Howard Stern is a Shock Jock known for his revealing interviews and comments. He loved to push the envelope while on terrestrial radio. He was fined by the FCC while at the same time being umber one in multiple markets across the USA. Eventually he was given a giant contract to move to Sirius Satellite Radio. At the top of his game, Howard had a movie made about his rise to stardom. Today I play a clip from the movie that explains that the reason most people listened is they had no idea what was coming next.

Compare that to most churches who are not growing and you will find the phrase, “That’s the way we’ve always done it.” This is the kiss of death to a church. The Word is alive, but your church is dead to new ideas of presenting the word to a new audience. It is embarrassing how connected we get to the old way.

I once wanted to move the announcements to the end of the service. After all you’re asking a visitor to attend something and they haven’t even figure out if they like your church yet. So I thought, “Let’s move it and see how it works.” It didn’t seem like it should be a big deal. It turned out to be a huge deal. Why? Because we’ve always done the announcements at the beginning, and they’ve always been read by the church clerk. I finally had to let one person read HER announcement . I could read the rest. To this I ask, if its all about YOU, then it’s not about HIM.

I’ve heard of churches who had to move the organ off the stage (as the organist had died and there was no replacement) a foot a week so that nobody go startled when the organ disappeared (even though it wasn’t or hadn’t been used in some time).

Preach the gospel. Provide a bible based lesson that will connect with your audience. God never changes, but how he is presented will continue to change over time. If it didn’t we would still be sharing the gospel verbally having to remember the whole thing.

Lessons Your Church Can Learn From Howard Stern is a post from: Grow Your Church Show