The Art of the Switch: One Tool That Can Revolutionize Your Preaching

Last updated on: December 14, 2017 at 7:10 am by Josh Daffern

The Art of the Switch: One Tool That Can Revolutionize Your Preaching 2017-12-14T07:10:06-06:00 Josh Daffern

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

unsplash-logoDardan Mu

Preaching is and always will be an art. There are many good ways to preach. Here’s one good way I’ve discovered over the years that can benefit your preaching as well. I call it “the switch” (not to be confused with bait and switch).

The idea behind this concept is simple: many of the deeper spiritual truths in the Bible are hard to wrap our heads around. Preachers can painstakingly explain a deep concept just to be frustrated when the audience doesn’t seem to grasp it. The audience needs handles to be able to latch onto deep spiritual truths. That’s when the switch comes in.

The other thing the switch can help provide is emotional investment. People can understand and even agree with what you’re preaching, but that doesn’t mean that they care about it. If the truth you’re preaching doesn’t prick them on an emotional level, there’s no motivation for them to wrestle with the spiritual truth long enough for it to penetrate beneath their emotional surface. That’s why people can sit in your audience, understand and agree with everything you say, and still go on with their lives without changing a thing. What people need is emotional investment before you lay the deep spiritual truths on them. That’s where the switch comes in.

Jesus was a master of the switch. It’s what we call ‘parables’. Jesus would convey deep spiritual truths through stories and illustrations that were designed to emotionally engage the audience. Once he had them invested in his illustration, he moved them over to the spiritual truth. He got them on board with an earthly illustration before he moved them over to a spiritual truth. In Matthew 18 Jesus could have just said “forgive each other,” but that wouldn’t have carried the same emotional weight of the Parable of the Unmerciful Servant.

Why is this important? Too often I hear preachers and communicators waste the potential of a perfectly good (and well prepared sermon) because they present truth but give people no handles to hold onto them with. They engage the mind but not the emotions, and both are needed for a message to be transformational. If a preacher thinks that stories and illustrations are somehow beneath him, then he believes he’s a better communicator than Jesus, who utilized stories constantly to build bridges between finite minds and infinite truths.

Here’s an example of how I recently utilized the switch in a message on stewardship. I wanted to convey the truth that giving is the only antidote to greed in a way that people would not just agree it, but it would actually change their giving and spending habits. I was trying to convince people to become more generous, which meant that my goal wasn’t just for them to agree with me, but to change their behavior. Because this truth is so transformational and cuts across so many ingrained habits, simply telling them to become people of generosity wouldn’t have cut it. Those exhortations would have bounce off the surface of their hearts without ever leaving a mark. So I employed the switch.

I spent the first several minutes of the sermon talking about Dr. Edward Jenner and the development of the first vaccine in rural England in 1796. I described the reality of smallpox and the horrors it presented. I painted a picture of the skepticism the first patient must have felt when Dr. Jenner was trying to convince him to allow himself to be purposely injected with a live virus. In spite of how counter-intuitive it must have felt, that first patient James Phipps allowed himself to be injected with a live virus, and the rest is history. The understood assumption is that after 200+ years of medical history, we know and embrace the positive effects that vaccines have had on human civilization. My goal was to try to help them wrestle with the skepticism of the first vaccine patient, highlighted against the backdrop of the knowledge of how life-saving vaccines truly are.

Why go to all that trouble? Because trying to convince selfish and stingy people to live a life of generosity is about as difficult as convincing James Phipps to be the first person purposely injected with a live virus. But like vaccines, the benefits of generosity far outweigh the cost of becoming a giving person. The switch was helping people embrace and identify with the struggle of James Phipps and the first vaccine, and then transferring (or switching) that over to our struggle to become people of generosity. Generosity is the vaccine that inoculates us against the dangerous side effects of wealth, but that truth is counter-intuitive to most people, so I told a parable first to get them to embrace the concept. I utilized the switch.

Previous Post

December 6, 2017

Pharaoh's Dream and My Prophecy About American Christianity Seven Years From Now

Next Post

December 19, 2017 5 Reasons Why Christmas Doesn't Make Any Sense

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Family Matters Ministry in the Trenches Morning Brew MTVpastor New Wineskins Top Menu Truth from Life Uncategorized Watch Sermons

Select a Month June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

True or False: Peter preached the first sermon after Pentecost, leading to 3,000 conversions.

Select your answer to see how you score.

TRUE FALSE