First Impressions In the Speech Driven Life

Today I post a page out of my book-in-the-works, The Speech Driven Life. I began the book to help equip students to speak the Truth with sincerity, skill and grace. While it is intended to prepare students for competitive public speaking, I think it's practical enough to be of benefit to every ambassador for Christ.

How to Make a Positive First Impression

It has been said that within ten seconds after entering a room most people will make a snap judgment about the social environment. In short order they’ll decide whether or not the people there are friendly. It’s called a first impression. Likewise, when you walk into a room you’ll be sized up in a matter of moments. People will notice your clothing, your hair style, the expression on your face, your posture, and your body movements.

When you speak, people will notice the quality of your voice. They will notice your pitch, your tone, your rate, your accent (if you have one), and your enunciation. They will make judgments about your emotional state based on your tone and style of delivery. Lastly, perhaps, they will notice what you have to say, which they will interpret by the first impression they have already made of you.

As a speaker you are essentially performing for an audience of judges. This is literally true if you are involved in formal speech competition. The more intentional you are about making a positive first impression, the easier it will be to establish the trust and credibility it takes to effectively communicate your message.

Here are some essential components for making a good first impression. These tips apply to the professional looking attire you would wear in speech competition, and they are good to consider for personal appearance in general.

1. Smile

Your face is your most important means for making a positive first impression. Wear a smile that can be seen in your eyes. It communicates friendliness and confidence. A grumpy disposition is a poor representation of a faith that brings joy. Avoid chewing gum or eating when you speak. Check to make sure you don’t have parsley stuck in your teeth or food smeared on your face. It’s distracting.

2. Dress to Feature Your Face and Hands

Wear clothing that directs people’s attention to your face. Dark suits allow your face to stand out in contrast. Include attractive colors in your attire (shirts, neck ties, scarves) to add warmth and personality. Dress modestly. Avoid clothing that directs undue attention to parts of your body other than your face. Avoid wearing colors and patterns that clash. Wear a hairstyle that keeps your hair out of your face and makes you look respectable. Keep jewelry to a minimum so that your eyes are the main focus. Temperatures permitting, wear long sleeves so that your hands stand out in contrast to your clothing and are easy to see.

3. Use Good Posture and Natural Movements

Good posture and smooth hand movements also help make a positive first impression. Take deliberate steps when entering a room. Let your hands swing naturally at your sides when you walk. Keep your hands visible and out of your pockets. Don’t slouch or look off balance. Let the impression you make show that you enjoy being with the people there, and that you look forward to communicating with them.

4. Sound Confident and Personable

The first words you speak will make an impression. Speak them loudly and clearly, in a calm, controlled voice. High-pitched, rapid speech indicates nervousness. Try to make your voice sound confident and friendly, generally in the lower part of your vocal pitch range. A greeting or welcome is a good way to be personable with your audience and put them at ease.

5. State a Clear Purpose and Preview Your Points

Let your audience know why you are speaking to them. State your topic clearly and give a preview of your main points. Hint at your conclusion to keep them tracking with you.

6. Have a Strong Beginning and Ending

Audiences tend to remember the beginning and end of a presentation the most. Make your opening and closing strong and memorable.

7. Keep Things Short, Sweet and Simple

Be enthusiastic. Be sincere. Be brief. People will appreciate it. Show gratitude to your audience for their attention.

It Is Well

I broach the deep subject of well water, and the need to raise it up from the grasp of gravity. During the last decade my property has become increasingly parched. The water table has dropped, and my well cannot produce the flow to green up my acre. The installation of a holding tank, years back, only delayed the dehydration. When, this August, the water dribbled into the tank as slow as slobber I knew it was time to dig deeper for the precious liquid.

Thus began the drain of our precious savings. We hired men to drill a 300 foot cylinder of space into the earth’s crust beside our driveway. Now I need to dangle the submersible pump in the abyss to draw the slurpy from the depths.

I’m hoping for a happy ending to my water woes. But deeper meanings can be plumbed here. I am reminded of the story of Jesus beside a deep well in the dry region of Samaria. It was here that Christ told a promiscuous woman about the spiritual water of the Holy Spirit. He said, ”Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

In today’s culture of easy belief and casual Christianity, I suspect that many souls continue to thirst. Multitudes have crowded around the dry fountain of man-centered, seeker-friendly, religion, instead of being filled by the power and presence of Almighty God. Playing church does not a Christian make. Being chosen by God, in Christ, before the foundation of the world (Eph 1:4) to be born again of water and the Spirit (Jn 3:5) does.

