PreachingToday.com: Mike, what do you do to build rapport with hearers? And why do you do it?

Mike Breaux: There's not a magic formula, and when you ask me that question I think, I don't know. I just kind of do.Maybe that's something the Holy Spirit puts within you. Maybe it's a gift that comes along with the teaching gift. I don't know. The main thing is being yourself, being a person trying his best to walk with Christ. My teaching ministry needs to flow out of the intimacy I have with God. Maybe what the hearer sees is a little bit of Christ coming out of you.

To what extent do superficial things, clothes, words, and so on play into it?

I just try to be myself. I would look stupid in a suit and tie. It's not me. I would encourage anyone to be who God wired them up to be. Don't try to compare yourself with other people or copy other people. When you're feeling free and at ease in who you are in Christ, that comes across to the hearers — that here is a confident guy who's living free and trying to be real.

You mention being real, and it sounds obvious, but what does that mean? How do you come across as real?

One of the ways is you talk normal. You don't put on a God voice when you preach. Are there normal words you can use instead of using words that are so religious sounding it disconnects you from your audience? I would rather appear that I don't know much more than you do, but I'm a truth-seeker like you are. Being real is my living in the same world you're living in. I struggle with the same things you do. There's that whole vulnerability piece of authenticity that plays there. You don't want to air all the dirty laundry in front of people. But they need to know you struggle with the same types of things.

For instance, I was teaching a series on the seven deadly sins, and this particular one was on lust. Being a warm-blooded, heterosexual guy, that's been one of those things in my life I've had to hand over to the Holy Spirit and say, " Make sure you put a guard on my eyes. " I was talking through the different ways guys could do that. And I gave them an illustration of how when I go to a club to work out, I take my contacts out so everyone looks the same to me. Now that's kind of extreme. It's on the edge of being appropriately vulnerable, but it put the rest of the guys at ease. I'm always looking to relate to the audience in an appropriate way that will make them know I'm a real guy too. And by the grace of God I'm learning how to walk a victorious kind of life.

When you're talking about vulnerability, you want people to know that you have been on the same spiritual journey that they've been on. I was talking about tolerance and how we're to meet people where they are. I brought out a rock I keep on my desk. The inscription on the rock says " First Stone. " I keep it on my desk to remind me of two things. First, to remind me I have no right to pick up a rock and throw it at anybody else. It also reminds me of the rock I crawled out from under one day when Christ's grace found me. That rock gave me an audience to say, " I'm not judging you. I'm not looking down at you. I'm here to lovingly tell you the truth. "

Are you consciously having to edit yourself? Or have you pretty much mastered that?

For me, that flows naturally because that's the way I talk all the time. I try to be the same guy in the pulpit as I am out of the pulpit, and so I don't talk differently when I'm not in that religious setting. But as you're writing a message, make sure you are X-ing out some of those code words no one will understand except for you and a few theologians in the crowd. Try to look at phrases that as a teacher you can find new ways to say them, so the common hearer can walk away thinking, I got that.

If you can't find new ways to say them, maybe you don't really know what they mean yourself.

Exactly right.

You're one of the teaching pastors at Willow Creek Community Church. Therefore, you communicate to a lot of seekers, and some of those people are not automatically going to see you as someone who has authority. They might even begin with reservations about what you have to say. How do you communicate to those people?

It goes back to authenticity, communicating to them that you're a truth seeker too, that you don't have all the answers yet. You haven't figured out everything, but you do know Jesus Christ is the source of truth. And all authority comes, not from you, but through Christ. That's one of the reasons, even speaking with seekers, I've always used a lot of Scripture, because that's the authority I have to stand upon. When you're relaying Scripture to believers and seekers alike, it's not your opinion. You're saying, God said this. So they know the authority is not coming from this really smart guy but it's coming from a God who loves them and has their best interest at heart and is a lot smarter than anybody in the room. That's where the authority thing comes from.

So your perspective is, it doesn't matter whether they believe it so much as they know I believe it.

Exactly right. I want people to come to a point where they love God as much as I do, and they're experiencing as much joy in their life and as much freedom in their life as I experience in my life. Don't you feel guilty sometimes? I'm walking through a grocery store or through a Home Depot, and I feel this incredible freedom in my soul that I don't need anything, I don't want anything, I'm at peace. If I died today, I'm going to be in heaven. It's such a great life. Even when struggles come, you know you've got this deep-seated joy to make it through. As you're making it through, God's doing this cool stuff in your character. I want people to know that. That motivates me. It motivates me for my seeking friends to know that kind of life. Sure I want them in heaven. That's a huge motivation. But I don't want them to live this life beneath their privilege. I want them to know Christ like I am learning to know Christ. That's what I want to communicate in my preaching. When people see me and they go, He's got joy, he's got peace, he's just a real guy, I want that in my life. I want that confidence when I die I know where I'm going.

There must be times where you feel like you struggle with that, that you're not coming across, or you're not connecting. What do you do?

You pray, and you panic, and you think, I hope this goes quickly. Having my roots in youth ministry, I was always trying to connect on the bottom shelf so kids could understand. I've always tried to incorporate that in my teaching to adults as well. If I can get a fifth grader to walk away going, Wow, I got it, I know a 45-year-old guy is going to walk away going, I got it. But I've got to do it in a way that he doesn't think it's so elementary. There's an edge to it. It applies to his life. So I'll try to find examples and illustrations that hit all those different generations.

