Posted on February 22, 2010 - by rfrank

Preaching with the help of a mind map

The past two months I have been afforded the opportunity to preach in “big church” a lot more than normal. Most years, I speak in big church probably four Sundays a year. Recently, our church agreed to provide the preaching/teaching and pastoral support at another church. Consequently, I’ve had to preach more to the adults at my own church. In fact, I’ve preached four of the past five Sundays between both churches. I’m thankful for a strong team of volunteers in my children’s ministry (guys like Evan Doyle, for example) that step up the plate and hit it out of the ballpark in my absence.

All of that to say this: I’ve been forced the past few weeks to sharpen my communication skills. Before I tell you about a communication technique that I’ve been using, let me preface this by saying that preaching must start with an anointed, God-called person who has a message from the Word of God. You can be a dynamite communicator but without the anointing and power of God you won’t have fruit that remains.

Once you have that message from God, I want to share a tip that will help you communicate it with excellence. It’s called mind mapping.

I first heard about using mind mapping while preaching from Ed Young. Mind mapping is simply a way of organizing your notes so that you can memorize them. The idea is that your brain works in a clockwise fashion and so your notes are laid out accordingly. With the help of some color coding and images you’ll be amazed how it will help you communicate your message.

What I have been doing is writing my messages in Pages (for you Mac-illiterate people out there it’s like Word, but better). Once I have completed my message, I transfer it to a template that I created in Pages. I try to get it where the main points or stories start each section of the mind map. Sometimes I even include images to help trigger my memory when preaching. The final copy of my notes (the mind map) is one 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, front and back. You can download my latest mind map at the end of this post.

Although people have been creating maps using an image-centered radial graphic organization technique for centuries (that was a mouth-full), Tony Buzan has made a claim to the origin of the Mind Map. He argues that “traditional” outlines require that you scan the information from left to right and top to bottom, while the brain’s natural preference is to scan the entire page in a non-linear fashion.

There are several books out there about mind mapping. Michael Gelb’s book Mind Mapping: How to Liberate Your Natural Genius, is a popular one. There are also websites that will help you understand what mind mapping is all about and how it can enhance your business, your education, and about every other area of life.

Yesterday I preached a message titled “A Picture of Grace”. It was the story of Mephibosheth. Here are some links to help you see how I used mind mapping in my study:

Click here to download my original manuscript.

Click here to download the mind map that I used to memorize the sermon. Text highlighted in pink are Scriptures that I read, text in green are main points, text in yellow are points that appeared on the screen.