COMMUNICATOR GUIDE PRO

COMMUNICATOR GUIDE PRO Tis The Season SOMETHING I LEARNED WHEN I SPOKE This tip is like gold to me. It s proven to be one of the best tools I have when it comes to bettering myself as a speaker. And it s so simple. I keep a note on my phone called Something I Learned When I Spoke. Every time I get off the stage, I stop and add something new to the list. Every. Time. No matter how many times I ve spoken or how good I think I did the last time, there is always something I can add to that list. If I pulled it up right now and showed it to you, you would see things like: Find a burden for a student. Think about him/her. Smile. Don t try to restate your sermon in your closing prayer. Shake off self-consciousness and insecurity quickly. Find your go-for-it moment. Know your first five minutes. Memorize your opening 10 lines. Practice your stories multiple times. All of these things are on the list because of an experience I had while speaking that taught me something new. I learned them by looking for lessons after I spoke. Just a few weeks ago I was speaking at an event, and one of those loud, borderline obnoxious students in the crowd started blurting out comments to interrupt me. Instead of shutting it down, I made one mistake that changed the dynamic of my entire talk: I engaged the kid. What I thought would be a witty response to get a laugh and quiet down the student turned into me inadvertently giving the kid encouragement to keep talking. And that changed the course and impact of my entire talk. When I got off stage I opened that note in my phone and wrote: If a student persists in interjecting and talking, shut it down and ignore it. Do not engage. That simple lesson learned then has proven to be helpful to me every time I ve spoken since. That s why this resource is so important to me; it helps me take stock right in the moment of what just happened and apply the lessons I ve learned in the future. COMMUNICATOR PREP LISTEN TO THIS Audio files of the Teaching Scripts can be found in the Large Group folder of each week. Listening to how someone else delivers each particular message is a great way to prepare to deliver the message to your students. PRO TIP You can also learn a lot by creating a note in your phone called Something I Learned From Another Communicator. Do the same thing you do with yourself. Every time you hear someone else preach, write down something you learned from them. There will be some positives things they did well. And some negatives things you never want to do in a message. Either way, it ll help you! Develop your platform as a communicator and take your unique message to a wider audience! Learn more at SpeakingToStudents.com. This Communicator Guide Pro was written by Jamey Dickens. For more from Jamey, follow him @Jameyd82. 1

COMMUNICATOR GUIDE Tis The Season / Week 1 SERIES SUMMARY In this 3-week series, we ll be talking all things Christmas, focusing on how we can our shift eyes away from the high expectations we have for the holiday season and instead focus on the true hope, peace, and love that only come from Christ. WEEK 1: Hope means trusting in a bigger picture. WEEK 2: Peace is found through God. WEEK 3: Love requires action. TEACHING OUTLINE INTRODUCTION Are you excited for the holiday season? Christmas really is the most wonderful time of the year. TENSION When you think about it, Christmas is the season of great expectations. I remember expecting Christmas to be this magical moment when all my dreams came true. Tell a personal story. The reality is that the things we really want don t fit under the tree. No matter what you want most this year, the point it this: There s this hope we attach to Christmas. TRUTH I m not sure where we got the idea that Christmas will meet all of our expectations. I want to tell you a story about Mary that took place before Jesus was born before Christmas even existed. Mary was a Jewish teenager who grew up believing a leader would be raised up from among her people who would rescue them. Mary lived with hope that the Messiah was coming, but then that hope arrived in an unexpected way. Mary had hope even when things didn t turn out the way she d planned. She didn t have the simple life she thought she d have, but she trusted God s plan for her future. APPLICATION Hope means trusting in a bigger picture. We all know what it s like to hope, to anticipate, to pray for something at Christmas, or any other time of the year only to have things not work out. Sometimes we need to be reminded not to give up. LANDING What would your life look like if you chose to have hope every day? Whether it s the most wonderful time of the year or the most miserable day of your life, would you consider being like Mary? QUESTION: What s something you re hoping for this Christmas? 1

