”, “I could never go to church…” Shame, fear, guilt on a personal level.
- We live in an entertainment-driven culture.
- Start communicating and build connection with your own life. Show you are a human, just like them.
- We assume people know so much about the Gospel, etc… and they really don’t.
- We need to build into where people really are.
- Let the text lead. Be more exegetical. People don’t know anything about the Word of God. Let the text lead – it will educate and transform your people.
- #1 factor that led people to the church are the pastor & the preaching… #2 was the doctrine – this stat coming from unchurched people.
- Move from topical to expositional.
- Anchor into one passage at a time vs “turn here, turn there.”
- Pick a translation.
- Share from your life. Build connection with people at a human level. Share from your own life and your own problems. Help them see how they have a similar problem or situation they can relate to. Then, take them to the text to hear what God has to say.
- Move from the problem to the solution. Solution is always found in the Word of God. Determine the problem the text speaks to.
- Focus on a Big Idea. Too many ideas come to listeners too fast.
- A sermon should be a bullet, not a buckshot.
- Big Ideas should be no more than 7 words.
- It should be stated and restated more than 7 times per message.
- Should be crystal clear, memorable.
- When you communicate, communicate with passion.
- Communicate to the broken. Always speak to the broken and you’ll always have an audience.
- Communicate for life-change. Ask 2 questions …
- What is the personal application?
- What is the corporate application?
- NEVER assume people know how to apply it.
- Communicate honestly… talk to people. Don’t scream. Don’t yell. Be conversational. Like you would over coffee.
- God has ordained preaching and teaching as his propositional way to communicate the Gospel.
- We CAN sing it, show it, etc … but we should just say it. Content is still King.
- When people hear the convicting, life-changing word of God… that is success.
- It’s important to create atmosphere and to connect with people culturally, but use those as a means to connect them to the message… don’t make the medium the message.
- “What you with them WITH is what you win them to.”
- The curse of evangelism is simply gathering people… you’ve got to create a movement and take people somewhere.
- What movement do you want people to make?
- On teaching schedule… Key times for new people are September and January… lighter throughout… and say what you need to say to the church in the summer.
- On sexuality… sexuality is a dividing line when we’re communicating a post-Christian culture? They do not take strong public stances against homosexuality or abortion on Sunday mornings… because they are no longer spiritual issues, they are political (culturally). They DO talk about it in membership classes.
- We are the ultimate hypocrites when it comes to our stance on homosexuality when we turn a blind eye to other sexual issues that are prevalent in the church.
- Behavior is not the primary issue in our lives… belief is. Beliefs about God, ourselves, who we are in Christ, our past, etc. Beliefs form behaviors. It takes time to unwire people’s beliefs.
- Too often we try to make the Gospel palatable to people, but it’s really not palatable.
- A post-Christian culture is messy.
- Remember where you were when you came to faith. We’re all really a mess.
