Bert Decker

Yesterday we gave some thought to the vocal variations needed for effective delivery. Today let’s remind ourselves of some aspects of visual delivery – the non-verbals that are so powerful. The key here is for the visual (non-verbals) and the vocal to work together with the verbal (words) to make the communication consistent and impactful. Words must reign supreme in the thoughts of the preacher, but words can be undermined by inconsistent visual presentation, or poor tone of voice.

Visual delivery issue – eye-contact. This is absolutely and definitely number one on the list. Eye contact is so powerful. Without it there is no trust. With too much there is perceived intimidation or inappropriate intimacy. We need to make sure we’re making genuine eye-contact with the people we speak to … perhaps 3-5 seconds at a time, then on to someone else. Beware of “blind spots” (mine is the people in the center of a spread out group, yours?) Beware of having your head in your notes all the time (and it is probably much, much more time than you think!) Beware of looking over everyone to the clock on one side and a fascinating emergency exit sign over the door on the other side.

Visual delivery issue – gesture. To put it simply, gesture needs to be consistent with words, increased in size for larger audiences and not repetitively monotonous. It takes practice to point to the right when you say left, or when referring to the past, because this is backwards to you the speaker. It feels unnatural to make gestures bigger when in front of a large crowd, but it looks weird to them if you don’t. And be careful of any repetitive habits . . . anything can be annoying or distracting once it’s repeated a few times – the finger point, the spider on a mirror, the hand in pocket, the werewolf, the T-Rex, the glass ceiling around the waist, the fig-leaf, the fig-leaf flasher, the Clinton, the face scratch, the arm twitch, the weight shifting, the rock’n’roll four-step, etc. (thanks to Bert Decker, Hershael York and others for the labels picked up over the years!) Any of these are fine, once or twice, but repetitively can become highly distracting. If you don’t know what you do a lot, ask someone!

I’ll finish this list tomorrow . . .

I just saw a chart showing that there are two key times in any presentation. I’ll describe the chart for you. On the vertical axis, from 0 to 100%, is the scale of attention and retention. On the horizontal axis, it reads “beginning … middle … end.” The chart consists of a U-shaped curve. Attention/retention are highest at the beginning and the end, but dip significantly in the middle.

This poses some concern for me as a preacher. If this is true, then we need to consider whether we’ve packed the best meat in the middle of the sermon. Surely we wouldn’t want to give a “meat sandwich” of a sermon if our listeners miss significant amounts of good meat, but take in all the white bread at the start and finish? Perhaps we need to give more attention to the bread of the sandwich. Too many sermons are fine steak in the middle of dry cheap white sliced bread. We need to give more time to preparing our intros and conclusions (so the bread is a higher quality homebaked wholemeal something or other).

Ok, enough of the sandwich analogy, I’m starting to get distracted by my own hunger. When we preach, let’s think carefully about how to maximize the value of our introduction – not just grabbing attention and building rapport, but also raising need for what is to follow and moving powerfully into the message in order to protect against an excessive dip in attention and focus.

Let’s think carefully about how to make the most of our conclusion – not just fizzling to a faded flop of a finish, but finishing strong, driving home the main idea, encouraging application of it and stopping with purpose.

If attention and retention are highest at the beginning and end of a message, let’s make these two key times count.

(If you want to see the chart and the suggestions given in that post, just click here.)