The Framework Of An Andy Stanley Sermon [North Point Community Church]

today on the Pro Tools show we're gonna break down the communication techniques of Andy Stanley Andy Stanley is the senior pastor of North Point Community Church in the Atlanta region and he's one of the most listened to pastors in North America so in this episode we'll talk about the specifics and break down the techniques frameworks and strategies that Andy Stanley uses in his communication [Music] well hey there and welcome to the Pro Tools show this show is all about helping you and your Church navigate the biggest communication shift of 900 years Alex it's the biggest and I'm joined as always to my right it sure is the biggest you can watch the video version of this show on youtube youtube.com slash pro church tools subscribe thumbs up church bell for notifications rate and review on whatever podcast listener choice that you prefer yes you can listen to this audio version if you prefer not to watch us on youtube in today's episode we are going to be breaking down the communication techniques and frameworks of one Andy Stanley oh yeah Andy is the senior pastor of North Point Community Church in the Atlanta area we recently did an episode highlighting north coins brand new website yes they're excellent communicating online but Andy himself is also an excellent communicator from stage but also in writing books and in this particular episode we are going to be looking and doing a deep dive into a single message that Andy preached in late 2018 one of his most popular as far as YouTube views goes correct so I went to end these Stanley's YouTube channel and there are a total current lis of 137 videos and this was the second most popular when you sort by views and the title of this message is called the Bible for grown-ups part one last things first preached in October 8th 2018 and we're gonna break down some of the things stood out to us while watching this message because we think Andy does an excellent job of preaching in a way that's inclusive welcomes everyone to the table no matter your life experiences no matter if you are a Christian no matter if you are someone who's been in church for a long time or just a little time yeah maybe you know a lot about the Bible maybe you don't know too much but what we also know is that Andy does an excellent job of talking about how he talks to others yeah I don't know how long Andy has been teaching he feels like one of those guys who just never gets any older well the problem is that he's the son of Charles Stanley yeah and so he's the grandson of George Washington Stanley who did not do TV ministry but was a traveling preacher someone comes from a long line of Stanley's and actually according to Wikipedia Andy stay and his name is Charles Stanley Wow who knew but he goes exactly like he's always he just always looks the same he always sounds the same he's so easy to listen to listening to this I loved listening to this sermon and he's not on my regular rotation of people I listen to but I just love listening to him he actually reminds me a lot of your pastor bill Markham at Central I feel like they kind of teach the same way but Andy and if there's any any pastoral or or preaching students listening you may have read one of his books like both you and I have called communicating for change we read it in school we both went to the same school and in that book he basically lays out his framework for preaching for teaching so the the course I read that book in is called homiletic so basically how to preach and we studied Andy Stanley because he has this very generic five-point framework so it goes me you God you we so just about every sermon you listen to follows that very generic map basically me is is either introducing himself sharing a personal story you connecting you to me and saying like hey we're kind of we can identify here then he goes to the text and says this is what God has to say then he brings it back to you and then it says now that it's been applied to you what are we going to do about this so in just about every sermon of his and surely many of the students of his teaching of which I am one of them you can kind of find these elements in his sermons but he wrote that book so this podcast is not that book he wrote that book you can read it this podcast today is specifically about this sermon called the Bible for grown-ups part one and the specific devices literary tools that he used to create tension and to preach as far as YouTube views goes one of his most popular sermons right so what made this particular message so popular why do people resonate with this more than a bunch of others because obviously sometimes you say something and people love it sometimes you say something and they really really love this and that's what happened here with this message so the thesis for this message is essentially if you don't know the story of the Bible it's very difficult to embrace the stories in the Bible I got saved as soon as he said that like that eat that's how you open the sermon oh my coop that's all I needed to hear it's alliteration making a quilt post yeah I tainted likes and go home yeah I made a t-shirt with it on it like yeah so good and essentially the underlying theme there is that if we don't understand how we got this book of books that we call the Bible how it was put together and what it was like for the early Christians to navigate that and what were they in their context dealing with when it came to putting together this whole giant text that we now call the Bible if we can't understand the story behind that it's very difficult to fully embrace and understand the individual stories within the Bible yeah and this is especially timely because if we look at a tool like keyword tool do we know that on YouTube alone the phrase the keyword phrase Bible study how-to gets more than half a million unique monthly searches on YouTube tomorrow in America and so there is a huge group that is wanting to understand the Bible more because it is frankly ancient it is frankly diverse and it is complex and complicated especially if you just open it and start reading you may not have the proper context to understand what it was what it was like for that writer to tabulate these stories yeah and what it was like for the characters in these stories what was their life like every day and if all we have is our 2020 cultural North American Canadian you know Brady Shearer Alexander Mills lens to view through the Scriptures we are gonna color the stories very very greatly if we don't have proper historical context him interestingly it's not just Christians according to Barnum more than half of all American adults 58 percent to be precise wish they read the Bible more often and this is why when we released our giant tool of what we saw the best sermon series ideas were for churches over the course of a year one of them was a yearly series on how to read the Bible yeah because we know how important it is to our Christian faith and yet it's this same text that has led so many to say I just can't believe this anymore well just that that thought alone has changed the way we've been teaching in our church over the last few years just