In a bonus edition of our Leadership Uncensored newsletter this month, Ed gives a behind-the-scenes tour of FC's message preparation process.
Winning sports franchises and successful organizations have one key ingredient in common: a commitment to the team concept. If the church is going to succeed in the difficult task of turning drive-thru seekers into full-court followers of Jesus Christ, it will need this same tenacious commitment to the team concept. With that in mind, the following is the process that Fellowship Church has used for several years as we have realized the benefits of the team concept for communicating God's Word with creativity and power.
There are four main stages of our message preparation process. These stages are not necessarily descriptive of hard and fast steps that we go through every time. As with everything else in the creative church, any of these elements can change without notice; but they do represent the basic journey we go through each week as we craft the weekend message.
Stage One
The first stage is called the "pre-meeting process." During this stage, my staff and I will individually collect preliminary research to augment the current message or series. For this research we will consult the Bible and biblical commentaries, magazines, newspapers, the Internet, relevant books and sermons by other speakers. After we have researched our topic, I will accumulate our findings and begin to assemble this material and take notes. Typically I will dictate my research and notes onto an audio tape so that my assistant can transcribe it into a research document for our creative meeting (stage 2). After the document has been created, it is moved into "mind map" form so that this document is on one legal-sized piece of paper, front and back.
Stage Two
The second stage of our team process is our creative team meeting. Before the meeting, my assistant passes out the initial research document to each member so they can be prepared for this Tuesday afternoon meeting. The contributors for this stage include three to four regulars coupled with one or two people who provide a strategic viewpoint. For example, when I am preparing for a message for singles, I'll invite a single staff member and possibly a divorcee. When we are preparing to speak on a doctrinal issue, I might invite a new Christian along. We've found that a diverse group brings vitality and a more balanced viewpoint as we shape the talk.
The goal is to establish a creative and powerful introduction, the first transitional statement, and generate different ideas to communicate the content of the message. Once these are in place, we work on the body of the message. We try to develop main points with creative and memorable verbiage, and points that relate back to a consistent theme. Once we have our main points in place, we work on our transitional statements. These transitional statements are, in my opinion, the most important portion of any message. We will also work on developing illustrations that help support these points. We don't force illustrations, but search for personal illustrations that reinforce and remind our listeners of the main points and theme of the message. Finally, we construct concluding remarks that help pull the parts together into a cohesive application or "take away" for each listener. At the end of this third stage we have the rough draft of the message completed.
Stage Three
The third stage is our follow-up creative team meeting, which takes place on Wednesday morning or afternoon (sometimes lasting all day). By now, I usually am working with only two to three members of our creative team. The goal of this stage is simple: to make our rough draft less rough. We work on the introduction, transitions, main points, illustrations and concluding remarks. At the end, we have formulated the final draft of the sermon, though in a sense, it will be reworked until the minute when I stand up to deliver the message.
Stage Four
Fourth and finally, are the weekend study, preparation and critiquing sessions. Weekend study for me usually begins Saturday after lunch since I speak twice at 5:00 and 6:30pm. I will read through the sermon several times while fine tuning the verbiage, illustrations, transitions, conclusion and overall flow. I will meet with our media director to view our PowerPoint slides of my main points and Bible verses. After the first Saturday evening service, I'll meet with several of the management pastors. We will quickly watch the service and critique the music, message, drama, video and make appropriate changes. What we are looking for is unity. When an element doesn't fit or takes too long to develop, we discard it in time for the next service. Throughout the weekend I continue to tweak the content of my sermon. I will pick the best message from our four services (two on Saturday and two on Sunday) to be transcribed and mastered for our audio/video series packages.
As you can see, I rely heavily on a diverse set of teammates for the various stages of our message preparation process. This has lifted an enormous burden from me as the principal speaker, and I know that our congregation benefits from the synergy and creativity that comes from our commitment to the team process. I'm confident that this process can work for you too. Isn't it about time you connected with the creative geniuses all around you?
