By Carey Nieuwhof
If you preach with any regularity, you know the pressure that comes with staring at a blank screen with a deadline approaching.
And if you communicate regularly within the context of the local church, like I do, you quickly discover that Sundays come around whether you’re ready or not.
I get asked regularly what I do to prepare for my messages, and there are a few things I practice and that I’ve seen other leaders do that I think can gain any communicator an edge. Now that a large portion of your audience is watching your preaching online, these 5 things are even more important whether you’re preaching to an audience or simply to camera.
The struggle communicators have when looking into a camera with no one in the room is an unique challenge that arises from a few things:
- No crowd energy off which to feed
- No reaction from the congregation as to where you message is tracking (or isn’t)
- The ability to stop or pause if you don’t like something you said or the way you said it (which isn’t possible during a live talk)
The list could be much longer, but those are some of the dynamics you face when preaching to a camera, not a live audience.
I’ve outlined 5 strategies for speaking directly into a camera in this post, but to master it, it’s important to go back to the basics, which has everything to do with how you write the message and internalize it.
Nail these 5 things, and speaking to a live crowd, your phone or a full video set won’t be an issue.
The following principles aren’t talked about that often, but they work for me and for other communicators I admire.
Although these things took my years to figure out, here’s to giving you a shortcut—five of them actually.
1. FOCUS INITIALLY ON THE QUALITY OF YOUR THINKING INSTEAD OF THE QUALITY OF YOUR WRITING
So how do you get to a killer message, article or post? You think your way there before you write your way there.
Look, I admire great writers and communicators. They can make anything sound interesting, fun or even meaningful.
But I appreciate great thinking even more.
So will your audience. Especially your online audience. They can swipe over to YouTube at any time and catch a perfectly delivered message, but great thinking is much more difficult to come by. Make sure that your preaching online is based in great thinking.
A great idea adequately expressed is worth more than a bad idea eloquently expressed.
If you put lipstick on a pig, it’s still a pig.
Read the full article at: https://careynieuwhof.com/simple-practices-that-will-make-your-preaching-better/