basically checking our assumptions at the door as pastors and as teachers and saying like we can't assume that everybody knows what we know and even for people who've been a part of this church for a long time we can't assume that there's familiar with these stories as we are or that they even have the same context so when it comes to teaching on a Sunday we've been acknowledging that and opening our our teaching portion we're saying hey for the next few moments we're gonna read from this ancient text and it's called the Bible and we have some here if you don't have one if you need a Bible right now put up your hand we'll put one in it we've been we've been introducing those elements because we we put ourselves in the position of either a first-time visitor to church or somebody who hasn't been in a church in a long time or just the people in the chairs that we are often not and said wait maybe we don't share the same context and so we just that awareness alone has shifted the way we've been teaching the Bible so in Andes clearly going through that with his church this was back in late 2018 but he kicked off this series all about the Bible not just to teach the people who find themselves sitting in those seats every Sunday but the people who are looking for answers on YouTube over half a million people in America every month asking that question on YouTube using it as a search engine how do I read the Bible and Andy's answering that and we think with this sermon and surely with the rest of the sermon series he did a tremendous job and thematically this seems like an approach that aim he has taken not just in this series but through so much of his content he has been producing over the last few years he had the book deep and wide which was all about how church should be inviting and exciting for those that aren't familiar with journey shouldn't just be this Country Club thing that if you don't have church experience you aren't interested in it right it be something that everyone wants to be a part of and then with his very popular book irresistible that was wading through the mess and all the ancillary things of the Christian faith that we can get bogged down in and say look at its core the story of Jesus is irresistible and he's taking that same approach here with this message before we jump into the specific things that stood out to us side note if you go and watch this message YouTube and we'll have it linked in the YouTube description for this episode it begins with one of the best and most haunting sermon bumpers that I've ever seen so this doesn't necessarily relate to the communication devices that Andy Stanley uses but obviously with Pro Church tool we talk a ton about videography and storytelling this sermon bumper is one of the best that I've ever seen normally with sermon bumpers you get something that maybe is a bit playful maybe it's a bit Kitsch when it's not done properly but at its best it's probably just gonna be something that's kind of forgettable and it's used as a transition exactly mostly as a transition you got about 30 seconds the premise for this sermon bumper is it starts with a young boy holding a children's Bible and he's singing the bibl II that's the book for me and it's in a very high voice because he's a young child then it shows him maybe three to five years older he still got the children's Bible he's still singing it then he jumps to a teenager and you can see him obviously a bit older he still got that same children's Bible he's still singing that song but you can see that there's a bit of interest that's being lost then it fast-forward to him in university and he's studying and the Bible still there but he's looking at his phone he's on his devices he's not really paying attention to it and then finally it ends it fast forwards to this same person and it's different actors for each stage of life and they're working in an office and they pull out the Bible and someone from across the room goes hey what are you doing there and he just says all nothing shoves it back in to his briefcase and goes back to work and of course the theme takeaway there is talking about how the Bible was once a part of our lives and as we get older we start to see it as archaic we see it as not as relevant we start to understand some of the criticisms of the Bible and that removes our ability to see it as something useful in our lives let's start with the very first takeaway that I got and it happens around four minutes into this message and let's take a listen Andy Stanley I'm just curious if you're watching or everybody everywhere at all of our campuses how many of you had a Bible as a child with your name printed on the front and some former fashion yes that's right and I bet when you received your Bible and for those of you who didn't raise your hand you're feeling kind of left out chill I'll tell you why in just a minute okay it's no big deal okay so if we're using the me you framework the message begins with Andy being like this was a Bible that I had as a kid yeah then transitions to you is like who else had a Bible like this as a kid classic preacher move raise your raise your hand if how many times can a preacher say raise your hand if in one sermon not less than 100 like yeah but what wasn't interesting to me and he almost catches himself you can hear him he kind of keeps going this oh I actually need to include this is that he says hey raise your head opt in if this is you and a bunch people raise their hand and then he moves on and then he comes back and just so you know if you didn't raise your hand don't worry we're gonna learn why just hold tight for a second and this is something that he does exceptionally well over and over and over again and this is just one manifestation of that he wants every person regardless of their past experiences circumstances understanding of Scripture lack of understanding of the Christian faith to be able to come to the table and hear about Jesus and hear about God yeah and so he knows that in his messaging he needs to be inclusive and something as simple as this we can overlook we can think this isn't that important but if you've ever been in a situation where a pastor a teacher anyways but hey who has this experience you raise your head you feel validated sure like this is me you see me I'm like that yeah the inverse is true for those that don't raise their hands they suddenly feel like this is not for me yeah I am not seen in this moment whatever we're talking about I am already behind the eight ball yeah whatever that saying is yeah your pastor does this really well and I mentioned him earlier bill Markham he will always go out of his way to define basically Christianese so it's in a more veiled way than this so here he's asked a question you can he can see who's opted in and can see that other people haven't so he can say he can he can acknowledge those people who haven't but what your pastor bill will do if he hits a word like let's say sanctification for a lot of people in the room we know what that is but bill knows that there are people in the room who don't know what sanctification is so he'll stop and he'll define that in English and say hey that word just means fill in the