How to Preach Winsomely and Wisely

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Julius Kim
Good afternoon. My name is Julius Kim, and you’re at the workshop entitled preaching for transformation, the art and science of wise and winsome sermons. So my task for you here live here in Indianapolis, thank you for coming. As always, for those of you watching online is to share with you in the next 45 minutes, my 20 years of experience teaching, preaching, and how you can preach for transformation, it’s, as you can imagine, that’s really hard. It’s almost impossible to share with you how to preach for transformation in that short amount of time. So I’ll do my best to give you kind of like a 20,000 foot level of some of the categories, as well as some certain tips that I think might help you preach and teach for transformation. And so with that in mind, let me begin with the word of prayer and ask the Lord’s blessing. Let’s pray together. Father, thank you for this opportunity to share your good word. And I pray that You would bless this time for your glory and for the good of ultimately, your church, as your preachers attempt to honor you with what they say in Jesus name. Amen. I’m sure you’d agree with me that preaching is not easy, but it is glorious, isn’t it? And whether what other calling allows you to represent the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, what other calling allows you to speak? Words of Life, joy, and peace? What are the calling allows you to see dead people come to life by mere words? Think about it. You who are preaching God’s word I could put on your resume. My my one of my skill sets is to bring dead people to life. Because it’s true, isn’t it? For those of us that believe that the power of God’s word can bring dead people back to life. That’s what we do, and we preach. So it’s a tremendous gift, a tremendous opportunity, a tremendous privilege, but also a tremendous responsibility, isn’t it. And so I want to share with you some of my thoughts of what it means to preach for transformation, the art and science of wise and winsome sermons. But rather than starting with the nuts and bolts of what to do, I always like to start my classes at the seminary with an image, the image of the first century Harold. Now we don’t use that particular term, or we don’t really talk about that particular person nowadays. But in the first century, the Herald or the care groups was a very important person in service of the king. chosen at an early age because of their unique gifting, trained for years, they would be sent by the king, to deliver words to the King’s words. And it was their responsibility and privilege to actually represent the words of the king. Whether those words were good, we won victory against our enemy. All those words were bad, flee for the enemies about to come. Whatever the case was, the Herald’s job was very important. But one thing’s for sure. He never made up those words. They weren’t his words. His job was to represent as faithfully as accurately as he can, the words and intentions of his king. If the King found out that he did not accurately and faithfully represent his words, he would immediately be killed. Because think about it. He says the wrong words like when he goes to a another country, representing like an ambassador would today. And he thinks he understands the intention of his king, but says the wrong thing. It can start a war, Battle at cetera. And so when the Herald spoke, everyone listened and listened carefully. Oh, that people would understand. That’s what preachers are right? Because of the news that he brought on behalf of the king could actually change their lives drastically. In the New Testament preachers of the gospel, or the good news of Jesus Christ were called heralds. This was no easy task. That Herald had to ensure the message that he proclaimed on behalf of his king was not only accurate and persuasive in content, but even in delivery. So can you imagine a herald being told by his king, please warn all the citizens in this land that a fire is coming the fire of the Assyrian army for example. And they need to do whatever they need to to protect themselves.

