Preaching: What’s the Big Idea? When you use the phrase “Big Idea,” what do you mean by that?

Ferguson: What we really mean to say is we would like to see you do is communicate one big idea every week. Haddon Robinson is the one who introduced the idea in the preaching context, but for us we are trying to figure out, not only within the message giving people one big idea, but in the celebration service or worship, how do we communicate one big idea, have one big experience? And it is actually taking it beyond that experience -- how do you give one big idea within the large group and the small groups events and throughout the life of the church and throughout the whole family: adults, students and kids?

Our heartbeat about that is we are convicted we were hitting people with so many little ideas. I think I could make a case that a family, throughout the course of the week, if they are well churched you could bombard them with a thousand different little ideas. I think implicitly we are telling people that you don’t have to live this out, you just have to hear it; you just absorb it cognitively. What we want is for people to live it out. I think that is Jesus’ intent. Our premise is: if we want to better accomplish the mission that Jesus has for us, it is to give people one big idea; you go live it out this week and come back next week and do the same all over again.

Preaching: Give me an example of how that looks in a sermon you have done recently.

Ferguson: This last week, Wednesday, it was called ATM. The series ATM has to do with Attitude, Treasure and Mission. We are actually on the Treasure one. I wasn’t speaking, but we collaborate on everything with the preaching and teaching pastors that particular weekend. The big idea was: tithing is a clear demonstration of what you treasure.

At this particular celebration service, there was a video that we did playing off the Super Bowl; we had sports reporters, all that. We had a guy, kind of in slow-motion, and he was putting in his tithe and they were announcing it, and someone was tryng to take money out of the bag, and they were announcing that there was a flag on the play. That introduced the topic. We actually ended up using an old country song, a Johnny Cash tune, and they changed the words to have to do with tithing. So by the time we got to that people were already introduced to the big idea.

When the teaching pastor got up he took it and we used the scripture from Malachi and other places. Basically people came away with the one big idea that tithing really does tell you a lot about what you treasure. So we hit them with it in as many multiple ways, multi-sensory ways, as we possibly could -- this is what we want you to live out. I’m happy to report that this weekend we had the highest giving that we have had this year! That is what we are trying to see -- not just to communicate one big idea, but how do you communicate it for action, for living it out.