blank so he he's aware that there are people in the room especially a church of central size there's always new visitors it's downtown the city so there's people who have never been to church before he knows there's people in the room who don't know what this word means I can't go over this and leave them behind here like I have to make sure they're coming along with us so I'm gonna stop define this in English for them so we can move on together and speaking is all about building trust creating bridges finding common ground so that you can then lead people to a moment where they have an epiphany or where they recognize the truth and are able to take action if at the beginning of your communication you're already leaving people behind by excluding them with what you're saying you've lost them or at least you've given an opportunity to lose them very early on by just being basically sloppy or reckless with how you communicate this is why we talk about storytelling being such really the universal and paramount way of communicating look at Jesus in the parables that he taught he would take something like sheep something like a lost coin for you know something that the entire culture would understand and he would use that premise a universally understood concept that everyone would have relation to oh I was a shepherd when I was younger I have family that's a shepherd shepherding is just a part of our culture that everyone understands he would use that as common Brown a common ground to explain an existential truths about the kingdom of God and that way he would invite everyone to the table and what's amazing about storytelling is that even though you have everyone at the same table everyone's different lived experiences will find a different ventricle of truth within that story you don't have to worry about acknowledging only if you don't understand what a sheep is like you would never need to do that you would never also need to be like oh just so you know a shepherd this is their role when we read it now we need to understand those things exactly then right it'd be the same thing as if we used a conversation starter a parable about like driving a car you wouldn't need to explain oh and when you get in the car you have to actually turn the ignition right turn it on we'd have to explain that to somebody in first century absolutely yeah storytelling is excellent if you're gonna do something that Andy does here and say hey is this ever been you you're in a traffic jam and so and you know that there's a potential that not everyone will absolutely be there yeah you also need to then acknowledge those that were not included in that exercise don't gloss over them run along second thing that stood out to us acknowledging objections we're gonna move to six minutes and ten seconds in this message here's Andy again now for many of us if the Bible says it that still settles it but for many of you those as many of you may be who were even raised with the Bible it's just not that simple anymore because somewhere along the way somebody pointed out to you what else the Bible says the parts they didn't talk about in Sunday school the parts they didn't talk about at church in fact you may be in a situation where you brought some of the parts to your parents attention or to your pastor or priest attention that they skipped over in Sunday school that they skipped over in church and you find yourself having a very difficult time reconciling what you found in the Bible with the reality that you live in in the world that you live in and you're an honest person you couldn't just look the other way so perhaps because of what you discovered about or in the Bible you walked away or perhaps you're considering walking away so what Andy is doing here is he is clearly and deeply articulating an objection a common objection that many people within that auditorium watching on YouTube listening on the podcast are harboring silently within them and it's going unsaid this is communication 101 if you want to move someone from point A to point B they're not going to go willingly otherwise they'd already be there there's a reason they're at point a and they're not at point B and anytime you're communicating something you want them to move in a certain direction for that to take place you need to articulate something that is silently unsaid in their head you need to say I understand why you're in point a because of reason one reason two and reasons three yeah and if you can't accomplish that first there's really no hope moving someone from point A to point B because you don't truly understand why they're at point a to begin with yeah when you're as a teacher trying to like you said move someone from point A to point B but wrestling through a lot of the stuff that we do when we're communicating truths about the God a lot of this stuff has baggage right so the Bible comes with a lot of baggage for a lot of people but even something that feels more safe like let's say you were preaching on the love of God thinking that ah this doesn't have a lot of baggage well no there's people in the room who don't have a good relationship with their father so when you're talking about the love of a good father they're not gonna connect with that and meeting those objections first before and Andy does it before he gets to before the content before he gets to the Bible it helps for your people who have those objections to not filter what you're about to say through the lens of their objections right so if I'm in the room and I've got baggage associated with the Bible and you're teaching me about the Bible I'm going to hear and and I mean see perceive everything you're going to tell me through the lens of my objections but if you can tell me like hey I see you're wearing those glasses I see you have those lenses on can can we talk honestly for a few moments and and when when I'm done you make your own decision but I recognize that that this is what you're carrying with you that is going to encourage people to take those virtual lenses off and maybe be considerate maybe open their hearts to hear what you're going to say soften their hearts if you will if you want to use some some Christian ease to - yeah just open their hearts to what you have to say and give you an opportunity it's like removing a barrier in a road that's what I was gonna say like your guard is up absolutely like yeah I saw 19:17 last night and there's a few scenes where there's there's only a few scenes where there cars involved and the main objection of the car in 1917 when you don't have off-road Jeep vehicles is that if the road is not clear you can't go around right you have to stay on the road and so what the Germans would do is chop down these trees lay them across the road because they knew if a trees here the the British troops can't go around so they had to remove that tree to be able to progress from point A to point B it's the same thing here he knows they have to address those objections if there is any hope of you hearing what I'm going to say and actually choosing to do something choosing to do something with it let's run with that analogy for a little bit because it's excellent in articulating moving from point A to