Is there living water in your life?

Jeremiah 2:13 "For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that can hold no water."

1 Corinthians 10:1-4 "For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ."

Revelation 21:6b "To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment."

The Speech Driven Life

Last year I began writing a practical workbook for beginning speech students, hoping to finish smartly and in due time. But as I labored away, new ideas kept creeping in to make it a larger work. I considered speech for all of life.

Now I fear it may take all of my life to finish it. So I include an excerpt below, salving a sense of tardiness, and tossing out crumbs as from a piece of toast, so to speak. Here's to the speech driven life.

Born To Speak

Imagine life without speech. There would be no words, no sentences, no greetings, and no good-byes. Life without speech would mean no stories, no songs, no sermons and no jokes. Bo – ring. Fortunately, the world is full of speech. It is a speech driven life.

I noticed right off that all five of my drooling and toothless offspring were hard wired to speak. As infants, they spoke in burbles and bubbles. They wailed their vowels before nap nap, and they sputtered out their consonants while slurping from their sippy cup. They grunted like daddy did when he tried to fix the plumbing under the sink. They shrieked like mommy did when she watched spaghetti sauce get splattered onto the off white carpet. In short order, too, our wee ones babbled out discernable utterances like “momma” and “dada.” “Good job,” I’d gush, “now can baby say ‘antidisestablishmentarianism’?”

The Science of Speech

Man has an amazing capacity for language. While other creatures on the planet might be able to communicate with various sounds and calls, only man can tell jokes and recite poetry. Right from the start, the first man, Adam, demonstrated his language skills when he named all the livestock, all the birds, and all the beasts of the field. He did this on his first day of existence. Talk about high aptitude. Then, a bit later, after God performed rib surgery on him to create a special-order bride (Eve), Adam woke up to wax eloquent. He crooned, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Busy day. (see Genesis 2:18-24)

The Bible states that God spoke all of creation into existence, and that man was made in God’s image. It’s no surprise, then, that man was given amazing language abilities. Man’s brain is designed with regions of special function that enable him to speak, write, read, compute, reason and be creative in all manner of ways. Man was made to live in community with his maker and with his fellow man. God therefore equipped him with an exquisite neurolinguistic processor.

Scientists have determined that a region of the brain called the perisylvian, located in the left hemisphere of the frontal lobe, is the chief command center for speech and language. It is in around this region that cognitive thinking, abstract reasoning, and language comprehension are believed to take place. The perisylvian area kicks into gear when you try to have a conversation with your dentist while his tools and fingers are in your mouth. It helps you deal with tricky figures of speech without losing sleep at night, thinking about ridiculous contradictions. Read the following oxymorons (incongruous words) to see if your perisylvian area is working.

jumbo shrimp

random order

tight slacks

pretty ugly

rap music

federal budget

God has equipped us with the marvelous ability to process and produce language. We should be eager to use it in ways that are pleasing to Him.

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14).

Graduation Invocation

I was asked to publish the invocation I gave at a recent homeschool graduation ceremony. Here it is

O God , our Father,

You have called us to worship You in Spirit and in Truth.
You have called us to love You with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.
You have called us to be fruitful and multiply and to fill the earth.
You have called us to receive children as a blessing, and to bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.
You have called us to diligently teach our children Your commandments, to talk of them as we sit in our homes, as we walk by the way, as we lie down, and as we rise up.
You have called us to obey Your Great Commission, to make disciples in our homes, in our cities, and in every nation.

Thank You, Lord, for the calling to homeschool.
Thank You for the strength to heed the call.
Thank You for the grace and power of Your presence to persevere in it.

We now ask Your blessing on this assembly.
We ask that You would continue to bless the fruit of our labor.
We ask You to preserve our freedom to educate our own children.
We ask You to sanctify and motivate our students.
We ask You to grow them in knowledge and faith, in love and good deeds.

We ask You to direct our graduates with wisdom, and discernment, and vision.
We ask You to raise them up into godly men and women, husbands and wives, churchmen and statesmen.
We ask You to bring restoration to our community and to our nation through them.
We ask You to renew their minds and transform them into bold and effective ambassadors for Christ.

