There are lots of great books out there by very accomplished speakers on the subject of effectively communicating and I encourage you to read them. (I especially like Maxwell's "Everybody Communicates..." and Stanley's "Communicating..."). My goal with this article is to give some practical examples of effectively connecting with your small town audience. No matter whether you are speaking to dozens or thousands, it is important that each week you connect to them and you inte

In the last post we talked about connecting to the small town where you pastor or lead, specifically looking at ways to connect to newcomers and long-time residents. Now let's look at ways to effectively connect to those who might want to check out your church. First of all is first impressions. We all know the stats that tell us most people have made up their minds about returning before you ever get up to speak. So we should be constantly looking closely at what our first i