point B so your point a there's a giant tree across the road you can't drive over it it's that classic riddle can't go around and crank you got it stay here that's and so what have you experienced other communicators do in the past because we've all been there we're a communicator acknowledges an objection but they don't give it weight in fact they undermine it maybe they make a little joke about it maybe they insult it maybe they laugh it off right like oh well you know those people those lukewarm Christians don't actually believe in the well everyone laughs the insider group is like huh and then there's like ten people in the room like well that's actually me I feel that way yeah and you just insulted it think about the great villains in movies and we had a very good recent one in Thanos within the Avengers and there's that classic Lima Thanos says he's like I am inevitable and what makes him such an excellent villain is this feeling of no matter what we do no matter how hard we try in 1 million different alternative universes or whatever it is this guy is still going to do what he wants and you cannot stop him and that's what makes overcoming fan OHS such an amazing part of the movie because the odds were so stacked against you in the same way if you are trying to get someone through an objection you might think the right thing to do is to undermine it and talk about how it's not that big of a deal they think they can't get past it what I need to do is it helped them realize that's nothing that it's just not something to be worried about a tree that's way just drive right over it the opposite is what you need to do you need to acknowledge the way to acknowledge the guard clearly articulate how difficult this must be for you empathize this is actually classic copywriting 101 and think about it it's done comically in infomercials like is this ever been you can open their cupboard and your glasses just fall on your face do they shatter you slip your jugular gets slashed and you're in the hospital does your boat have a hole in it flex seal I am gonna spray paint on it and it's gonna be fine the comical version of this you're good they're acknowledging the literal hole in your boat yeah if you ever tried in early World War one to get over a giant you can't here's an idea send two people to notify the troops on the front land they're running into a trap yeah acknowledging the objection giving weight to it and clearly articulating it if you can clearly articulate it sometimes in copywriting the best compliment you can get is it's like you were like inside my head knowing my exact problems yeah when you can articulate that it builds instant trust because it shows I understand where you are and then you look at that person you're like well they're at point B and they understand what it's like to be a point a maybe there's a chance for me to get from point A to point B as well it's it's like a virtual expression of empathy right it's like oh you see me you validate me and in in the you know the the metaphor that we're running with of this tree on the side of the road Andy is virtually on the other side he's a point B but it's it shows that aunt Andy's basically saying like hey let's move this log together I'm gonna move towards you let's move this log together so you can get your car up here and we can move to point B so it's is an expression of empathy it makes sure everyone in the room feels known feel seen and that way you can actually learn and grow and move somewhere together and look you might be thinking why do we need to make everyone feel know we need to make everyone feel seeing like just just do what I say just listen that is something that we maybe don't say but we believe in our hearts like everyone's so soft nowadays just like get over it yeah if you truly want to move people from point A to point B if you want them to hear your message take action on that message have it reside deep within them and change them for them to take an accept if you truly care about that this is an essential part of communication surety and if you are going to undermine it gloss over it the truth is you're not gonna be as effective as a communicator that's the bottom line your choice to make but don't just overlook this as something that is not something of value or of weight and one exercise that I think that every one of every one of us that's a communicator should begin to do and I've been doing this for years is when you begin to talk about something you have to do this exercise of going through okay what would be an objection to this all right we did this in a recent episode on our most recent episode we taught this new social media strategy and we knew that there were gonna be this many objections and so what we went through was it you might be thinking this is actually just engagement bait yeah here's why we don't think it is you might be thinking is this really actually gonna work for me and here's why it went through all the objections if you can do that ahead of time preemptively and then weave them through your message yet you will see so many more people taking action which is of course the goal what we're trying to do let's move on to point number three empathizing with skepticism really just another form of Andy responding to objections yeah which goes to show you when you're doing your message a huge part of it a third a half might just be you breaking down objections hitting through the guards that people have up that's just the truth we all have different lived experiences or all skeptical here's Andy again and the question that we all should wrestle to the ground and if you've walked away from faith or walked away from Christianity I understand it if I heard your story as to why you walked away I would probably say who could blame you this is the lead pastor of one of the biggest churches in America yeah one of the most influential he just said there I understand why you left the faith he said if you told me your story I would agree that makes total sense I don't want to just quickly get through that that is cell Aegeus a substantial statement yeah because the theory is well if you're a Christian you should have this unwavering faith and as a Christian there should be no room for doubt and no one can walk away like if you're saved you're saved and we don't want to let in any type of crack because what happens when there's a crack the devil fills it he's coming to get you and he's flipping that on its head and again acknowledging skepticism but he goes farther he doesn't just acknowledge the skepticism he empathizes with it yeah and he doesn't sympathize there's a difference he doesn't say you know what I could totally understand how you could get there he says I would understand and do the same thing yeah he's empathizing which is him going out of his way he is crossing the aisle he is sitting in your seat right next to you and being like I get it I understand why you were at point-a yeah I I mean it's all reminiscent of the way Jesus we have records of how Jesus interacted mostly with individuals in the Gospels like I think about the woman at the well right and going back to our last point like when we were talking about you know you