Communicating for a Change: Seven Keys to Irresistible Communication [Kindle Edition]

Andy Stanley (Author)

Book Description

When You Talk, Are People Changed?

Whether you speak from the pulpit, podium, or the front of a classroom, you don’t need much more than blank stares and faraway looks to tell you you’re not connecting. Take heart before your audience takes leave! You can convey your message in the powerful, life-changing way it deserves to be told. An insightful, entertaining parable that’s an excellent guide for any speaker, Communicating for a Change takes a simple approach to delivering effectively. Join Pastor Ray as he discovers that the secrets to successful speaking are parallel to the lessons a trucker learns on the road. By knowing your destination before you leave (identifying the one basic premise of your message), using your blinkers (making transitions obvious), and implementing five other practical points, you’ll drive your message home every time!

“Long ago, in a galaxy far, far away…”

“Once upon a time…”

“In the beginning…”

Great stories capture and hold an audience’s attention from start to finish. Why should it be any different when you stand up to speak?

In Communicating for a Change, Andy Stanley and Lane Jones offer a unique strategy for communicators seeking to deliver captivating and practical messages. In this highly creative presentation, the authors unpack seven concepts that will empower you to engage and impact your audience in a way that leaves them wanting more.

“Whether you are a senior pastor with weekly teaching responsibilities or a student pastor who has bern charged with engaging the hearts and minds of high school students, this book is a must-read.”
-Bill Hybels, Senior pastor, Willow Creak Community Church

“A very practical resource for every biblical communicator who wants to go from good to great.”
-Ed Young, Senior pastor, Fellowship Church, Grapevine, Texas

“To communicate effectively, you have to connect. Andy has been connecting with people for years, and now he’s sharing his insights with the rest of us.”
-Jeff Foxworthy, Comedian

Story Behind the Book

Andy Stanley and Lane Jones are on staff at one of America ’s largest churches, North Point Community. Leaders of thousands of people, they regularly speak in front of large groups. They also listen to numerous speakers and know the disastrous effects of a poorly delivered message. This book is the result of their efforts to make public speaking—one of the most common fear-inducing activities known to mankind—simple, easy, and even enjoyable, so that God’s messages will readily produce the life-changing results they should.


From the Hardcover edition.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Andy Stanley

Andy Stanley serves as senior pastor of the campuses of North Point Ministries, including North Point Community Church in Alpharetta , Georgia ; Buckhead Church in Atlanta, Georgia; and Browns Bridge Community Church in Cumming, Georgia. Each Sunday, more than twenty thousand attend one of these NPM campuses. Andy is the bestselling author of Visioneering, The Next Generation Leader, It Came from Within!, and How Good Is Good Enough? Andy and his wife, Sandra, have two sons and a daughter.

Lane Jones

Lane Jones is a native of Atlanta, Georgia, where he lives with his wife, Traci, and their three children, Jared, Caitlin, and Madison. He coauthored 7 Practices of Effective Ministry with Andy Stanley and Reggie Joiner, and is the executive director of membership development at North Point Community Church, where he loves to write and participate in the creative process. Lane holds degrees from Georgia State University and Dallas Theological Seminary.

Product Details

• File Size: 357 KB
• Print Length: 210 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1590525140
• Publisher: Multnomah Books (August 19, 2008)
• Sold by: Random House Digital, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001E2WM54
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #16,590 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Clergy > Preaching
  • #3 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Evangelism > Preaching
  • #5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Religion & Spirituality > Christianity > Christian Living > Leadership

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

47 of 49 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Preaching to Post Moderns July 31, 2006

By R. Kirkham VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

A casual reader might glance through this book and think Stanley is suggesting watering down the gospel in an effort to be pragmatic. This is not accurate. This is not a book about Biblical exegesis or scholarship. This style of preaching does not preclude in depth study. Study for sermon preparation simply is not what this book is all about.

This is a book about delivery. About half of all younger Christians today attend the top 10% of churches. These churches have learned to communicate in ways that are simple and relational. We pastors need to speak in a language that people can understand.

