The following article is adapted from, Communicating for a Change (Multnomah, 2006), by Andy Stanley and Lane Jones.

This outlining method is built around the communicator's relationship with the audience rather than content. After all, the way we organize material on paper is very different from how we process information in a conversation. (Try outlining a conversation with your spouse.) For that reason, this method allows the message to retain a conversational quality. The outline revolves around five words, each of which represents a section of the message. They are: Me, We, God, You, and We.

With this approach, the communicator introduces a dilemma he or she has faced or is currently facing (Me). From there, you find common ground with your audience around the same or a similar dilemma (We). Then you transition to the text to discover what God says about the tension or question you've introduced (God). Then you challenge your audience to act on what they've just heard (You). And finally, you close with several statements about what could happen in your community, your church, or the world if everybody embraced that particular truth (We).

Each of the five components plays a specific and important role in facilitating the communication journey. Me orients the audience to the topic. It answers the question, "What's he or she talking about?" We assures the audience that this is a relevant topic. It allows the communicator to identify with the audience. The God section serves as illumination. This is where we bring a new perspective to or shine fresh light on a specific tension. You is simply application. We is the placeholder for inspiration.

Perhaps an example would help. Let's assume your topic is marriage. There are dozens of things you could say about marriage, but you've narrowed it down to one thing: "Submission is the best decision"—the idea being that our first response should be to put the needs and desires of our spouse ahead of our own. With that in mind, here's how the MWGYW outline might look:

Me: Sometimes I find myself wondering how to respond to situations in my marriage.

We: I imagine you've found yourself in situations where you weren't sure what to do either.

God: The Bible teaches that we're to submit to one another, to put the desires and needs of our spouses ahead of our own needs and desires. In a marriage, submission is generally the best decision.

You: Next time you're not sure what to say or do, ask yourself this question, "How can I put the needs and desires of my spouse ahead of my own in this moment?"

We: Imagine what would happen in our community if all of us began to model that kind of mutual submission before our friends and neighbors.

Me

By starting with a statement or story about myself, I'm able to introduce myself, as well as the topic, to the audience. This is especially important when addressing a new audience. But Me isn't really about me. Me is about finding common ground with them.

Common ground is an essential to any relationship, especially a communicator's relationship with an audience. An audience has to buy into the messenger before they buy into the message. You know from your own experience that if there's something that bugs you about the communicator, it's difficult to engage in the content. This is especially true if they don't seem genuine. A lack of genuineness makes it difficult to trust a speaker. You may even catch yourself resisting and arguing with their content.

What's easy to spot from the audience is usually difficult to see from the stage. Speakers aren't usually arrogant or insincere or slick on purpose. But it happens all the time. And in most cases the communicator never knows that it's happening. Five minutes into a talk, the audiences sense the speakers' arrogance—and turn them off. And the speakers don't have a clue. Or if they do sense something's wrong, they don't know why.

Recently, I received some very negative feedback from a talk I gave at a Youth Specialties conference. I was really surprised by the reaction. The talk I had given was one I had done on many occasions, and had received overwhelmingly positive feedback. So I was shocked to hear that "hundreds of student leaders walked out in the middle." Some actually booed me.

Intrigued, I contacted my host at the conference and asked for a CD of the talk. He graciously sent me one, along with his comments. He assured me that, on most occasions, he really enjoyed my leadership messages, but this particular one was not one of his favorites. And he went on from there to tell me why. Again, I was really surprised. I knew what I'd said. And again, it wasn't anything I hadn't said before.

But soon after I started listening to the CD, I knew what had happened. I had assumed a relationship with this audience that I didn't have. Specifically, at the beginning of my talk, my microphone went out. So for the first few minutes, I was trying to get the mic to work while a guy from backstage fiddled with my belt pack. A bit unnerving in front of 5,000 student pastors. I'm very committed to staying within the allotted time, especially in an environment that's heavily programmed. So as they continued to mess with my microphone, I was watching precious time slipping away. The sound gurus decided the headset wasn't going to work, so they handed me a handheld mic. By this time, I was so distracted that I made a huge communication blunder. Actually two. First, I skipped my introductory remarks and went right to the notes. Big mistake.