Julius Kim
And what if this person with this alarming news, this warning went to The village is here, you hear you much danger ahead, please go find a safe place, thank you very much. He wouldn’t do that, right? We don’t do that instinctively, fires, fire, get out, run to the hills, whatever it may be. And that’s exactly what the prophets did right? In the Old Testament. When they went to Israel on behalf of their king, whether it was a wake or Israel from your slumber or your God is a good shepherd, who watches over your souls. He loves you more than the birds in the air. Trust Him. So whether in content or in delivery, these Harold’s had the responsibility to represent the king. And so for me, when I think about my task, as a preacher, thinking about how the New Testament describes the preacher as a herald actually relieves me of a lot of pressure, frankly. Because when when I think about what do I need to do what or how my interpretation, that’s the exact my, my outline has to be really good. My delivery has to be perfect. Well, yeah, those are all good things. Don’t get me wrong. But at the end of the day, it’s not about you. Let me say that, again. It’s not about you. It’s just representing the King of kings and the Lord of lords, to the best of your ability. So in that way, it is about you, right. So you have to do your best to learn as much as you can keep growing and learning in your ability to, to not only accurately interpret, but also to wisely construct, but also to passionately proclaim with wisdom, as well as with winsomeness. And so what I’d like to do is share some of my thoughts of what it takes to be a herald but I start that way to kind of relieve you have the pressure that I think often we face as ministers and preachers and teachers, the unnecessary pressure we place on ourselves to either be like another preacher or to to have certain things happen. No, your job is just be faithful, do your job week in and week out whether they listen or not, frankly, of course, you want them to listen. But at the end of the day, you just want to accurately represent your king. And that’s a good thing. It really is. And so while the analogy to the modern day preacher today does not correspond, I think the image of the Herald is a helpful one as we begin talking about sermon preparation process and preaching wise and winsome sermons. This, of course, requires humble and diligent work. That’s your part, as it was for the Herald work that first requires a Harold to I want to share with you four things briefly, that I think you need to also be considering. To preach to transform one to discover, discover the truth of the text according to the human author, to discern Christ in the text, according to the Divine author. Okay, so I’ll say it again, discover the truth of the text, according to the human author. Secondly, discern Christ in the text, according to the Divine author. And then once this interpretive work is done, we pivot and transition to the communication right from interpretation, to communication from Discover and discern, to now design, design a sermon according to truth, goodness and beauty. And I’ll talk about all these, design a sermon according to truth, goodness and beauty. And then lastly, deliver the sermon for maximum attention, retention, integration, and hopefully, by the Spirit’s help transformation. So those last two was designed a sermon according to truth, goodness and beauty. And then lastly, deliver the sermon for maximum attention, retention, integration and transformation. So let’s take a look at these in turn, recognizing this as again, just there’s a lot here.

Julius Kim
And a lot of this comes from a shameless plug here, I apologize. A lot of this obviously comes from a book that I’ve written, I wrote a couple years ago that talks about this. So if you’d like more information, you don’t have to buy the book, but maybe you can borrow one. Try not to sound like anyway, so there’s a book that I wrote on preaching and so you this, a lot of this obviously comes from that. So hopefully that might be helpful for you. So discover the truth of the text according to the human author. It goes without saying that one of your primary tasks as a herald is to understand the message of the king. What in the world is the king saying? It’s Sometimes I don’t understand. So if you selected the text, you’ve prayed to God, you’ve meditated on the text, and then you’ve worshipped, right? You praise God in the process of sermon interpretation. Now we begin the process of interpreting your passage for the purposes of preaching it. And part of discovering the truth of the text, according to the human author is to engage in the interpretation of the text itself. And fundamentally the key to discovering the truth of the text by the original audience. The original author that is that by the intention of the original author, for the original audience, is to learn to read the text carefully, and to write to ask the right questions of the text. And again, this is all in the book, but essentially, one of the primary things you do you want to understand the message of the king? Who is the King talking to? Who is the king? Who is the King talking to? Then in the scriptures here? Is the author, the human author? Who is he? What’s his background? What’s this, what’s the setting, etc. But in this particular stage of interpretation, there’s actually three things I want to mention. And again, this is a lot of information in a short period of time, so I apologize. But these three stages of interpretive analysis, I think, will help give you some categories to interpret the text. It’s a dynamic process where you can move back and forth. It’s dynamic and nuanced, involving both inductive and deductive method, methods of interpretation. But in this section of discovering the truth of the text, according to the human author, the original author to the original audience, you want to be asking three questions. One, what does the text actually say? This