Peter Grainger; Information Overload

In a previous posting, I reviewed Philip Collins’ book, The Art of Speeches and Presentations – The secrets of making people remember what you say (Wiley 2012), in which he states that all speeches can be divided into at least one of three functions:

1. Information: a speech whose principal function is to leave an audience better informed than they were before you began.
2. Persuasion: a speech whose principal function is to persuade an audience of a case that, before you began, had either never occurred to them or to which they had been actively hostile.
3. Inspiration: a speech whose principal function is to inspire the audience to do something that they had previously not considered doing or had been refusing to do or, occasionally, to carry on doing something.

He points all out that while all speeches will have more than one function, one will be dominant; and he states that this function should be persuasion.

What is true of speeches is also true of sermons and, as I have listened to several hundred over these past four years – in churches and from the preachers I mentor – my observation is that the great majority major on information, at the expense of persuasion and inspiration. You can actually estimate this (as I do) by timing how much of the sermon (or how much of the preacher’s notes) are devoted to each function. In extreme cases, a sermon can be 99% explanation of the text with 1% application which can be summarised as, “Go and do likewise.”  Keep reading