could just say like hey like you just got a you just got to go home and and you just gotta don't do this anymore but like that was not Jesus approach at all like he met with this woman he sat down with her he heard her story he let her speak up let her come to her own conclusions he gently guided her there and they ended up getting there right she ended up making a move from point A to point B but his approach was so empathetic it was so kind it was so gentle it was um it I and ease teaching technique is reminiscent of the technique that I see Jesus using all the time when he was interacting with individuals and I know in my own personal ministry from the pulpit but also personally like one-on-one with folks in our church it's just an essential posture not just of teachers right but just of Christians you know because we're all we feel that if you're not a teacher from stage but you're a Christian maybe you feel that compulsion to to move people in your life from point A to point B and that's all good and fine but if we're not starting from an empathetic position saying like yeah like I'm human too like I've I've been there I I feel that I hear you and and working through that stuff hand in hand to to help our friends and family take next steps in their life with Jesus just as somebody did for us just as people still do for me you know so Jesus did it and and that's just what we're trying to do and I I really do see that personified in in the teaching of Andy here I think this is a perfect example of what it looks like to meet someone with with empathy and and what that does is it disarms you right yeah it disarms it removes those objections those virtual those proverbial logs across the road just sitting there with your arms crossed you scowl on your face yeah you start talking this way and you're like my posture has to change yeah and Andy's asked here and the Sermon is pretty big like not just for people who are unchurched but maybe more so for people who are Church she's basically saying like this text that we've grown up on and the ways we've interpreted it maybe we need to reframe this maybe we need to relearn some things here like it's a big ass and so I think that's why for a lot of this sermon he's spending time building trust with everyone who's in the room everyone who's online every half a million people every month who are looking at Bible how-to he's building trust because the ask is big it's the the stakes are high this library of text is essential to living and we need to know how to read it and maybe we've been reading it wrong it's a huge ask for some people and for that reason it's as these these techniques that he's using can't be overlooked in any of our communication they have to be understood and they have to be employed because they're essential few things that stand out to me and how he's talking about this he says verbatim if you have walked away from faith if you have walked away from Christianity he's not speaking hypothetically here it'd be very easy for him to say you know we all know that person that's walked away from faith there are those people that don't follow Jesus any more and he would be in that way pitting the insiders against the outsiders instead he's using the word you to say there are people in this auditorium right now that are one of us yeah that feel this way and by doing this he's not distancing the problem from where everyone is in that room yeah he's saying this is us there is no insider and outsider there's only us and we are dealing with this right now another thing is that he empathizes with the skepticism he validates it and in doing so he avoids doing what a lot of other communicators would do lesser communicators they would blame external forces so we see this in the garden right Adam takes a bite of the Apple God says what happened here she made me do it I immediately starts blaming someone else and we all do that something has happened we are at fault we are in trouble there is something that is hurting us and we immediately go well because of this it's because of this it's because of this and we start to blame external forces why well because we're creating a narrative to make sense of the chaos that's happening around us the world is messed up terrible things happen and so we create these stories in our mind to make sense of it so that we can go throughout our day by day life without just falling over into the fetal position and just like crumbling down and so it takes someone who's very secure it takes a person who is very sure of themself to empathize with something that a lesser communicator would consider an attack on the Christian faith yeah this is an attack on the faith and me as a priest of the faith as a pastor of the faith is an attack upon me yeah for someone to empathize with a concern with an uncertainty so deeply and so strongly demonstrates to me a person who is confident who is sure of himself and his lacking ego yeah for you you would have to strip yourself of any ego to empathize in that situation totally because if you had any ego at all you would be feeling vulnerable yourself yeah and thus wouldn't be able to speak as powerfully about it so there and to go back to acknowledging objections empathizing objections I've found that your ability to describe empathize articulate an objection will ultimately decide your ability to respond to an objection so these are precursors to actually what's coming in the message right like if you can't clearly articulate an objection you can't respond to it now because you won't have the people's guard removed you have to first say I see the guard it looks like this it's this big this is where it came from can I remove it for a second so we can take a look at another option yeah if you can't first do that you can't talk about going to point B because they'll still be stuck behind that guard get blinded yeah so it's not until this next clip we're going to talk about is 24 minutes in you know for some pastors like your sermons over at 24 minutes so it's not until 24 minutes and then he actually gets to it and says like oK we've dealt with all that we've had we've had our shop talk like everyone is on the same page now I can tell you what like I'm here to say so that was he took a long time to build trust it was necessary necessary and here comes the ask and he's building trust with the church he communicates with every go weep yes and of course it's not a guest speaker sure he has a global ministry watching the new tube like us for the first time but like in the moment he's speaking as well to the auditorium they have people that have been in his church for decades and he still is doing this much work to build trust to essentially say guys the Bible is trustworthy yes yeah like let's not overlook that yeah these are Christians in the auditorium and this is the stuff that we miss with our communication and we rob it of our power sure we don't build up Thanos to be the villain that he is and that's when we overcome him it doesn't really matter that much right like if you have a trash boring not powerful not daunting villain in a movie when the heroes overcome him it's like okay that wasn't exactly compelling right right you can