I went through this book and applied its communication principles to a "test" sermon. My preparation was no different than I might have done at any other time, except my delivery intentionally followed patterns laid down in this book. The results were electric. People were engaged. They didn't want to leave after the message, and conversation continued as people slowly left for home.

These principles will not be comfortable for everyone, but they are still worth wrestling with. We pastors spend the largest portion of our lives preparing for or communicating publicly. We must constantly stretch and learn new methods. Buy the book. Read the book. If these principles do not fit your communication style, fine. But make sure you know why they don't fit and that you are correct. Don't refuse to consider them just because they are new and novel.

24 of 24 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Warning to Christian Communicators... September 20, 2006

By Kelly K. Dunn

Format:Hardcover

I feel compelled to warn fellow Christian Communicators. This book may make you angry. It just might inspire you to change the way you communicate the life-change message of hope.

I suppose whether you are angered or inspired depends upon what your goal is. Is your goal to teach the Bible to people? Or, is it your goal to see people changed as they apply the life-changing message of the Bible?

If you are comfortable with people telling you "Nice message..." as they leave; If you really don't want to disturb those who sit under your preaching/teaching; If you are satisfied with merely reading your three points to your people and expect that they'll "get it" because it is a sermon then you might want to take a pass on this book.

However, If you are like me and have a burning desire to see people CHANGED having heard the crucial message you want to give them then you will want to read this book (several times) with a legal pad and pen!

I can hear my seminary preaching professor even now in my mind, "This is against all convention!" That would be a correct assessment to be sure.

I'll confess the title caught my interest so I picked up the book. Once I started reading this book I literally could NOT put it down. Please know that I have read many books on the art and science of preparing, and delivering sermons. I have had several preaching classes in seminary, but NONE of them challenged me to make ONE point! Andy Stanley did... give him a fair hearing. I know this: I will never communicate Biblical truth the same way ever again! As Stanley correctly states, there is so much that is at stake!

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars A relational approach to preaching July 30, 2007

By Darryl Dash

Format:Hardcover

Anyone who has heard Andy Stanley preach knows that he is an effective communicator. Now, Stanley and coauthor Lane Jones let us in on the secrets of effective preaching in Communicating for Change.

The first half of the book is a fable about a discouraged preacher, Pastor Ray Martin, who is desperate for help. He meets with an acquaintance, a successful businessman, who flies him by helicopter to meet Will Graham, a truck driver who has just the answers that Ray needs. By the time Ray leaves, he has a new approach and new hope for his preaching.

The second half of the book explains this model of preaching, covering topics like the goal of preaching, how to outline the message relationally, and how to engage the audience.

The model offered by Stanley and Lane has two main strengths. First, it centers preaching around one central idea, taken from the text. This is more effective than other approaches, which fail to capture the central idea of the text. In trying to communicate everything, they communicate nothing. Haddon Robinson and others have also written on the importance of the big idea in preaching.

Second, Stanley and Lane also present a relational outline approach to preaching. Their outlines are built around "the communicator's relationship with the audience rather than content." They remind us that "the way we organize material on paper is very different from how we process information in a conversation." This relational approach can lead to better communication of the Biblical idea of a passage.

The book is not without its problems. The leadership fable, in which an unlikely hero rescues a hapless practitioner, may be an overused approach.... Also, this book is not a homiletics text, and preachers would be wise to look beyond this book for a full understanding of the task of preaching.

Stanley and Lane argue that the purpose of preaching is to "teach people how to live a life that reflects the values, principles, and truths of the Bible." They imply, however that this can happen by giving people application points. I am not so sure that application points always lead to life change; they can instead lead to application fatigue and moralism if the preacher is not careful. Preachers will want to wrestle with the larger issue of how people grow into spiritual maturity.