In my introduction, I was planning to talk about the tensions I faced as a student pastor working in a church that was not student friendly. That was my connection with the audience. That was about my only connection with that audience. I'm 48 years of age, but most of the men and women in attendance were in their late 20s. I skipped Me and consequently it was difficult to convince them that there was much We. Without meaning to, I positioned myself as a highly opinionated speaker who had little or no empathy for what the average student pastor was dealing with back at home.

The second mistake I made was that I rushed through the material. When a communicator rushes through material, it sends a very specific message: I'm more concerned about covering my material than I am about communicating with my audience. The emotional message it sends is, I'm more concerned about Me than You.

In my case, when I rush I have a tendency to over-communicate my point. I can come across as very dogmatic. After listening to the message, I understood the response. The negative feedback I received focused on my content. But I'm confident the problem was my lack of connection with the audience.

It's difficult to receive challenging information from someone who seems to have no clue as to what it's like to be you. That's why the Me component of any talk is so important. When handled correctly, audience members find themselves shaking their heads in agreement and thinking, "Me too." (Or in southern vernacular, "You got 'dat right.")

How you handle Me will be somewhat determined by your audience. Whenever you're speaking to a new audience, it's critical that you begin with something about yourself because they don't know you. However, if you're talking to a group that hears you on a regular basis, Me is not as critical. They already know you.

Having said that, I always look for an opportunity to insert my personal struggles with the topic of the day at the front end of a message. After all, on any given Sunday, there will be people in the audience who don't know who I am. And by nature of the fact that I'm a preacher, there will be people in the audience trying hard not to like me. Why? Because if they can build a solid case against me as a person, they have an "ironclad" excuse for ignoring everything I say. So I go out of my way to share my humanity and frailty. Doing so tears down walls. Besides, if you preach from your weakness, you will never run out of material.

We

Having made it clear to our audience that we're wrestling with a particular tension, the next step is to broaden our tension so as to include everybody listening.

For example:

"Sometimes I wonder why I even bother praying (Me). I bet you've wondered about that as well (We)."

"Sometimes I wonder why I am overcome by the same temptations over and over (Me). But that's probably something that only I wrestle with, right (We)?"

"There are just some people I don't get along with (Me). Can anybody here relate to that (We)?"

In this section you need to spend some time applying the tension to as many areas as you can so as to spark an emotion in as broad an audience as possible.

For example, one Christmas I addressed the issue of unmet expectations that seems to be bigger than life during the holiday season. I talked briefly about my family situation and my frustration of not being able to be with both my parents at Christmas. That was Me. Then I spent a few minutes poking around in just about every family dynamic imaginable, hoping to spark an emotion in as many people as possible.

I addressed the blended family, the single who only has a few days off, the teenager who has to split the holidays with two sets of parents, the prodigal who probably wouldn't show up at all, the loved ones who've gone to be with the Lord since last Christmas. My goal was to surface the issue of unmet or unrealistic expectations at Christmas. I struggle with it. You struggle with it, too.

If you're reading this article with a highlighter in your hand, I encourage you to highlight this next sentence. Don't transition from We to the next section until you've created a tension that your audience is dying for you to resolve. In other words, assume no interest. Focus on the question you're intending to answer until you're confident that your audience wants it answered. Otherwise, you'll spend 20 or 30 minutes of your life answering a question nobody's asking. I imagine you have better things to do.

You've probably heard or read differing opinions on how much of a message should be allotted to application. If you've ever heard Chuck Swindoll, Bruce Wilkinson, or Rick Warren speak to this issue, they all believe that 70 to 80 percent of the gospels and epistles are application-oriented. I agree. (I bet these guys will be relieved to know that.)