is linguistic analysis. What does the text actually say? This is linguistic analysis. Secondly, how does the text say it? How does the text say it? This is literary analysis. And then the third question is when and why is it being said? When and why is it being said this is life setting analysis? Quickly? linguistic analysis, of course, what are you doing here? You’re translating, because the Bible as we have it is not written originally in English, did not start with King James. Of course, you know that it’s Greek and Hebrew, some Aramaic and so part of our job is to translate the original, understand its syntax and structure. So there’s linguistic analysis involved. But in addition to the linguistic analysis of the text itself, there’s also literary analysis, the text is given to us in different genres, or different types of literature. Genre represents the kind of classes of literature that we have in the Bible, for example. 60% of the Bible is historical narrative story. And part of your job is if you’re preaching a story, you have to understand certain way stories work in the New Testament. And in the Old Testament, for example, for example, Hebrew narrative or Old Testament narrative, work with particular particular steps in mind starts with with a semblance of peace. In the story, then there’s a conflict that emerges in the story that brings about a a journey of the hero to try to solve that conflict, there’s a climax to the story, then there’s a resolution, and then you mind, for example, you know this because all the great dramas that you’ve read in books, or all the great movies you’ve seen, work the same way. It’s called a narrative arc. And so knowing that when you approach a narrative text, you have to analyze and interpret that text in light of its genre. And the unique way the author placed the truth of the what he wants to say, in this particular form in this vehicle. He’s using the vehicle of historical narrative versus poetry. Poetry works very different. Poetry doesn’t have this narrative arc and often uses things like parallelism,

Julius Kim
repetition, different poetic devices to signal to you as the reader and interpreter as the Herald. Why is the king using poetry now, to make his point is right Hebrew poetry works this way. So now I know what the main point is, because of clastic structure, for example. So that’s literary analysis. So you have linguistic analysis, literary analysis, and there’s life setting analysis. Here you’re asking the questions regarding historical and cultural background, occasion and purpose, those kinds of issues. So that’s part of our task. Preaching wise and winsome sermons actually means you do you have to do some homework. But it’s a good thing. Why? Because you’re a herald of the king. And you have this wonderful privilege to get into the mind and heart With the king, as he’s giving this message to these human authors by the power of the Spirit that requires a lot of work. And that first step is this discovering the truth of the text, according to the human author, but secondly, there’s more. There’s also discerning Christ in the text, according to the Divine author. Again, I don’t want to assume that all of you will agree with me, that part of wise and winsome sermons, is to see the divine author’s intention. But my belief, and my premise here is that the Bible is not a loose collection of stories, poetry and other literature just kind of cobbled together. But I actually believe that the entire Bible is actually one unified story. It’s one unified, unified story, tracing God’s intention to save a people for Himself through His agent of salvation, his son, our Savior, Jesus Christ. And so I believe the Old Testament looks forward to Jesus the Messiah, then the New Testament looks back to so to speak, Jesus and his work on the cross. And so part of our interpretive task is to ask questions of the text regarding what what was the divine author’s intention, in giving us this text in this book, in this testament, in light of the big picture. So I believe we need to read, interpret and preach Christ and His gospel from all the Scriptures. And let me just share with you at least three reasons why. Three reasons why I believe we need to see and read and interpret and preach Christ from all the Scriptures. First, because I think it’s biblical, because this is exactly what Jesus and the apostles did. The first Can we call them Christian preachers, the first Christian preachers starting with Jesus, and His apostles use the same methodology. They understood that the entire Bible was one singular story of salvation through Christ. Now, of course, in the Bible, it’s much more implicit, not explicit, it’s more in the shadows, and not out in the open like in the new. But nonetheless, it’s hard to see the Old Testament making any sense without some understanding of Jesus and the big picture. So Jesus and the apostles did a thing. For example, Jesus, after his resurrection appears to His disciples in Luke 24, this pair of dogmatic stories, he’s on his way to Emmaus from Jerusalem. It’s about a seven mile journey. And as he’s walking with these two disciples that are dejected, because of Jesus’s death, Jesus appears and starts to talk to them. And as he discovers that they’re discouraged, he says, Did you not understand what the law and the prophets and the writing said? And he uses this phrase, the law of the prophets and the writings. And what it says about me, All scripture is fulfilled in me, when he uses that title, the law, the Prophet and the writings, he’s using the Jewish form of the actual Hebrew Bible, the Tanakh, the Torah, the Naveen and the Cathedral, which are the Hebrew titles for the three sections, three main sections of the Hebrew Bible, it’s basically saying, Did you not understand what the entire Old Testament said about it said about me that I was supposed to come, die, and then be raised to life. So Jesus tells us in Luke 24, that we must see the Old Testament in light of him.