O, God, we ask You to pour out Your Spirit upon us. Fill us with Your holy cause.
May Jesus Christ be known among us and to the very ends of the earth.
May we be changed more into the likeness of Christ by our gathering.

May this evening bring You glory and honor, for the furtherance of Your gospel and for the expansion of Your kingdom.

We ask these things in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.

Same Church, New Name

We've changed the name of our church from Coram Deo to Household of Faith.

Koran what? What kinduva church is that?

Quorum Deo? How many people do you need to hold a meeting?

I've heard such things over the last three years. Not from the folks who speak Latin, or read Ligonier Ministry's Table Talk Magazine, mind you. Just most of the people that I meet, or work with in Grants Pass, Oregon, including fellow evangelical pastors.

Coram Deo, in Latin, means "before the face of God," which is where we're prayerfully laying the new church name. I'm hoping the change is not merely a practical marketing strategy, but rather a clearer way to communicate our vision and purpose for restoring households of faith. Furthermore, we will be affiliating with a Portland area, church-planting consociation, called Household of Faith Fellowship of Churches, a partnership which we hope will invigorate our efforts to make disciples.

Household of Faith Community Church, Grants Pass (HOFGP) is a family-integrated fellowship committed to uniting church and home. We are a congregation of families in Southern Oregon who love Jesus and who desire to serve Him multi-generationally.

3-D Distinctives

Doctrine - We desire transformation by the renewing of our minds in Christ. We treasure the Bible as God's sure and sufficient Word for all of life and godliness. We strive to teach the Scriptures expositionally in engaging ways that include each member of our age-integrated congregation.

Devotion - We desire the power and the joy of the Holy Spirit to turn our hearts fully to Christ. We love to worship God in song and praise. Our sincere love for one another is evident in our prayers, in our joyful singing, in our time of sharing, in Communion, and in our fellowship meals which follow the teaching each Lord's Day.

Discipleship - We desire to be a congregation of action in the world, living out the gospel of Christ. We are passionate about making disciples in our homes and in the culture. We strive to equip men to be servant leaders and pastors in their own homes, which serve as household embassies of faith.

Our purpose is to equip each family to live the Great Commission lifestyle as a team of ambassadors for Christ.

We believe that God has strategically placed men in the crucial role of raising their children in the fear and instruction of the Lord.

We believe that the prophetic turning of the hearts of the fathers to their children (Malachi 4:5-6) is a spiritual prerequisite to the restoration of families in our community and in our nation.

Is God calling you into deeper discipleship? Contact pastorjohnsleadd@gmail.com if you'd like more information about being a part of the Household of Faith.

Household of Faith, Grants Pass web site: http://www.hofgp.org/

Preacher Feature

Training Men to Teach, Preach and Lead

Earnest men of sincere faith, I invite you to join me to sharpen your skills as gospel ambassadors for Christ. Starting in February I'll be spearheading a preacher feature in the Clarion Speech and Debate Club.

The goal is to equip men with an Accurately Informed Mind, an Artful Method of delivery and diplomacy, and an Attractive Manner of relating to others. Thank you, theologian and apologist Greg Koukl, for the inspiration. Consider this blog post an assignment for those interested in growing as teachers and disciple makers. Contact pastorjohnsleadd@gmail.com with questions or comments.

2 Corinthians 5:17-21 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
2 Timothy 2:15 Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth.
2 Timothy 4:2 Preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, and exhort, with complete patience and teaching.
1 Peter 3:15 But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect.

Eight Sessions – Tuesdays Nights, Grants Pass High School main bldg, 6:30-8:30PM

Book Study: The Supremacy of God in Preaching, by John Piper; also recommended Preaching The Cross, by Dever, Duncan, Mohler , Mahaney

Session One (2/3)
Introductions & overview of class
Intro. to TnT Format (exposition, application & discussion)
Intro. to Impromptu Speaking
Intro. to Apologetics Categories
Assignments: 1) Read prefaces & Ch 1 The Goal of Preaching: The Glory of God, 2) Write out & memorize your testimony of faith (3-5 minutes)