articulate the weight of the villain overcoming it now it becomes that much more powerful yep so we get to 23 minutes 39 seconds in the message and Andy starts saying things like this for most people who walk away from faith you know what the bottom line is and maybe this is your bottom line maybe you know this maybe you haven't thought about it the bottom line is you know Andy it's good for you but I don't believe it anymore I mean I just don't believe it anymore and the question that I hope you'll wrestle to the ground and the one that John wants you to wrestle to the ground because he wants to wrestle it to the ground with you is this what is the it that you don't believe if you walked away from faith or considered it or considering it what is the it and John not the Bible we haven't gotten there yet John not the Bible is about to tell you the only it that really matters this is so important John an eyewitness someone who spent time with Jesus says that this these things that I've written in this gospel these things are written that you may believe believe what that jesus is in fact the Messiah to the Jews the Son of God to the Greeks and the Romans and that by believing you may have life in his name regardless of what you've heard regardless of what you've seen regardless of what you've experienced in your life as a Christian John says this is the it that's it and that's the only it that really matters and this the implications of this statement in this document we call the Gospel of John and here's why I say that if John's account of the life of Jesus if John's account is all you have John's account is all you need so we've built up 25 minutes into this message we've been responding to objections and Andy has brought the listeners and the viewers to this moment and what he's doing is he's presenting a paradigm shift in copywriting at least internally approach your tools and we call this the old way and the new way approach and if you go to nucleuses website our product you will see an actual table called old way a new way and on one side we say here's how the old way of doing Church websites is here's what we think the newest ray here's the old way of doing social media for churches here's the new way we need a paradigm shift Jesus articulated it like this and you've heard it said but I say to you this is a timeless way of communicating where you say this is what you have now this is the old way I want to present to you the new way and this is especially timely I think in 2020 because we're living through the biggest communication shift in 500 years and so we are experiencing paradigm shifts in every single industry so much so that things that we have done traditionally for hundreds of years or let's say a hundred years as North America are just becoming obsolete and so let me frame that you've heard it said this way I now say to you in a different way not through the way Jesus would say but through the way some of our favorite companies would say it to to nail this down a little bit more you've heard it said you need a professional camera to take beautiful photos but Apple says to you you just need our folks or how about this one you've heard it said you need to go out to a nice restaurant to experience fine dining but blue apron says to you you just need our meal kits amen you've heard it said you need a gas-powered vehicle to experience the fullness of driving the Tesla says to you you just need our electric car can confirm this is a timeless classic way of communicating you've got someone at Point a you need to get them to point B you've worked to remove the objections the reason they're at pointed the reason they're stuck and now you're gonna say here's the difference between point a and point B yeah we're removing all the reasons why you can't get to point B now once those are gone we can articulate why point B is so awesome mm-hmm and Andy talks about John writing his account of his first town a firsthand encounters with Jesus and at that point John has no context for what the Bible will become right if you said John isn't it cool that you're writing a book of the Bible he'd say I don't know what you're saying that makes no sense to you which is something that we would never consider sure has since we were a kid singing the bibl e we've been looking at this and that's the fourth gospel that's the love gospel a lot of red letters and that yeah sometimes all you need is the Gospel of John you should start there and then go to X you know we've created so much culture around reading the Bible but let's think about it from John's perspective for a little bit he's at the end of his life he's dictating this he wants future generations to have record of the words works and lessons of Jesus and what it was like to live with this man on a day-to-day basis because he doesn't want it to be lost down the road and Andy's saying if you were in that place there was no entirety of the Bible so maybe you've got hung up on some of the Old Testament before maybe you've asked the question how could God say this is okay for the Israelites it seems so out of character for what Jesus would do and he's saying look if all we had was this document it would be enough to understand the person of Jesus and to put your faith in Christ to have eternal life now and in the next via I mean Andy has spent 20 at this point 26 minutes basically stripping away the baggage that everyone walked in the room with that everyone grew up with that's how he started his sermon with a sermon bumper of a little kid singing one of the most familiar songs where anyone who grew up in church reading that classic children's Bible it's stripping away baggage that we've carried since since being a child and and now it comes to this this epiphany moment right where he says like now that we've now that we've moved that lock and you can see the path here maybe can we think about this differently can we can will you go on this journey with us and it's it's just incredible I mean I I joked before that I got saved at the beginning of what Andy said but and I like I'm a student of the Scriptures you know how many Bibles I have but more than like a thousand I actually don't know how many Bibles I have that's a problem but listening to the sermon Andy did such a great job of communicating the truth even though I'm not where most of the people in the room are as consumers of of a sermon I'm usually on the other side it spoke to me so poignant Lee hmm because he did such a calculated job of articulating some of the biggest existential truths that anyone will ever wrestle with you know talking about what does the gospel mean what does this story of Jesus mean and I might just go ahead and listen to the rest of the of the series I don't know how many sermons are in there but it's kind of have a cliffhanger at the end yeah I mean and so here I just pulled a Mark Driscoll any big in week 252 no yeah so if we go back to that original generic framework that we spoke about at the beginning here of the me you God you we curious he's talked about the Bible's he's talked about the God part right in the middle of the sandwich right and now the ask comes he says this is how this applies to you what if you