Julius Kim
But it’s one thing for Jesus to just say it, it’s another thing for him to actually give us an example. So one of these days, take a look at John chapter six. In John chapter six, we have what’s usually titled the Bread of Life discourse. And John Jesus, after feeding the 5000, sits down with these disciples and begins to teach them about that he is the bread of life. Fascinating form of a sermon there, I believe, it was very similar in terms of structure and form to many of the synagogue sermons that we have from the early centuries. So Jewish rabbis would preach a particular way in the synagogues. They will take one verse from the Torah, then a secondary verse from the prophets, and then it’s positive, and apply it pretty simple. That’s exactly what Jesus does. Jesus takes a passage from Exodus 16 When God gave them mana, because just like God gave manna to Israel, God now gives me to you. And same thing with the prophets, he uses Isaiah and Isaiah Prophet and John chapter so that Isaiah passage is he actually says that they will all be taught by God and Jesus because guess what? That’s me. So the form of the sermon that Jesus gives her would have been very familiar to everyone listening or who actually paid attention when they went to synagogue, they paid awakened synagogue. And the rabbi gave a pretty decent sermon on the law on the Prophet text. There was no that’s a familiar form, but the interpretation was very different. Because he said, I am that manner, I am the bread of life that God says, and you must eat of me. So again, think of how shocking that would have been to these early believers. They have never heard an interpretation or a message like that. I wonder if they thought, Is this guy a cannibal? But what is he doing? He’s giving new covenant meaning to an Old Covenant story. That’s Christocentric interpretation and preaching. So not only does Jesus give us the paradigm of why we must interpret and preach the scriptures in this way, but he actually demonstrates for us how to actually do it. So it’s biblical Jesus did it. Well, that’s Jesus, we can’t preach like Jesus, you’re right. But we can learn from him. And that’s exactly what the apostles did. The apostles learn from him. So if you look at the sermons in the book of Acts, again, take a look, for example, at the sermon and Acts chapter two that Peter gives, and the sermon and Acts chapter 13, that Paul gives Peter there in Jerusalem, gives one of the best introductory statements to introductory lines to a a sermon, one of these days, I wish I can do something like that. He gets up and says, We are not drunk. That hook the audience pretty quick. We are not drunk as you suppose. Okay, let’s hear you out Peter. And then what does he do? He talks about the Joel prophecy. And then he says, Today that’s been fulfilled. And he starts to recount redemptive history, that all these prophecies in the Old Testament was pointing forward to the reality of Jesus’s life, death and resurrection. And that, then he applies it. They were cut to the heart. Remember that? I don’t know about you. But that’s what I pray, what I preach, Lord, would you cut them to the heart, such a great line? Lord, cut me to the heart. So he says, believe and repent, repent and believe. Oh, that our sermons would be that simple. Actually, nowadays, I think that’s what we need to tell our people repent and believe that she lied to all this chaos. And all the confusion that we’re facing right now. I think right now what we need is preachers to just preach the gospel and tell people to repent and believe. And that’s exactly what Peter did, following the pattern of Jesus. That’s exactly what Paul does in Antioch. Pisidian, Antioch. And in chapter 13, he does the exact same thing, same pair of dogmatic Christocentric interpretation and preaching. So the first reason why I think, part of our job is to discern Christ in the text, according to divine authors, because it was biblical Jesus and the disciples did it. But it’s also foundational. Secondly, we do it because it’s foundational, the Bible actually makes no sense. Without Jesus, it’s like a it’s like a murder mystery. I don’t know about you. Sometimes i i read murder mystery books, and I cheat and I go to the back.