Session Two (2/17)
Impromptu Practice: Existence & Nature of God
Share Testimonies
TnT Practice
Book Discussion: Prefaces & Ch 1
Assignments: 1) Read Ch 2 The Ground of Preaching: The Cross of Christ, 2) Memorize scripture verses above

Session Three (3/3)
Impromptu Practice: The Scriptures
Share Memory Verses
TnT Practice
Book Discussion: Ch 2
Assignments: 1) Read Ch 3 The Gift of Preaching: The Power of the Holy Spirit

Session Four (3/17)
Impromptu Practice: Nature, Purpose & Destiny of Man
TnT Practice
Book Discussion: Ch 3
Assignments: 1) Read Ch 4 The Gravity and Gladness of Preaching, 2) Memorize the Two-Minute Gospel

Session Five (3/31)
Impromptu Practice: Salvation, or How to Know God
Share the Two-Minute Gospel
TnT Practice
Book Discussion: Ch 4
Assignments: 1) Read Ch 5 Keep God Central: The Life of Jonathan Edwards, 2) Conduct at least three Spiritual Surveys by 4/21

Session Six (4/7)
Impromptu Practice: The Person of Christ
TnT Practice
Book Discussion: Ch 5
Assignments: 1) Read Ch 6 Submit to Sweet Sovereignty: The Theology of Edwards

Session Seven (4/16) Meeting at Gateway Christian Fellowship
Impromptu Practice: All categories
Share results of Spiritual Surveys
TnT Practice
Book Discussion: Ch 6
Assignments: 1) Read Ch 7 & Conclusion - Make God Supreme: The Preaching of Edwards

Session Eight (4/23) Meeting at Gateway Christian Fellowship
Impromptu Practice: All categories
TnT Practice
Book Discussion: Ch 7 & Conclusion
Wrap Up

Merry Christmas 2008

Here’s a post to acknowledge my absence from the blog-o-sphere. I’ve been away since September with too much to do, and too little time to do it. My household is shrinking, too. My firstborn son, Nathan has married and moved into his own home. God has blessed Nathan and his wife, Colleen, with a honeymoon baby. My daughter, Naomi, and her husband Nathanael, are expecting their second child. It’s a great thing to be a grandparent. Enjoy the pictures. “So how is it being a bi-vocational pastor?” I’m asked by folks who know that I’m a homeschool dad who teaches public school students during the week, and preaches sermons to the saints on Sundays.

Allow me to recount my blessings. I’m delighted to have the freedom to live out my faith in a great community. I’m blessed to be able to disciple my children in the ways of the scriptures. I’m privileged to work with students who have an appetite for knowledge and truth. I’m thrilled to spread the vision of discipleship to unite church and home, and to transform the culture. Shucks, I’m having so much fun, perhaps I should be tri-vocational. I jest.

Good Times We’ve Had
Recently, we elders of Coram Deo Church preached our way through a series of topics that paralleled Focus on the Family’s The Truth Project. We came to more fully understand the marvelous imprint of our triune God upon all human institutions. Since we are made in His image, it is no surprise that the very nature of God is expressed in marriage and the family, in the church, in the state, in the sciences, in the arts, in the economy, in everything.

Good Works To Be Done
In these times of economic calamity and political scandal I am more convinced than ever that we need to seek the face of Almighty God, Him who first sought us. God is sovereign over every aspect of His creation. He is just and powerful, yet He cares for the lowly and the needy. He ordains the rise and fall of nations. And He welcomes humble, child-like faith.

If the American dream of autonomous individualism and materialistic consumption comes crumbling down around us, then perhaps we will take notice again of our Creator. Perhaps we will see the deception of a worldview that curses children and blesses debt. Perhaps we will craft an exit strategy from our reliance on the secular state as our savior. Perhaps we will lose our fondness for being comfortable, religious spectators. Maybe we'll start shining the Light of Christ to the world around us. It will not be without cost, just as Jesus promised.

A Son Is Given
Tomorrow I will preach a Christmas message entitled God With Us, God For Us, & God In Us. I am pleased to include a couple of young apologists from the Clarion Speech and Debate Club, Jachin Scott and Tait Deems, to help me make the case for salvation in Christ alone. It is young men like these who give me great hope for the future. May the Lord raise up more men in the church to boldly proclaim the gospel of peace and the salvation story of GRACE - God's Riches At Christ's Expense.

Soli Deo Gloria,

John Sleadd