Ernest Smith

A Key Ingredient

Creating a message is not an easy task, at least not if you want to create a dynamic, relevant, and transformational message.  It is the intent of this 5 part blog series to give a glimpse at the world of message creation. We have already discussed two essential steps to writing a message, (1) asking the right questions and (2) picking the right biblical passage, both of which can be found in early posts.

After you have moved through these two steps, the next step will determine whether your audience will listen or if they will mentally, and spiritually, check out of your talk.  The third step in writing a dynamic, powerful, life-transformational message is to (3) create the hook.

A hook is the introduction of the truth being taught.  The goal of the hook is to help the audience understand how this particular message applies to them and helps them answer the question “why should I care?”  Although we would like to think that all of our congregation members are at church to just hear “the Word preached”, the reality is that every person is asking the question, “Why should I care about this topic?”

None of us want to waste our time.  Rarely do people go to church because they are bored and don’t have anything else better to do.  People come to church because they want to connect with others and because they want to know what God has to say about their life.  And, when a communicator stands before the audience, they are simply wanting whatever he/she has to say, to apply to their personal life.  They want the words of the communicator to matter.  The hook speaks to this desire of the audience.

Most communicators know that they need a hook, that they need to answer the question of “why does this matter?” from the audience, but many communicators fail to truly capture the audience’s attention, ultimately creating a message that is untimely and unresponsive.

If you are a communicator and you want to create a hook that will draw the audiences’ heart and soul into the message, then you must know your audience.  You must know who is in your audience.  Know their fears, their questions, their struggles, their life circumstances, their joys, their successes and their failures.  If you know your audience, then you will be better equipped to speak to them.  In order to know them, you must get to know them.  Spend time with them and simply listen.

Many communicators focus so much on creating a “great” message that they forget that one of the most important steps to creating a great message is creating a great hook and in order to have a great hook, you must be willing to spend time with your people and simply listen, getting to know who they really are.