Julius Kim
Jesus, is that like that? The answer in the back of the book. So all of these tensions are like material he talks about in his commentary, there are these tensions in the Old Testament that need resolution. For example, just take the three major offices that we find in the Old Testament, Prophet, Priest, and King, great leaders of faith in the history of Israel, all these wonderful prophets, all these wonderful priests, all these wonderful kings, but remember, even the greatest king of all, who would that be, arguably David, one of the greatest kings of Israel. Last time I checked, he was a murderer and an adulterer. Why? To ultimately reveal that he’s not the final King, we still need a greater king, a better king. And that’s what actually this conference is about. Jesus is greater. And the book of Hebrews is essentially a crystal centric sermon. And we give away my plenary talk tonight, but it’s a Christocentric sermon, that Jesus is greater than Moses, one of the greatest leaders in the history of Israel. And thank God. Moses never made it to the promised land. That first generation didn’t. And so they were Israel was still awaiting, when is our king gonna come? Whereas our perfect priests gonna come? Where’s our perfect Prophet gonna come? And hallelujah in the New Testament, Jesus arrives. So all of these tensions in the Old Testament make no sense unless you look at the back of the book. Ah, so seeing Jesus and interpreting Jesus is absolutely crucial because it’s foundational to the entire storyline. So it’s biblical, it’s foundational, but it’s also practical. Think about it. Why should we read and interpret and preach Christ from it? Every text of Scripture why? Because ultimately you cannot become a Christian, or grow as a Christian without Christ. Now, many of you will say, of course, Julius, at least with the first part, I agree that no one can become a Christian without Christ. So we need to preach evangelistic sermons that talk about the law and the Gospel. Absolutely. But what about growing as a Christian? Do I just need to give you seven tips of a healthy marriage? How to be a great employee at your office. Now, don’t get me wrong, those are great, and wise things to share. But last time I checked, that doesn’t help me become more like Christ. To become more like Christ, you actually need Christ. You actually need the Spirit of Christ coursing through your veins. You cannot become a Christian, or grow as a Christian without Christ. So if Jesus is the only way that you become a Christian, and become more like Him, Why would you give your people anything less than Jesus? Now, again, don’t get me wrong. We want to be faithful to the text of Scripture. And the text of Scripture, according to the human author has a lot of details. And so you have to talk about that. For example, think about, think about the 10 commandments. Don’t lie, don’t steal, don’t murder. Those are really good. By the way, you should preach that. Because that’s what the human author intended. The human author intended you as a preacher to go up and say, people of God, don’t lie. And here are multiple reasons why it dishonors God, who is the God of truth. For example, if you’re representing God, you cannot do that. Because that’s outside of God’s character and outside of God’s children. But guess what? You still lie. You still have a problem with lying, we caught we may call it different things like reality augmentation, or strategic misrepresentation. At the end of the day, that’s a lie. And we get caught in that. So even though we prayed, we preach to people don’t lie. And here are the reasons why. And here’s how you do it. Guess what? You’re still stuck by yourself. You’re going to still lie. But guess what, there’s someone who did not lie. He was truthful to the very end. And that’s Jesus. And as a result, Jesus paid the penalty that you deserve for being a liar, but also provides the power, he paid the penalty and provides the power through his Spirit so that you can become more like Him each and every day. And that’s a promise. You just have to believe. And work with the spirit in sanctifying yourself to not lying.

Julius Kim
So it’s eminently practical. seeing and reading and interpreting and preaching Jesus is eminently practical. And so you must discern Christ in the text according to divine author. Third. So we looked at discovering what is the interpretation, right, talking about interpretation, discovering the truth of the text according to the human author, discerning Christ in the text, according to the Divine author. Now we’re transitioning into communication, interpretation of communication. First step, you need to design you need to design a sermon according to truth, goodness and beauty. There was an architect, a Roman architect many, many centuries, millennia ago, that argued that good buildings should be motivated by three central themes. strength or solidity, purpose or function, and then beauty and delight, or in other words, buildings should be built with according to truth, solidity, goodness, with function, and beauty, the light, proportion, et cetera. These are the foundational convictions that he argued his name was Vitruvius Vitruvius argued that these are the foundational convictions prior to actual blueprints being drawn up for a building if, if you I don’t know if you know, but if ever seen Leonardo da Vinci’s picture of a man standing and these like multiple arms and legs, here we’re seeing that it’s a man in perfect proportion to circle and a square. He entitles that the Vitruvian Man because it’s based upon the principles of this architect named Vitruvius, who argued that the human body fearfully and wonderfully made, has its beauty in proportion and solidity, etc. So even DaVinci understood this principle. Now, we find the same Principles of truth, goodness and beauty in the ancient rip texts of rhetoric. From the foundational claims of the sofas to the paradigmatic work of Aristotle, for classical rhetoricians, like Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian, the art and science of persuasion involved the whole person, the intellect, the