Communicating for Change reminds us of the importance of engaging interest, communicating a single big idea, and honoring relational dynamics in our preaching. It may be what discouraged preachers need as they work to improve their preaching. Read more ›

27 of 30 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Biblical Preaching, More Than Communicating for a Change June 30, 2011

By Daniel

Format:Hardcover

Which is better, preaching that exposits biblical texts, or communication that changes lives? Having trouble deciding? Think of expository preaching as the mere transfer of information with diverse multiple points that no one--not even the preacher--remembers. Now think of the alternative, modeled by Andy Stanley and Lane Jones, as "teaching people how to live a life that reflects the values, principles and truths of the Bible" (p. 95). Still not sold on Communicating for a Change? Try assuming that Bible teaching only imparts knowledge that puffs people up with pride, while talking to them about themselves from the Bible (p. 96) results in obedient action. After all, "We don't live our lives by points" but "by emotions. We respond to what we see, taste, and feel" (p. 102). So why insist on an approach to preaching that requires rational understanding of historical facts and spiritual appraisal of their personal implications? If, by chance, you are still left standing in support of teaching the Bible to people, ask how you can possibly defend your stance since it reflects "a system designed in another era for a culture that no longer exists" (p. 89)?

Such a line of argumentation runs throughout a book that is otherwise brimming with helpful communication insights and techniques. In fact, the practical value of this book, the engaging style in which it is written, and the authors' own success as effective communicators, seem to have overcome any inclination on the part of its 89 reviewers to voice biblical objections to some of its assumptions. Before offering my own critique, I want to summarize the material I found most helpful.

Helpful Content

I agree that a sermon should reflect a clear goal that can be expressed in single statement.... Everything should lead up to, support, or point back to that central, memorable statement of truth that Haddon Robinson calls "the big idea," and that Arthur Whiting called "the theme," and that Charles Stanley apparently refers to as the preacher's "burden" (p. 13).

Asking the five questions: What do they need to know?; Why do they need to know it?; What do they need to do? Why do they need to do it?, and What can I do to make it memorable?, strike me as useful tools in getting unstuck when I get bogged down or distracted while preparing the message or communicating a single point. They insure coherent movement from INFORMATION to MOTIVATION to APPLICATION and INSPIRATION, with helpful REITERATION.

Other good counsel includes: Internalizing the message by identifying the big chunks that serve as "mile markers" through the message; building tension in the introduction and early part of a message that is relieved by the one point of God's Word being presented; less information, more life; talking faster, and taking it slower in the turns so that "passengers" aren't lost in transitions.

Chapters 12 and 13 were the most helpful. ME-WE-GOD-YOU-WE is an approach to organizing a message based on the relationship between the speaker and his audience, rather than the text. It starts with the preacher, ME. My personal experience with a problem, question or need introduces the subject in such a way as to invite my listeners to identify with me. Together WE are engaged in the process of discovering what the Bible, GOD, says to answer the question, solve the problem, or relieve the tension identified in the ME-WE potions. The listener, YOU, is then faced with the changes called for by the single point of the sermon. Finally, the message concludes with a call to imagine or envision the implications of an obedient response on the part of the community of believers--including the speaker and listener, WE. I believe that thinking in these terms will help me do a better job of connecting, keeping my listeners engaged, and bringing them with me to the desired destination.

Having read several of the customer reviews that average nearly 5 stars, I am impressed not only with the unanimity of praise the book has received but with the number of reviewers who join the authors in rejecting how they were trained to preach in seminary. But at least four assumptions deserve some critical analysis because they appear to weaken a biblical understanding of the peculiarity, purpose, and power of preaching the Word of God.

Humble Critique

First, the writers state: "We make no distinction between preaching, teaching, or general communication. For our purposes they are the same" (13). While all communication--including biblical teaching and preaching--share certain principles and processes in common, the biblical purpose of preaching is unique. Unlike general communication, driven by results, biblical preaching is driven by revelation. Using the Bible as a resource to talk to people about themselves can result in effective communication, but the preacher speaks for God with the biblical text as his source (2 Tim. 4:1-5). Communicators speak naturally to connect with as many people in the audience as possible. Biblical preachers speak with divine authority that no one naturally receives (1 Cor. 2:14).