only had this gospel what if you only had access to this letter what would this mean for you how would your practice of Christianity look if you were the one that John was writing to and that's all you had if you're in first century Rome and you were one of the ones who got to hear John's letter and that was all you ever heard about Jesus what would this mean for you and so this is where he brings it home he starts applying it to everyone in the room and then in a classic Andy Stanley sermon the we would be like okay this is what we've learned how are we going to act on this his ask for we is a little bit short because this is the first sermon in a series and the we is basically like hey we're gonna keep digging into this next week you should come back because this sermon basically functions as an introduction to a series that I like I said I don't know how long it is but to relearn how we approach the scriptures is again take some time so we laid the framework and said let's do this again next week and we're gonna learn a little bit more so we spend the first two thirds of the message just basically acknowledging empathizing responding to objection yes we then present the old way new way approach this is the paradigm shift that I'm suggesting you're at point a I understand why you're there but we can get past that and here's why point B is so awesome and then what is he goes right back to responding to objections yeah because this is what humans do this is what we all do sure we listen to something and we say this is not for me and then if a person does an excellent job of basically removing all of our excuses we'll say all right I'm gonna listen this could be for me and then they say and this is the solution to which we immediately respond right I get that for me this is why I could not do that sure I understand you remove the objections but now that I understand your solution I have more objections not to point a and me staying there I now have objections to point B and why I would not be included in the group that would be suitable for and this is what Andy does after suggesting this new paradigm for decades actually for generations for you know a couple three hundred four hundred years people have been directed not to read the Bible but to read the Gospel of John in fact some of you may have become Christians because somebody said hey you know I just want you to read something don't start in Genesis you know don't start in Matthew just you know don't read the Bible just just read this one account of the life of Jesus and in reading the Gospel of John you put your faith in Jesus because John was right if this is all you ever have if this is all you ever get this is all you'll ever need that amazing two hundred and seventy years before this book is ever assembled shouts to again the hold me back techniques out of the mic up so where you say something so good and you know if you're Mike Todd and you're a little bit younger you know you're like basically saying I'm yeah but you know you can be in your 50s Andy Stanley you say something good oh wow do you know what my dad did a few weeks ago was that he was wearing like a really nice sports blazer he's preaching and he said something that was like really tweetable you know the guy reaches into his breast pocket pulls out a microphone that he's bought at I don't know dollar Amer something's he's already speaking with a mic but we use a headset now he's got a headset off so he went to Dollarama he knew that this line was gonna be so good he went to Dollarama bottom mic so he could reach into his breast pocket hold his arm out straight and drop the mic for himself preachers feeling themselves is one of my favorite moments like they've studied and they've worked so hard and there's a lot of humility that comes and presenting the gospel but every so often you need to flex on the congregation and you can start screaming how they don't know I preach you tonight yet he's give a little understanding you could pull a microphone out of your breast pocket drop it in front and say was this premeditated yet yes I did the anti flex a couple weeks ago I was getting really pumped up about one of our gospel readings where I started like almost yelling I was just reading it with a lot of passion which I'm usually pretty like cool like a cucumber when I'm speaking but I was pretty amped up for some reason and so I read it and I finished and I was like I'm so sorry for yelling at you I totally deflated the moment I was like I did not mean to do that I'm sorry for yelling and then there were some people in Congress like no no it's good I was like okay so aside from from that moment I wanted to highlight in this particular portion of the message is Andy again reaching back into his bag of objection yeah and responding to them because he says look this might be a tough paradigm shift for you I'm essentially saying if all you had was the Gospel of John that would be all you need to find faith in Jesus so don't get bogged down in the ancillary don't get bogged down in all of the weeds that we have to crawl through sometimes if you can believe in the person of Jesus and the God that you see in Christ that is enough and what happens immediately you start saying what about the Old Testament are we just gonna erase that and write are we saying that that doesn't count are we saying that it you know what about if any stroke is removed from what about all Scripture is god-breathed and profitable like this is too much like you are tearing down our tradition he says was it not enough for the first hundred years of Christians how often have we said in our rhetoric if we could just get back to the early church well they didn't have that yeah they didn't have this book that you're saying right now is a deal-breaker or what about the first 400 years like when was scripture canonized and then when was it slightly tweaked like there are so many Christians and this is a classic you present a solution this is like peloton 101 you present a solution and they're like well it wouldn't work for me well what about Jenny mom 25 years old busy on-the-go she lost this many pounds in this much time per day on the peloton on the Bowflex eight minutes three times a day we've got all these testimonies he's basically said hundreds of years of early Christians this was enough you're saying it's not enough for you yeah so is enough for them earliest Christians persecuted they did not live in an empire that was quote/unquote Christian they are being persecuted by the Romans they are being executed they are being upside down crucified martyred in the most grotesque horrific ways and all they had was John's little notes about what happened didn't even call it a gospel it wasn't canonized it was enough for them and you're saying it's not enough for you responding to objections just taking a machete to these objects and just flashing them down we need a sermon series on how to not listen to things and immediately have objections if someone could teach us how to do that then preachers wouldn't have to go through this process all the time trying to dismantle our objections we just wouldn't have any well we wouldn't even need therapy because we exactly