emotion and the action, or the head, the heart and the hands. So Aristotle argued that the speaker prepares and makes argument or designs his talk, that are sound in logic, truth, ethical and character, goodness, and emotional and response, beautiful. Or ethos, pathos, and logos. So let me just offer a few words of advice in applying that to the sermon because it can’t talk to you in five minutes about how to design a sermon. But let me offer at least these three categories truth, what does it what does it? What does a good sermon look like? How do you design a good sermon? In light of that, first of all, truth just means faithfulness, right? faithfulness to the kings words and intentions. So you’ve kind of done that already in good interpretive methods, asking the right questions, etc. You want accuracy and consistency to the King’s words and intentions. Let’s talk about goodness. This is also faithfulness, now not faithfulness to the king and his intentions, but faithfulness to what ultimately benefits your hearer. That’s goodness, you must design your sermons in a way that benefits your hearers not makes you look good. You want to be receiver oriented, not sender oriented. What that means is just practically as you’re preparing even your talks, your sermons, you’re asking questions, how is this being received right now? Even as you’re delivering your sermon, or your talk, you’re asking, Do I see them fidgeting? What is their body language speaking to me, and good speakers pick up on cues. Because even though you’re not speaking to me, you are. Because just by your body language, there’s over 60,000 messages you can give. And good speakers are attuned to the messenger messages of the audience, even though it’s not verbal, or nonverbal messages. And so good speakers are able to recognize the kinds of responses people are giving, like when I say a joke, are they actually smiling? Are they laughing? What did I just bomb, et cetera, et cetera? Is this particular section in my sermon, not going anywhere? That means maybe on the fly, which I rarely do, maybe on the fly, I stop and say, Hmm, some of you look a little confused. Let me try it this way. Or move on to the next point. You know what, let’s just move on.

Julius Kim
But that’s, that’s what we’re trying to do because you’re more sender, or maybe you’re more receiver oriented than send origin. I think a lot of preachers make the mistake of thinking they do all their research, and they read all these great books. Wow, that’s really interesting. Did you know that the errors subjunctive, have this Greek word means power? Yes. dunamis equals dynamite. You know, and they’re so fascinated by that Greek word. So they spend like five minutes of their sermon, let me break down dunamis for you. And the audience is like, preacher, I got it. The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. Actually, that’s more important than the word dunamis. Tell me about the gospel and how it transforms us. And it helps me when I’m struggling, not showing off your Greek skills. It’s well intended, don’t get me wrong, right? It’s well intended, because you get excited about studying God’s word. But sometimes in that moment, you forget you’re being send oriented, not receiver oriented. That’s goodness. So you have to design your sermons with that in mind, and even deliver it but can I need to move on? Beauty or beauty? What about beauty? Again, beauty and attractiveness can be very subjective. But we want our talks to delight and to inspire. And so part of my job over the years has been has been learning how to not only design but deliver sermons that actually not only delight the ear, but also the senses. And I think sometimes we get afraid that but but Julius I’m not a thespian. I shouldn’t speak like this. Thus saith the Lord. That’s acting of course, but that means you’re a thespian, not a herald. If you’re a herald and the king says, go warn the people. All that if they continue down this road, there is disaster. So what would you do just like if a child continues to cross the street or play with matches or play with knives, as parents, what would you do? You wouldn’t say, Hey, honey, could you just stop in the middle of the road? When I talk with you? You’d say, Get back, you’re right now, that’s instinctual. Why is God made you that way? Why don’t we do that when we preach? God made us to be able to use our full bodies, our emotions, etc, to just whatever the emotion is. Why? Because you’re a herald of the king, not a thespian in a play. And if you’re a herald of the king, you use all the resources God has given to you to not only delight by using good word structure, finding the best way to say things, poetic ways of saying things, but also delivering in a way that fully exercises all that God has given to you. Now, again, you have to find your own voice. None of us are going to preach like John Piper. There’s only one John Piper. Right? Then there’s only so many of you that can be like, you know, Tim Keller. And they’re brilliant. But they have their own voice. And our job is to figure out God, how have you made me, I just want to maximize whatever you’ve given to me to beautifully articulate the message you have for your people. They’re not even mine, they’re your children. You’ve given me this wonderful opportunity, responsibility and privilege to speak on behalf on your behalf. Let me do it the best that I can. And so one way to do that, let me just suggest one way to structure your sermons word with truth, goodness, and beauty is to use what I call the narrative arc. You understand the narrative arc, because a lot of good storytelling, movies, books utilize a very simple narrative arc. Aristotle calls it the three act structure of beginning, middle and end. Aristotle was brilliant. But you have other other folks who more recently have talked about the five acts of exposition, for example, of rising action climax, falling action, Daniel Mont. And these authors have shown how the world’s most memorable stories are told, based on particular structural elements, I actually think preaching in light of a narrative arc can be very, very persuasive.