COMMUNICATOR GUIDE Tis The Season / Week 1 SCRIPTURE LUKE 1:26B-35, 37-38 NLT This week, you ll introduce Tis the Season by telling students about Mary being visited by the angel to hear unexpected news that would change her hopes and dreams for her life. As you share this story from Luke 1, be sure to provide historical and cultural context to set up why Mary s changing circumstances could have filled her with uncertainty. You ll also need to slow down to explain ideas like the Messiah, teenagers about to get married, and, yes, even the significance of Mary being a virgin. YOUR STUDENTS Hope can be a hard topic to cover at any age, but especially in middle school. Students are just beginning to understand what hope looks like on a bigger scale and some have already probably experienced the disappointment of deep hopes not being met. Be aware that students may all approach the concept of what it looks like to hope from different places. Be sensitive to the students in your group who have already walked through situations that truly felt hopeless. Even though you can t answer the big questions of why those things happened in their lives, you can remind them of the truth that God is still near and working in their lives. INTERACTIVE: BUSTER THE BOXER OVERVIEW For this Interactive, you ll use technology a popular Christmas commercial to show students an example of our expectations around Christmas. WHAT YOU LL NEED Buster the Boxer Christmas commercial A screen or laptop large enough for your students to see HOW-TO To prepare for this Interactive, you ll need to find the John Lewis Christmas Advertisement 2016 - #BusterTheBoxer commercial on YouTube. You ll use this commercial to give students an example of the way we build up our expectations around Christmastime and how reality often looks different. Be sure to point out the way the girl had so much excitement and expectation on Christmas morning in the commercial, but the reality that her dog stole the show was much different. Refer to the Tension section of the Teaching Script for directions on how and when to use this Interactive. 2

Tis The Season / Week 1 BOTTOM LINE HOPE MEANS TRUSTING IN A BIGGER PICTURE. INTRODUCTION 1 MINUTE Are you excited for the holiday season? Isn t it the best? There s Christmas music and lights and getting to watch the movie Elf on a nonstop loop and warm drinks in red cups. There s time off from school, hot chocolate with marshmallows floating at the top, and the scent of homemade cookies filling the air. Christmas. It really is the most wonderful time of the year. TENSION 5 MINUTES I bet many of you don t agree. Sometimes even I don t think Christmas-time is all that great. When you think about it, Christmas is the season of great expectations. Do any of your parents get weird about sending the perfect Christmas card or decorating the house just right? Those are expectations. I remember expecting Christmas to be this magical moment when all my dreams came true. There s this commercial that I love that paints a great picture of what a lot of us expect Christmas to be like. Check this out: INTERACTIVE: BUSTER THE BOXER This is where you use technology (a popular Christmas commercial) to give an example of our expectations around Christmas time. See the Communicator Guide for detailed instructions. 1

I don t know about you, but I want to be as happy this Christmas season as Buster was when he was jumping on that trampoline. That dog waited so patiently to finally get what he hoped for! For me, it wasn t a trampoline. When I was a kid, I banked on the original Super Nintendo being under the tree and my Christmas stocking being filled with beef jerky and orange Tic Tacs. Some years, all my dreams did come true. I d get everything I wanted. Other years... not so much. Let me tell you about one of those times. TELL A PERSONAL STORY: Tell a story from your own life that illustrates the following ideas... Talk about a time you had an unrealistic expectation of what you d get for Christmas and wound up disappointed. Keep it short, funny, and relatable to middle schoolers. I really hope something like that doesn t happen to you. Maybe you re hoping your parents will get you an iphone or your Grandma will give you a gift card instead of itchy socks. And while both of those things would be nice, the reality is that the things we really want don t fit under the tree. For some of you, maybe you re hoping this will be the Christmas your dad comes back home. Or maybe you re hoping the friend you had a fight with will forgive you. Or it could be you re not exactly sure what you re hoping for, but you just know you want life to be different going into next year. No matter what you want most this year, the point is this: There s this hope we attach to Christmas. We have an expectation for it to be a magical time when we re happy, everyone gets along, and all our problems disappear. TRUTH 6 MINUTES To be honest, I m not sure where we got the idea that Christmas will meet all of our expectations. In fact, even on the very first Christmas, things were far from perfect. Maybe you ve heard about Jesus mother Mary how there was wasn t any room available for her and Joseph, so she gave birth to Him surrounded by animals in something kind of like a barn. That alone sounds less than perfect. Today I want to tell you a story about Mary that took place before Jesus was born before Christmas even existed. At the time of our story, Mary was a teenager, close to the same age as you. Mary was also Jewish and grew up believing a leader would be raised up from among her people who would rescue them. The world around Mary was broken and she lived daily with the expectation that someone would come and make things right again. This person would be known as the Messiah. Mary lived anticipating the coming Messiah. In other words, Mary lived with hope. 2

