2007 April — wadehodges.com

Made to Stick: Simplicity

Filed Under: Books, Gospel

In Made to Stick, the Heath brothers unpack six principles that make an idea sticky. The first is Simplicity. They write, “How do we find the essential core of our ideas? To strip an idea down to its core, we must be masters of exclusion. We must relentlessly prioritize.”

This is one of the hardest things for me in preaching. There is always so much that can be said about any given text or topic and I want to say it all. Something inside of me needs to say it all. If I say it all, I end up saying nothing.

“To get to the core, we’ve got to weed out superfluous and tangential elements. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is weeding out ideas that may be really important but just aren’t the most important idea. A designer of simple ideas should aspire to the same goal: knowing how much can be wrung out of an idea before it begins to lose its essence.”

“Forced prioritization is really painful. Smart people recognize the value of all the material. They see nuance, multiple perspectives–and because they fully appreciate the complexities of a situation, they’re often tempted to linger there. This tendency to gravitate toward complexity is perpetually at war with the need to prioritize.”

Let’s think about this principle with the gospel in mind. For many Christians, the gospel can be stated in a simple and memorable way: Jesus died on the cross to forgive you of your sins so that you can go to heaven when you die. That’s a sticky idea that is easy to summarize on a bumper sticker. 1 Cross+3 Nails=4 Given.

A number of people have pointed out to us that the gospel is about much more than getting our sins forgiven so that we can stay out of hell. I’ve preached a bunch of sermons about how big the gospel is and how far ranging are God’s intentions with it. The problem I’ve found is that a bigger gospel is hard to encapsulate in a simple idea that will stick.

For those of us who want to articulate the whole gospel in a fresh way this is a challenge. So far, most of our explanations of it are too complex and too nuanced to be sticky.

April 12, 2007 By Wade 16 Comments

Made to Stick: The Curse of Knowledge

Filed Under: Books, Preaching

I’ve been spending some time with what I think is a pretty important book. It’s important if you teach or preach or do fund raising or blog or do anything else that depends on the communication of a message.

The book is Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip Heath and Dan Heath.

The Heath brothers have put together an entertaining, informative, and persuasive handbook about how to make our ideas sticky. If you’ve read The Tipping Point, then you recognize the stickiness lingo from Gladwell.

A lot of what they say is common sense, but it’s not common practice. In fact, it can be quite a challenge to make our messages sticky. Why is that? Because of what they call “The Curse of Knowledge.”

Here’s how they define it: Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it. Our knowledge has “cursed” us. And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can’t readily re-create our listeners’ state of mind.

The Curse of Knowledge is real a challenge to anyone who loves an idea or field of study so deeply that they’ve immersed themselves in it. Their love for the idea and the knowledge that comes from that love will make it very difficult to communicate it to other people.

Ever noticed how difficult it is for scholars with multiple degrees to clearly communicate their ideas to people outside their field of study? They can’t help but give too much background information and too many qualifications to what they’re about to say. Their presentation is usually too nuanced. They may cover all the bases and they may cover their rears, but they don’t communicate anything that sticks with the audience. They haven’t been able to bridge the gap between what they know and what we don’t know. The most important part of their message gets lost in the chasm between us. That’s the curse of knowledge.

You see this all the time in preachers and Bible teachers who have gone to seminary and graduate school. I pity the church that calls a pastor just out of seminary to come and preach to them. He or she has been cursed with knowledge and that makes for some pretty incomprehensible sermons. I know because I’ve preached plenty of them.

The Heath’s description of the Curse of Knowledge made me shudder as I thought back to all the times I had tried to communicate too much information in language too technical to ever be heard and retained by anyone other than myself and my old college professors. I’m not sure I even understand all the stuff I’ve tried to teach others, but I liked how smart it made me look.

Most of the book is about the six keys to making our ideas sticky. I’ll outline those in the next post.

Technorati Tags: made to stick

April 11, 2007 By Wade 5 Comments

What is Your Core Message?

Filed Under: Gospel, Theology

Here is a great article from Tom Bandy.

Imagine. It is almost 11:00 on Friday night when the phone rings. Your neighbor is calling in a panic. He is not particularly religious, but he knows that you go to church regularly. In a rush of words he tells you that his daughter is being held in conversation by his wife on their cell phone. The daughter is away to college, very depressed, and threatening suicide. Sure, they know that there is counseling available in the morning. They even know there is a hotline for emergencies. But before any of that can be useful, they have to keep her alive for a few hours. This is the problem. Your neighbor doesn�t know what to say. He figures you do. You�re religious. Surely you have a message that can keep someone from killing themselves in the next 20 minutes? So what do you say?

Read the rest of the article here.

If you want to take a shot at stating your core message, please do so in the comments.

April 10, 2007 By Wade 8 Comments

A Trip to the Pet Store

Filed Under: Family

Yesterday, after a great Easter Celebration at Garnett and a huge Easter feast at Macaroni Grill, we took the boys to the pet store. This was the third time I had been there in the past few weeks. The first time was with Caleb when we were grabbing some father-son time. He decided that we had to bring Elijah so a week later we came back to take another look. Both of them decided that “mommy gots to see this” so we took her there yesterday.

Question: How many times can you safely take your boys to the pet store before you have to purchase something that moves?

Answer: No more than three.

I wisely waited until Heather was with us. After ten years of marriage, I get something right every now and then and it feels really good. She helped decide which animals to buy and what kind of cage to get. The boys were so excited during all of this that they started hopping around the store like little over-caffeinated crickets. This was upsetting to all the reptiles so I had to take them out to the car and strap them down while we waited for Heather to come out of the store with our two new hamsters.

They’ve been named R2D2 and Yoda.

On the way home, Caleb asked, “Mommy, is everyone’s life a dream?”

My inner preacher got the best of me and I jumped in and said no and told him how blessed he and his brother are and how they always need to be ready to help other people who aren’t as blessed. That’s probably why he asked his mom instead of me. He already knows that all he has to do to hear a sermon is pull my string. Note to self: not every nice moment has to be a “teachable” one.

Last night, as we were praying before bed, Elijah said, “Dear God, thank you for my hamster. Please help him grow up to be a guinea pig.”

Dear God, thank you for my boys. Please help them grow up to be men who have kids that will give them as much joy as mine are giving me.

And God, please be with our hamsters. If they survive even a week in the Hodges household (I will love him and hug him and hold him and pet him.), it will be a miracle.

April 9, 2007 By Wade 7 Comments