Julius Kim
And so what you do is you start off by talking about lying, for example, just use that I don’t know why I’m lying. A talk about how words are beautiful and powerful that words can bless words can curse, the little thing James says, but it can do so much damage, but also so much good. And one of the ways that does bad is when we lie. You talk about lying? How bad it is. So you’re basically setting up a tension. You create that tension, and you build upon that tension. You just talked about lying in general, and how lying people like this. And then you make that final turn of application and go, boom, guess what? You’re a liar. That’s exactly what Nathan did to David. Remember, when he was confronting him about his adultery? Nathan, when he was hearing the story about this person who was stealing sheep? David was livid. Find me that man. And Nathan dropped that drops the mic, because you are that man? What is he doing? He’s creating tension in his exposition, his sermon, Nathan, by forcing his hearer to feel that tension and need for resolution. So then you make that turn in your sermon and you go from that you say, what’s the climax? Well, someone else came. By the way, you can’t die for yourself. No one can die for your sin. But someone did. Then you get to the climax of the cross that Jesus spoke the truth, even on the cross, My God, My God, why have you forsaken me? That’s true. His heavenly father turned away and became silent, turned his back on his son, even though his son cried out to him. speaking words of truth, God turned his back, which means God will never turn his back on you. And will empower you to speak words of life and truth. And so this kind of narrative way of speaking can be very helpful to your sermons. Again, I can’t talk too much about it. But I think that’s one way. One technique that you can use is using the narrative arc in your preaching that kind of problem solution or problem cause solution. There are times when I just can’t find the right even words are the clever ways to structure my talks. So I just say, point one, there’s a problem. There’s a problem in this text. And guess what? You’re that problem. It wasn’t just Israel. Two, you know why that’s a problem, here’s the cause your sin. But I start with Israel as a younger look at these guys mumbling and grumbling their way through the wilderness. Guess what? That’s you. And then you provide a solution. So there’s a problem cause solution, three point sermon. But what you’re doing is you’re bringing your audience along in this drama, and you’re placing them within that drama and that narrative arc, and they get into it, and they just can’t wait, then by the time they get you get to the solution, you’ve taken them on a particular journey, and where they started and where they ended up is very different. And that’s what you want. At the end of the sermon, you want to take people where they are, and elevate them to another level of Christ’s likeness, by the power of the Spirit. I think that’s one way to do it. And so lastly, in the four minutes that I have, you also not only want to design the sermon with in light of truth, goodness and beauty, you also want to deliver the sermon for attention, retention, and transformation, hopefully. Now, a lot of this a lot of this part, in the book that we’re talking about delivering for attention, maximum attention, retention, and transformation comes from the research that I did over a little bit of a little while ago on brain science on neurology, neuroscience. And neuroscience is a burgeoning field, it’s it just continues to grow. So I’m just barely scratching the surface. But we’re actually learning a lot from brain science of how to more effectively give talks or sermons for maximum attention, retention and transformation. I recently read a report that the average listener, when given a talk of about 30 minutes or more like this, do you know how much they retain about what percentage they retain? Like when you walk out of this room, on average, you will retain this much percentage of what I’ve said, What do you think that is?