I may reference school. I may reference the playground for the younger kids. I may reference your grandchildren. I may reference the job, the struggle about this deal you're trying to close. I may mention the locker room. I try to put those different things in so the whole crowd feels like, This guy's talking to me, and he's interested in me. And God has something to say to me today. That builds rapport, and I consciously write that into messages. But there are some times I feel I'm not quite connecting with this crowd. But by the grace of God, those times are fewer than they could be.

I consciously try to think from 8 to 88, and everyone in between What can I say in this message that's going to touch their heart and let them specifically know God cares about them, that God didn't write them off after they got over 60, or that God doesn't care until they get to 30, but he cares for everyone?

Do you think there's a time when that kind of connection, that kind of rapport can be misguided or misused?

Absolutely. There's a real danger in ministry to play to the crowd. One time I was teaching at Asbury Seminary, and a student asked me, " What's the difference in your preaching now than when you first started out? " I said, " I believe it now. " Not that I didn't believe it when I first started, but when I first started, I just wanted to survive. I wanted them to like me and not throw things at me. But now that doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is I communicate the truth, I do it in a God-honoring way, and in the process I build this rapport with people so they will fall in love with Jesus, not with me. There's a big difference in that. There's always the danger of trying to please. That's different than building rapport.

My goal in building rapport with a group of people is so that they will come to love Jesus Christ and not go, What a great, funny, wonderful guy. I'm so in love with Christ, I've got to speak. I believe to the core of my being this is the right thing to do in life for everyone, so that motivates me much more than I was ever motivated by the applause of people. In ministry, you can fall in that trap. In ministry we take our share of criticism, but in what other job do you get regular strokes every week, where someone comes up to you and says, " That was great " ? And if you're not careful, that can become the motivating force behind why you preach. One of the verses I pray regularly is where the apostle Paul says: We're not trying to please men. We're just trying to please God, who alone tests our motives.

I try to lay that before the Lord every day and say, " God, this is not about me and them liking me. This is about them falling in love with you. And how do I connect with them, so that they see more of you and a whole lot less of me? "

It can be a fine line to walk sometimes.

It can be. I tell our worship team and all young pastors that I come in contact with, " We're just prompters. We're not performers. We're trying to prompt people to see this awesome God. We're not there to soak up the spotlight. We're there to throw a floodlight on God and show people how great God is. "

My job as a preacher is to throw the best alley-oop pass I can throw. I work hard at it, but then it's God's job. It's the Holy Spirit's job to come along and dunk it somewhere. He does it with flair and in places you never dreamed it would go. I want him to get all the headlines. I could care less if my name is ever in the box score.

When you're connecting, when you're wanting to decrease and see the Lord increase, there's not just one emotion you're hoping to evoke in people, there's a range. You spoke about crying as well as laughing.

Is that a part of every time you speak?

It's a rollercoaster ride. When I'm writing a message, there are times I'm sitting at the computer typing words, and I'm crying like a baby, because it's flowing out of my heart. The times when you're afraid of that are the times God usually connects with people in a deep level, because they see your vulnerability. It's not a manufactured thing. Like you write in your message — cry real hard right here. It's something that happens within you that cracks the door of your heart and lets people see in.

There are other times I'm writing a message and I think, This is pretty intense. I need to say something funny right here. I've got to give a little break, a little comic relief to let them catch their breath before we go to the next hill, because the next one's going to be pretty intense, too.

It seems that some of those things you described — emotion, the subjects you're talking about — are actually going to push people away from you. And they don't want rapport at that point.

Right. I'm committed to speaking the whole truth in the Scripture, and there are some topics in our culture that are sensitive to bring up. So how do you talk about sensitive topics that are politically incorrect and maintain rapport? That's a delicate dance.

A danger could be if we assume we just want to connect with people, that we become casual, and then that casualness leans over into truth.

Exactly right. I'm a casual guy. This is who God made me. But I'm not very casual with my relationship with Christ. I'm not casual with the truth. We have a mandate to speak the truth. The apostle Paul says, " I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ. It's the power of God to salvation. " Everybody needs to get on this. The most unloving thing you can do, the most seeker insensitive thing you can do, is not share truth. You just need to do it in the way Jesus did. Jesus was approachable, he was kind, he was insightful, he was creative, he was funny, he was real, he was available to people. If you teach like that, you don't have to apologize for truth. You don't have to even make it a little less edgy than it is. Jesus spoke truth, and they said of him: This guy speaks with authority like no one's ever spoken.

Look at that word authority. People are hungry for truth. People want to know, Is there right and is there wrong? Jesus spoke with that type of authority, but the thing that gave him authority in the eyes of people was often authenticity, that he was available, creative, warm, caring, engaging like their religious leaders weren't. They were rigid and intolerant.

He believed what he was saying.

He believed what he was saying, and he loved the people he was saying it to. That has revolutionized my preaching through the years. I've been praying and trying to develop the heart of Jesus toward lost people. Hopefully I'm starting to love them like Jesus did. I'm trying. I want him to continue to grow me in that. But when you have a sincere love for people that are far from God, it changes the way you preach. And it changes the way you build rapport with people when you do preach. It's more than just loving the generic lost. It's when you know people like Todd and Harold and Phil and Mark and Wandathe people I love that are far from God. When I've got those people in my mind, it helps me preach in a more effective way.

Mike Breaux is teaching pastor of Heartland Community Church in Rockford, Illinois.