Saturday, June 20, 2009

Communicating for a Change - Chapter 1-6 Notes

The book is broken into two parts... first part is a narrative and story of discovering communication principles, while the second part is more a structural, informative outline to follow.

PART ONE

- The decision to improve communication skills has to come from the person

- You need to have a clear goal and objective

- You can talk about a lot of interesting stuff, and it can all be true, but if there's no point, no ultimate direction, then all you've been doing is talking

- Airlines don't give broad messages ("Fly to Russia"), so why should the church?

- The one point message - can you give a clear "address" of the message, eliminating other locations a listener might want to wander to and verifying if you reached it at the end? (a short simple statement that summarizes the entire message - like 7010 Hwy 40 NE) - Recalling numbers listed exercise

- People can't apply things they can't remember, and it's hard enough to get someone to apply something even if they remember

- Too many preachers hide behind the excuse that it's the Holy Spirit's job to apply a message, but then they don't give the Holy Spirit anything to work with

- You need a map, not outlines. Outlines focus on structure and supportive statements, while maps bring you somewhere. A good map isn't an atlas, but one picked route clearly laid-out. An atlas is the starting point, but gives you too many options... you're goal is to narrow it down to give the most effective path.

- The map can look like an outline, but a different kind (not a traditional information outline, but a relationship outline between the communicator and audience): ME-WE-GOD-YOU-WE

- You need to internalize the message personally - it isn't delivery style, but more... knowing your message so well that you own it, and it feels like a burden you need to share

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