Julius Kim
Five? Wow, that’s nice. Thank you very much. Yeah. I’m horrible. Yeah, but that’s actually really close. The average adult when they listen to something about 30 minutes long, they only retain about 7% of the material. Now, I don’t know about you. But as a preacher, I want people to remember more than seven. So there are certain things you can do. Let me give you a few suggestions of retention. One, the brain works in such a way that it actually likes patterns, it maximizes patterns. For example, if I were to give you a string of letters that are 16 letters long, you would have a hard time memorizing more than five to seven of those characters. That’s why telephone numbers, by the way, are only seven digits long. Because brain scientists figured out that’s about the maximum we can remember and put into long term memory. We’re actually quite sad creatures. Seven numbers, now we have smartphones. So we don’t even memorize numbers anymore. Right? That’s horrible for our brains. But oftentimes, what however, if you, if you take that 16 string letter and break up into patterns of four, four fours, does that make sense, you actually have a better chance of memorizing all 16 Because they’re in groupings of four. Now, take that and apply it to preaching a lot of what we do in preaching is string along a lot of good information without any patterns of balance unity structure. And so part of your goal when you design and deliver sermon is to speak in patterns. For example, the brain another thing the brain does is it when it when it locks on to a particular particular information, it fires in a three step process. The brain is told to get ready for something than aim at something and then when it finds it, it fires just like a gun. Ready, Aim Fire. And so since the brain works that way, one of the easiest things you can do in every talk you give is just let people know what to expect coming up. You prepare the brain, it’s called pre encoding of the brain. And so in the introduction, tell people where they are going. Just tell them your your points. But Julius, I want to be more creative. I don’t want to give the points upfront. It’s like giving away the punchline right up front. But no, jokes are a particular genre that are only like 20 seconds long. This is a 30 Minute 40 minute I don’t know how long you preach a sermon that works very differently. Jokes worked very quickly. So you don’t want to give away the punchline. It’s more inductive. You lead them to it and boom, you’re given the punchline, right? Preaching works, I think better deductively tell people at front Tell people upfront, by the way, I’m going to tell you about three main things that this text talks about one, faith to hope, three, love. Very simple. But now the brain has been pre encoded. And then then you start talking, you start talking about faith. And when the brain starts looking at locks on the faith, boom, it fires and it triggers. And there’s something that happens in the brain that allows that information more likely to go from working memory to long term memory. It’s a simple thing. But that’s one thing you can do. And I’ve run out of time. But let me say one more thing. Eye contact, eye contact is so critical. I’m not always good at it. But we have these things called mirror neurons. Babies understand this, because when even babies, when you like, make faces at them, they kind of copy you. Your audience is watching everything, not only what you say, not only listening to what you say, but watching what you do. So your facial expressions, your body language, says everything. So if you preach behind the pulpit like this the whole time, you know, it gives a message. Or even if you put your hands behind your back, as you’re talking, it gives a message. Or if you put your hands in your pocket. I don’t know if you do that. Everything you do sends a message. And you want what you’re sending nonverbally to match what you’re sending verbally. So if you’re, if you’re trying to comfort your people, in a very difficult time, when a member of your church has passed away a long standing member, you wouldn’t put your hands in your pocket and say, friends, I really feel for you. So I hope you’re doing okay. Because I know this is really hard for you right now. And so as your pastor and shepherd, I just want you to know, I really care for you.

Julius Kim
I’m obviously I’m exaggerating. But you’d be surprised at how often we what we do doesn’t match what we say. And what happens is people because they’re mirror neurons, whatever you’re giving off, is what they’re actually feeling. And so in their ears, they’re hearing the pastor’s telling me. He wants to comfort me. But why does my soul tell me he doesn’t care. And that dissonance that happens in the brain usually means they’re going to forget what you just said. Because the brain is going to be fighting. That happens a lot in the brain. And when it fights, it gets tired, and then it shuts off. It doesn’t work. That’s actually why a lot of people are sleeping in our sermons. Because your brain is overworked due to bad mis or disorganized information. That’s irrelevant. And so this is called This has nothing to do with me. So they shut down. But so those are just some thoughts that I have. Time’s up. Right. Those are just some thoughts I have. If you’re interested in learning more, please feel free to buy the book or not. That’s okay. But thank you all for being here tonight. Or this afternoon and many blessings to you. Thank you