Below is a great Monday Morning Memo by Roy H. Williams...aka the Wizzard of Ads. Mondaymorningmemo.com
Some of you know that i intend to write a book w/ the working title "what commercial writers can teach preachers." The main concept is that the world is being changed 30 seconds at a time as opposed to 30 minutes at a time.
This will be the start of one of the chapters... the edited article is below with my thoughts after that... because i need just one more outlet.
The MondayMorningMemo© of Roy H. Williams, the Wizard of Ads®
The Monday Morning Memo for February 16, 2009
Let Me Tell You a Story...Magic Words to Penetrate the Filter,Erase Suspicion and Lower the Guard
Our bodies contain approximately 100 million sensory receptors that allow us to see, hear, taste, touch and smell physical reality. But the brain contains 10 thousand billion synapses. This means we’re roughly 100,000 times better equipped to experience a world that does not exist, than a world that does.
The first step in persuasion is to entice your target to imagine doing the thing you want them to do.
Four and a half years ago in the summer of 2004, a screenwriter named Eli Attie began creating a persona for a new fictional character that would appear on The West Wing.Matt Santos (played by Jimmy Smits) would be a young congressman, new to Washington, a working-class member of an ethnic minority.
Prior to running for public office, our fictional character Santos had been a community organizer in a major city (Houston.) Screenwriter Eli Attie admitted to The Guardian, a British newspaper, that he was inspired in 2004 by a young Illinois politician – not yet even a US senator – by the name of Barack Obama, a community organizer from Chicago.
As a result of Attie’s attraction to Obama, the 2006 television season showed us a glittering, fictional candidate for the presidency, a happily married, young minority male with 2 children who would run against a moderate Republican opponent from a western state.
The imaginary Republican senator, Arnie Vinick (played by Alan Alda,) was unpopular with his conservative base due to his moderate views. His principal opponent in the fictional Republican primary was the Rev. Don Butler, a Christian preacher. Keep in mind these West Wingepisodes aired 18 months before the nomination battle between John McCain and Mike Huckabee.
But wait, it gets weirder.
Ten years ago, Aaron Sorkin admitted that he based The West Wing’sJosh Lyman on Rahm Emanuel, who served in Bill Clinton’s White House. Both Lyman and Emanuel are Jewish. Both are brilliant. Both mail dead fish to opponents who make them angry.
In the 2006 season of The West Wing, seasoned White House staffer Josh Lyman serves as campaign manager for the long-shot, minority candidate. When his candidate wins, Lyman is named Chief of Staff.
Two years laterRahm Emanuel, the real Josh Lyman,will become Barack Obama's Chief of Staff.Was it all a plot?
Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just an example of how we tend to act out the things we’ve seen in our mind.
Roy H. Williams
In my mind, preaching is helping people make the WORD become flesh. So how does creating fiction relate to preaching?
What i love about Roy's article is that a good preacher- like a good commercial- has the audience envisioning themselves in the story-passage-applications offered. Preachers lose and potentially insult their people by assuming that any application is separated from their real life.
Like a Lexus commercial running during Spongebob.
If you are preaching about compassion, let them see look of gratitude from the single mom you are handing a bag of food to. If you are encouraging people to pray, paint a specific enough picture that they can see themselves in the picture. Their world, their concerns, their obstacles. Don't just tell them to pray for their kids, let them feel your heart praying for your kids. Or better yet, let them feel God's heart for their kids.
Remember, too many generalities are like spraying teflon on their spirit.
Your creativity in creating a "fictional" example that rings true, will enable your listeners to turn fiction into reality.
West Wing did that w/ the Presidency, preachers can do that with Godliness.
and THAT is a tough sell...
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8 comments:
Seems to me that if the goal is to become more like Jesus then perhaps it is not so much be about imitating the illustration from the pastor (albeit fictional)as our lives should reflect, though dimly, the Word...?
Memorization of the Word, now there's a lost art.
Suddenly ART makes sense! All this time we thought it was pretty or funny, entertaining. Apparently, a weapon to be wielded. And as you say it, there is far more "being" involved in preaching than "talking". The word made flesh in a sense?
Ever read the book, Communicating for a Change by Andy Stanley?
Keep 'em coming!
So, so interesting. I think you must have posted this just for me because I have been thinking about these things. Have you ever wondered exactly what it was in Genesis 11 that was so threatening that God had to come down from heaven to stop it. Well, oh my goodness! As far as I can tell it was man's imagination:
"And the Lord said, Behold, the people [is] one, and they have one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them which they have imagined to do."
Whoa! God threatened by imagination? Can that be? Is imagination indeed where we conceive things in our life, good or evil? We all know, no conception, no birth. Did God make us with 100 billion synapses so we could use our imagination as a creative tool? Is this why we are instructed in Phil. 4:8 to think upon that which is pure, lovely and of good virtue so we concieve that instead of the evil things? Is this why we are instructed to cast down imaginations against God's Word in 2 Cor 10:5? Is imagining how we plant God's Word in our heart? And is imagining how we get God's promises to manifest in our lives? Is doing the works that Jesus did (and greater works than those) as simple as imagining yourself healing people and raising people from the dead? Well. . . . I think I will have to experiment with this. Maybe we all need to experiment with this.
Make that 10 thousand billion synapses. Did I get it right that time?
Does art have to be an illustration? Can it be that what comes from Man's imagination cannot help but be an illustration--good or bad? I've always known art has power. It has motion, speed, someone grab the rudder--what the hell good is an imaginary rudder HAHAHA?!
I don't know about the illustration question but it seems that illustration can have untold power. If faith is the substance of things hoped for, there is no faith without hope first. Hope is not seen, it is but a picture of something better in your mind. I think your imaginary rudder is as powerful as hope is to faith. In fact maybe that imaginary rudder is what hope is. I just think the concept of using the imagination in preaching is brilliant, and the thought of using art as a tool or weapon is facinating.
Can I just say, WOW. What thought provoking conversation. Pig Woman, so insightful. I suddenly feel so careful about what I may think - to think upon that which is pure, lovely and of good virtue so I conceive that instead of the evil things. What an honor. So a pure mind is so much MORE than obeying God and trying to think nice things. It is conception! Obedience it seems is just the most elementary, literal level. I wonder how often our obedience is just the first step into something like this.
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