the world clearly and ethically and we'd have no ego and we'd have full self value of ourselves and we'd see every single person like Jesus sees them I think you're describing Jesus I'm or I'm describing the teachings of Jesus right we could all be Jesus okay so we'll work on that we'll get back to it big takeaways from this episode that we think that you can enact whether you are a social media manager I do this all the time in my capsules yes whether you are a preacher whether you are just putting together strategy for church we've seen this type of copywriting all the time on websites for instance we were looking at the church's website the other day and it was talking about how they put together their small groups and some of their small group activities are called a quarterly missional hangouts and the words that they put into this we're so intentional to say we do these and there isn't necessarily anything quote churchy related to them we might go to a bowling alley but they are meant to create neutral spaces where missional community can take place the wording was so specific because it wanted to break down any objections from people in the church saying why are we hosting small groups while going bowling what does that have to do with church they knew that was an objection that we're gonna hear and so on they're small groups page on their website in paragraph 25 they're including these takeaways and these communication devices there so no matter what you're doing was in the world of church honestly talking to your partner this is an important thing to consider when you're asking for something when you're suggesting something when you're saying we should spend our money this way we should go on this trip we should not do this we should do this think about their objections acknowledge the let them feel hurt empathize with them don't just like bulldoze and steamroll over people takeaways consider do the thought exercise of what are the potential objections any of them all of them make it as exhaustive as you can objections will come up when I propose this new paradigm shift and then that point a point B old way new way you've heard it said I say to you how can you articulate things within that framework here's how you're living right now here's what you've been told here's what you've accepted I am suggesting this and how can I paint the difference clearly between one and the other and what benefits come from this new way because if there's an old way a new way the new way must be better why is it better and then do the same thought exercise exhaustive as you can responding to objections when you present this new way yeah and then do it all again next week all again next week and then write a book about it yeah and then do it for your website social media yes just never stop responding to objections yeah and as much as you can and I have fallen prey to this as recently as yesterday you need to treat objections with care you need to empathize with them and as much as you can take your ego out of it take your insecurities out of it recognize your value and assurance and remove yourself from your work an objection is not an objection to you as a human when someone is saying idea I'm having trouble with they're not saying you are a bad person and I do not like you yeah and treat them with as much depth as you can because it's easy when you've heard objections enough to start creating a narrative in your mind if these are the type of people that say these types of things and we've talked about this recently with our episode on politics and we've seen so much of villainize ation in those places where you've had enough with dealing with objections you've had to tread lightly you've had to be empathetic you've had to be acknowledged minty and articulating and you've tried to do it so and it still hasn't worked so what do you do you say I've had enough of this I'm just gonna start saying this is for my people and if you're not with us then you're against doesn't screw it because that's what we do we get too tired we get worn down we get exhausted and that's a great Scripture you know do not become exhausted with doing the good works of ministry because it's gonna wear you down you're gonna get tired of being so empathetic I got to be so nice to people I got to think about their needs and feels like why won't they just do what I say I think though and I've seen this work out of my own ministry of my own life my own marriage that when you just live with this posture although it does I think at first it feels like a lot of work but when you see the fruit of it so in andis case you know he's got probably gonna see a lot of people show up for that part too and probably going to reframe the way people consider the Bible so that a few series later when he wants to really dig into something he's laid the foundation of how to approach the Bible where he doesn't have to do that work anymore like we're all on the same page now we've moved in our in our approach of how we consider the Bible that we can talk about this differently now so you get to live in the fruit of it so in andis case in a pastoral case you get to live in the fruit of watching the people who are a part of your community take those next steps you know move from point A to point B same thing happens in a marriage and a friendship in a workplace so yeah it feels like work but I mean is anything that is worth having is worth working for and it's not a sacrifice if it doesn't cost you something and living in the fruit of that is worth it and then with time that kind of demeanor that kind of attitude that kind of empathetic posture of your heart your mind and your voice just feels like second nature and you end up being a better person so that's good and I think we all get to look a little bit more like Jesus also good yeah so I think I think Andy I've read his book followed along with him for a long time we've done a couple small group studies of his at our church now listening to his sermons again I think Andy does a really good job of modeling first of all what Jesus would sound like but also how Jesus would teach and I think that's an example we're falling I think that's a great place to leave off make sure to subscribe your podcast player of choice or on youtube to watch the video version leave us a comment we'd love to hear your thoughts engage with you in the discussion if there are any points that we can clarify stuff that you think we missed we'd love to hear that as well thanks for watching this episode of the ProTools show we'll see you next time

Channel: Brady Shearer

Views: 5,981

Rating: 4.8350515 out of 5

Keywords: andy stanley sermon outline, andy stanley sermon series, andy stanley sermon, sermon andy stanley, andy stanley sermon outlines, andy stanley sermon structure, how to preparation a sermon andy stanley, north point community church atlanta, north point community church strategy, An Andy Stanley Sermon, The Framework Of An Andy Stanley Sermon, andy stanley north point community church, north point community church sermons, north point community church atlanta ga

Id: rjLQctMKpAE

Length: 54min 27sec (3267 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 25 2020