Preaching the Big Idea: An Interview with Dave Ferguson...Continued from page 5

It does seem like there are a lot of places you can point them to now. Perhaps not that it is so much happening within a particular church, where there is collaboration like what we are doing. What you do see is a collaboration between many pastors of various churches that are getting together for study group, get together to work on a particular series, sharing, that kind of thing.

Preaching: You have built a team within your church doing this. How do you advise the solo pastor who is not part of a larger group or network? How can he or she find a way to create a team to be able to find help in this kind of process?

Ferguson: When it comes to the Big Idea, two things come to mind. One: whoever is the staff person or volunteer person who is responsible for what I call the other thirty minutes of the service -- you create a finish line that says: here is where I take where I am going with my sermon, and then you involve the worship leader or arts director in that process. Then I think you can create the experience of the one big idea. You can plan in advance, make that happen with that person. That is a beginning point.

Another thing is if you already have a pastor or two, I would try to organize my life around a second meeting. Who are some other people -- whether they are other pastors or some other spiritual mature people that I respect, that have some wisdom, that I can say, “How can I have breakfast with those people once a week, have lunch with them this week?” I can talk over this and get them to begin to give input in this. Eventually, even to switch with those pastors and begin to give different sections each and share in this. I think you will receive a lot of the benefits we have been talking about.

Preaching: As you try to frame the Big Idea, or phrase the sentence that is going to be the Big Idea for your message, what makes a good Big Idea?

Ferguson: Good question, I think we need to work harder on that. If you have one Big Idea that really calls people to a certain kind of change. It maybe goes back to is it something in your head, your heart, your hand. You have got to make them think differently, feel differently or do differently. So it is not just an idea but an idea that calls people to live something out, in our terms missionally.

Preaching: What do you enjoy most about preaching? What do you find to be the biggest challenge?

Ferguson: What I enjoy most about preaching? I probably teach from a leadership gift. For me, maybe that is why I became this big proponent of the Big Idea -- because I feel like it mobilizes people to actually live out what it means to be a follower of Jesus. So the part that I love about teaching is actually seeing people live life differently, the way Jesus wants us to. I don’t particularly get a buzz out of just the teaching part.