SermonView Newsletter November 2007

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VISUAL PREACHING

Myth Busters: The Truth about Church Communication #2

Myth #2: The church has to try to emulate secular media in order to communicate effectively.
The Truth: Keeping things simple allows a church with limited resources to maintain a visual quality and communicate effectively.

The Facts: We live in a world filled with visual imagery, nearly all of it designed by professionals. Millions of dollars go into nearly every Hollywood motion picture. Thousands of man-hours go into a 30-second advertisement. This saturation of media has conditioned us to expect a certain level of quality.

Let’s be frank. If a local church tries to compete at this level, it will lose. We just don’t have the resources. At most a preacher can spend 30 or 40 hours preparing a sermon, with most spending less than 10 hours. Volunteers have only a few hours to work on slides. There’s no way that you can offer Hollywood razzle-dazzle week after week after week. So don’t try.

That doesn’t mean that quality is unnecessary. We need to put our best foot forward and use the highest quality of visuals available. Cheap clip art and irrelevant photos can distract from the message. For some pastors, this is where they give up. Knowing they have limited budgets and less than ample amounts of artistic talent, they are left with a decision to abandon consistent visuals for fear of perplexing their church with poorly produced slides.

The Solution: Churches around the world are looking for ways to better communicate their sermons and increase the impact of their messages with strong visuals. Here are a few tips toward better visual communication:
  1. Choose a core image and style for every sermon or series. This means deciding whether contemporary imagery or traditional styles would better fit the sermon theme; or if a simple graphic element or photographic image would help people to better relate. Starting with a theme allows you to keep a cohesive feel throughout the sermon or series, allowing your visual learners to follow the flow of your message.
  2. Use imagery at key points to illustrate concrete ideas or places in time. Visual learners put more weight into the things they visualize than just auditory information. This means that if you are speaking about an event in the Bible, a picture of the scene might help them to better understand the reality of that moment in history. These people need to watch the story unfold, not just hear it.
  3. Use imagery sparingly. There is a balance between using a black background and having a jumble of 25 different images during one sermon. Too many images will cloud the mind of your audience limiting the effectiveness of the visuals. Focus on the primary thematic image and a few supporting graphics.

With these three suggestions you will be able to engage your visual congregation members in new ways and allow them to maximize their understanding of your message.

© 2007 Narrow Gate Media LLC. All rights reserved. Narrow Gate Media
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