Second, as good as it sounds, a changed life is not an adequate goal for preaching the Word of God because God is glorified in His judgment of those who reject His Word as well as in the blessing of those who receive it. We are not commanded to relate ideas from the Bible that we judge to be essential, applicable, or appropriate--"all they gotta know"--but what God has already chosen to communicate because He considers it to be essential to knowing Him (John 17:3, 6-8, 17.) If we faithfully proclaim the whole purpose of God (Acts 20:27), teaching and admonishing one another in order to present every man mature in Christ (Col. 1:28), His word will not return to Him without accomplishing His purpose (Isa. 55:11). That purpose involves what people think and believe as well as what they do. Teaching the Bible to people has the decided advantage of equipping the listeners with a model for how to feed themselves. It also gives them a basis on which to evaluate messages they hear, like the Bereans did in Acts 17:11. While alignment of purpose, goal and method makes perfect sense in terms of communication strategy, there is a greater need now than ever to remember that the end doesn't justify the means. Attainment of the preacher's goal does not validate a methodology that promotes dependence on a fallible communicator.

Third, when preachers talk about a "powerful illustration," an "impactful delivery," or "seven keys to irresistible communication," often they are describing a human cause-and-effect. But there are important differences between the persuasive powers of public speaking and the power of the preached Word of God (1 Cor. 1:18-25; 2:1-5). The power of motivational techniques is human, while the power to convict sinners, justify believers, and sanctify saints, is divine. The assertion that "burden" plus passion equals change fails to distinguish between the power that resides in the packaging of the message from the supernatural power of its content . That God works through the personality in whom He has chosen to wrap His message does not mean that powers of persuasion are commensurate with the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16,17; 2 Tim. 3:14-17). While it may be true that "presentation trumps information when it comes to engaging the audience," it is the Word itself that is "...living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword... (Heb. 4:12,13). It is the heart of the listener that must be prepared to receive it as sown seed (Matt. 13). In spite of being the Truth in human form, the very Word of God perfectly packaged, the Lord Jesus was rejected by the majority of His own, and received only by those who, having been given the right to become children of God, believed in Him (John 1:11,12).

Homiletic application of biblical truth--even with inspirational imaging and reiteration--only identifies and urges needed change. It no more guarantees actual implementation of biblical truth than does information by itself. According to Matthew 7:28,29, what distinguished Jesus' communication from others was not that He was creative, direct, compassionate or offensive (as stated on p. 150), but that He spoke with the authority of God!

Fourth, the assumption that a generational shift has made it necessary to "abandon a style, an approach, a system that was designed in another era for a culture that no longer exists (p. 89)," is unsubstantiated. The authors ask, "Will you consider letting go of your alliterations and acrostics and three point outlines and talk to people in terms they understand?" The question seems to attack textual expository preaching as a relic of left-brained modernity, even discounting the present value of literary and mnemonic devices as if they were Confederate currency! The implication is that either the old style of preaching was ineffective in its own generations, or that now we have to accommodate a new generation that is not only completely different, but defensibly disconnected from that of their fathers. This goes beyond the idea that truth never changes but methods can and should. It essentially denies the existence of timeless principles of biblical preaching, and embraces contemporaneity as synonymous with relevance. Preachers must always bridge the gap between the time and culture of the Bible and of their listeners, and there are many kinds of bridges. But the principles of verbal and relational bridge-building don't change.

Honest Commendation

If the helpful content of this book is promoted on the basis of some faulty assumptions, the reader should carefully distinguish the two and not think that he must embrace the authors' apparent antipathy for textual-expository preaching in order to connect better with listeners that are increasingly influenced by postmodern thought. "But," as Robertson McQuilkin has written, "let's not be caught defending the indefensible or putting institutions (which the postmodern has little use for) ahead of people and authentic human relations." Stanley and Jones have reacted to common abuses of verse-by-verse teaching and preaching. The wise reader will make the necessary adjustments in his approach to sermon development and delivery rather than jettison his commitment to preach the Word in favor of a generational, results-oriented technique for communicating with people. Read more ›