One last detail about Mary: She was engaged to a guy named Joseph. I know, getting married as a teenager might sound crazy, but it was pretty ordinary during Mary s time. So to recap: Here s Mary. A teenager, engaged to be married, and waiting for the Messiah the person who would fix what s broken in the world to show up. And then the unexpected happened. Let s read about it: God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you! Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. Don t be afraid, Mary, the angel told her, for you have found favor with God! You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end! Mary asked the angel, But how can this happen? I am a virgin. The angel replied, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.... For the word of God will never fail. Mary responded, I am the Lord s servant. May everything you have said about me come true. And then the angel left her (Luke 1:26b-35, 37-38 NLT). Mary had hoped for a Messiah, but then hope arrived in an unexpected way. I doubt Mary ever walked home from school with her BFFs and said, Hey guys, I think God s plan for my life is to be an unmarried, pregnant teenager. In fact, her plans were the opposite. Before the angel arrived, Mary s life was set. It was predictable. Then things got complicated fast. As you can imagine, not everyone believed her story. The Bible tells us that Mary was a virgin meaning she hadn t had sex. Understandably, it was hard for her to believe that she of all people could be pregnant! And even though the Jewish people were waiting for the Messiah, it wasn t easy for everyone to believe Mary could actually be pregnant with Him. Upon hearing the angel s news, Mary could have freaked out, but instead this is Mary s response. Let s read it again: I am the Lord s servant. May everything you have said about me come true (Luke 1:38a NLT). Mary had hope even when things didn t turn out the way she d planned. She didn t have the simple life she thought she d have, but she trusted God s plan for her future. 3

APPLICATION 2 MINUTES For all of us, there s a point when hope meets reality. When we realize life s not going to play out the way we expected. And when that happens, we realize living with hope is more than just getting what we think we want. We realize that hope means trusting in a bigger picture. I don t think Mary was excited about what she would face. She could have grown bitter and gotten mad at God. She could have allowed her expectations, her dreams, and her hopes to be crushed when it became clear life wasn t going to look like she d envisioned. But Mary realized God had a plan that was bigger than hers, so she let go of her plan. She made a choice to trust God and follow Him, even when it was hard. She knew her life was part of a bigger story, even if she couldn t see it at the time. We all know what it s like to hope, to anticipate, to pray for something at Christmas, or any other time of the year only to have things not work out. Hoping we d make the team, then not making the cut. Wanting an invite to that event, then realizing we weren t included. Praying our dad would get that job, then finding out he didn t. No one has to teach us how to hope. But sometimes we need to be reminded not to give up. Mary said she was the Lord s servant even if that meant enduring the judgment of her peers and the whispers of her family. Mary learned to hope differently, trusting God to write her story even when it was different than the life she would ve chosen for herself. And we can too! Hope means trusting in a bigger picture. And with God, we can live with hope no matter what comes our way. LANDING 1 MINUTE What would your life look like if you chose to have hope every day? Whether it s the most wonderful time of the year or the most miserable day of your life, would you consider being like Mary? You can choose to let God use your good days and your bad days to share a bigger story. As you go to small group today, I want you to think about this: What s something you re hoping for this Christmas? TRANSITION INTO SMALL GROUPS 4