In Made to Stick, the Heath brothers unpack six principles that make an idea sticky. The first is Simplicity. They write, “How do we find the essential core of our ideas? To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize.”
This is one of the hardest things for me in preaching. There is always so much that can be said about any given text or topic and I want to say it all. Something inside of me needs to say it all. If I say it all, I end up saying nothing.
“To get to the core, we’ve got to weed out superfluous and tangential elements. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is weeding out ideas that may be really important but just aren’t the most important idea. A designer of simple ideas should aspire to the same goal: knowing how much can be wrung out of an idea before it begins to lose its essence.”
“Forced prioritization is really painful. Smart people recognize the value of all the material. They see nuance, multiple perspectives–and because they fully appreciate the complexities of a situation, they’re often tempted to linger there. This tendency to gravitate toward complexity is perpetually at war with the need to prioritize.”
Let’s think about this principle with the gospel in mind. For many Christians, the gospel can be stated in a simple and memorable way: Jesus died on the cross to forgive you of your sins so that you can go to heaven when you die. That’s a sticky idea that is easy to summarize on a bumper sticker. 1 Cross+3 Nails=4 Given.
A number of people have pointed out to us that the gospel is about much more than getting our sins forgiven so that we can stay out of hell. I’ve preached a bunch of sermons about how big the gospel is and how far ranging are God’s intentions with it. The problem I’ve found is that a bigger gospel is hard to encapsulate in a simple idea that will stick.
For those of us who want to articulate the whole gospel in a fresh way this is a challenge. So far, most of our explanations of it are too complex and too nuanced to be sticky.
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons
Wade, do you like Veggie Tales?
I bought a couple of their sing-alongs for my son and I keep seeing pointed and simple truths in the silly lyrics and performing veggies. I have been teaching a youth series based on them, and I am planning to preach in a month or so on the song “Gated Community.” I would love to hear a whole sermon series preached on Veggie Tales silly songs, I think it would DEFINITELY stick. I can’t get them out of my head as it is!
I like Jesus’ word/summary for the Gospel: “The kingdom of God”–which is simple not but certainly not easy.
Wade,
It’s difficult to be “sticky” without becoming reductionistic and squashing all the mystery out of the gospel.
Many of us have experienced preaching filled with platitudes that were memorable but left us feeling somewhat empty. We found that platitudes often lose their meaning when faced with real life situations — especially hardships.
“Let go and let God” is easy to remember, but it doesn’t help much when your child’s become a prodigal or the doctor says it’s cancer.
Still, there should be some way of making our message more easily transferable. I know as a communicator I work really hard at reducing and reducing and distilling my content down to one point if possible.
Oh, and at the risk of making a long comment even longer, I’ve noticed that people don’t tend to learn things until they think they need to learn them. For example, I didn’t feel compelled to learn about parenting until I had kids. I didn’t read many books on marriage until I was married.
Somehow we’ve got to do a better job of letting people know why they need to know what we’re going to tell them BEFORE we tell them what we’re going to tell them.
In response to Turner’s last comment above, that, for me, is the beauty (and responsibility) of community. We live the message, interacting with “them” everyday and, through shared life experience, we are able to not only tell, but show them the importance of the message. Once we realize how much we really do need community, it too (like marriage and parenthood) takes on a different meaning.
We can , in all our concerns about preaching / teaching forget the power of the word. Yes , we must pray for wisdom and work hard, study, and prepare and take seriously the proclamation of the word. But communicate the word. Then leave it to God and the open hearts hungering for the truth of scripture. Those who listen have a responsibility to let the word ” stick ” in their minds and hearts. I like what John MacArthur said about preachers dealing with the depth and God will take care of the breadth.
ahh. this is a clasic example of sacraficing what is “good” for what is “great”…
Just look at the Master Teacher Jesus and see and learn from Him and see how plan and simple He made it stick. He used all teaching syles and made it stick. He didn’t use was the word in flesh made simple to a people to understand giving them a choice to recieve or regect. The same is for us.
This is definitely a great challenge, but I think it is one that extends far beyond our pulpits. I think that this need extends into our classrooms, small groups, special classes, and the way that we learn to read and study the Scriptures for ourselves. Where I work we want to make sure that the message of the Scriptures doesn’t just come into my world (meaning that it could have a general 21st century application) but that it comes all the way down to my life.
This may mean that we have to take a look at a “bigger” piece of Scripture than verse-by-verse would facilitate but we are finding that if we will seek to get the entire message to “my life” then we will have been successful (or at least more so than before) in “making it stick.”
I hope to have our model up on our website this week. Thanks for the great post.
Wade, I found you on here. 17 days and counting down man! I’m pumped to be there in Tulsa with you guys. Looking forward to this summer man.
In our complex world there will still be the basic ,simple ways to touch lives. Pray about lost souls and for open doors to proclaim the gospel. Then when the doors open ,preach / teach the good news. Let your life be one of daily compassion to those people who come into your line of vision. We plant and water , God gives the increase.
One of the things the Heaths talk about is that in order to be sticky a “core” idea must be short and profound. A short sentence that sounds good can end up being an empty cliche, as John has pointed out.
They point to proverbs as being the holy grail of simplicity. Anybody can come up with a short statement. Coming up with a short statement that is profound enough to encapsulate years worth of wisdom–that’s much harder.
I’m not so sure I’m buying this stuff. I liked what Turner was getting at in an above comment: the gospel isn’t really that easy and can’t easily be reduced into one nice, pretty, simple, pithy statement.
preacherman says that Jesus made his teachings simple but did he? The disciples sure didn’t get it and those thousands that followed him were there more likely to see something than hear something, right?
I don’t know. I mean, I get the need to make the message understandable but I’ve been doing Christianity for a long time and I still don’t quite get it. That’s not a function of bad teachings/preachings but a function of the complexity of the gospel.
I think jch is right. It is not always easy to interpret the scriptures. Some of the parables are difficult to understand. My concern is that we are making it too easy for those who listen to lose the discipline to listen and think and meditate on the word. No , not making every sermon or lesson so technical that no one comprehends but also not hesitating to explore the depths of scripture. Some are hungering for depth.
jch,
I believe Christianity is all about a relationaship with God and personally knowing him. Not about but relationship with, daily. Keeping in step with the spirit. Living a Spirit filled life. When I say look at Master Teacher: at pentecost the disciples did get it. Spirit lead them in them into understanding. As minister the Spirit leads us in understanding the word and helping making relavent to our listeners. Praise God that we have the Holy Spirit to help us as ministers, pastors, elders, teachers, leaders of the church to make it stick.
More on this topic: a 1985 study of face-to-face communication conducted by Albert Mehrabian of Standford Univ found that 55% of the messages hearers receive comes from the speaker’s body and face. Thirty-eight (38) percent of the message comes from the tone of voice. A mere seven percent of the message from the words.
I’m not at all implying, and neither is Dr. Mehrabian, that words are unimportant but I am saying, as I was taught in one of my homiletics classes, that we sometimes discount the use of our body in favor of the words we speak. I’m wondering if we should also consider our body/tone/etc when thinking about making a message stick.