This group of 16 preacher friends from Western North Carolina Methodism descended on Good Shepherd yesterday for the launch of an eight month workshop I am leading called Simplify The Message; Multiply The Impact.
Everyone who signed up showed up. That’s no small victory.
For the bulk of 2018, this group will gather on the first Tuesday of each month and go through sermon design and delivery together. I have given them assignments in between our workshops, including the fiction of Ann Patchett and the music of Jason Isbell.
On Tuesday, we started off with a look at From Clarity To Clutter: The Power Of A One Point Sermon. I shared my own journey from pointless to multi-point and now to one point sermons. In the same way that Chick Fil A does one thing and does it brilliantly, so should a sermon convey one theologically accurate and rhetorically precise point and do so repeatedly.
My prayer is that this group of pilgrims will learn to communicate Gospel clarity in the midst of cultural clutter.
I have great hopes for and belief in the content of Simplify The Message; Multiply The Impact.