One of the advantages to this approach is that it wraps the entire message in application. Unlike some methods where the application is tacked onto the end, this approach allows the communicator to introduce a topic within the context of application. If you can get your audience to question something, say, "Yeah, me too" about something, or simply wonder, "What should I do about that?" you've already crossed over into the realm of application.

Application isn't a section of the message; it's the context of the message. The MWGYW approach addresses the issue of application in the beginning as well as at the end. If you open the message with your struggle (Me), and relate it to their struggle (We), you're already in the arena of applied truth.

But enough about us.

God

Now for the meat. The Bible part. The God part. The text! The goal here is to resolve the tension, or at least some of it, by pointing people to God's thoughts on the subject at hand. One of my well-worn transitions goes something like this:

Apply the tension to as many areas as you can so as to spark an emotion in as broad an audience as possible.

"Well, the good news is, we're not the first people to struggle with this. The people in Jesus' day did as well. Turn with me to … ."

Similarly: "The good news is that we're not the first group to have doubts about God's goodness—King David did as well. Turn with me to. … "

Or: "God must have known we would struggle with this, because Jesus addressed this very issue one afternoon on his way to. … " You get the point.

When it comes to handling the text, communicators tend to move toward two extremes at this point. They either skip along the surface of a few verses without really explaining or engaging the text, or they go down so deep and stay there so long everyone in the audience is gasping for air. The first extreme leaves the audience biblically illiterate. The second extreme reinforces many audience members' assumption that they could never understand the Bible on their own.

On one hand, you don't want to skimp on the Scripture. On the other hand, you don't want to get bogged down in the text. This is where sermons lose momentum and get boring. I think it's the fear of losing the audience that motivates so many young preachers to be Scripture-light and story-heavy. But there's a third option: Engage the audience with the text. Don't just read it. Don't explain it to death. Engage the audience with it. Take them with you. Make this part of the journey. Make it so fascinating that they're actually tempted to go home and read it on their own. This isn't easy, but it's worth the effort.

You

This section, as I mentioned earlier, is typically referred to as the application of the message. This is where we tell people what to do with what they've heard. This is where we answer the questions "So what?" and "Now what?"

My preference is to find one point of application that I can challenge everybody to embrace. I rarely ask people to make a life-altering commitment to anything. I don't think that's realistic. But I often challenge people to try something for a week, or even a day. Occasionally, I'll ask people to commit to something for a month.

As we're about to discover, finding one application that everybody can get on line with sets you up for the We aspect of your message. But more importantly, it allows you to stay focused and concise in your communication.

When it seems necessary to broaden the application, I find it helpful to think through the concentric circles of relationships. You were probably taught this somewhere along the way:

• How does this apply to me?
• How does this apply to my family relationships?
• How does this apply to my relationships in the community of faith?
• How does this apply to my relationships with those outside the faith?
• How does this apply in the marketplace?

Another way to mine for application is to think through the various stages of life:

• How does this apply to teenagers and college students?
• How does this apply to singles?
• How does this apply to newlyweds?
• How does this apply to parents?
• How does this apply to elderly folks?
• How does this apply to empty nesters?

I'm not recommending that you walk through all these categories in every message. But by taking the time to think through each of these on your own, you'll surface some angles that you might have otherwise missed.

There's a third list to think about as well: Believers and unbelievers.

I often address unbelievers at this point in the message. If there's an application for them, I make it. After all, a principle is a principle. Many biblical principles work for anybody. Unconditional love makes an impact regardless of your theology. So do honesty and dozens of other biblical virtues. If I can get an unbeliever to apply a biblical principle and he or she sees results, that's progress.

When a message doesn't apply to an unbeliever, I let them know that as well. In fact, I usually let them know up front. I often say something to the effect of, "If you're not a believer, you're off the hook today. Just sit back and relax. You're in a 'guilt-free zone.' In fact, today's message may give you another reason to put off becoming a Christian."

The last category I might apply a message to is the person who's not there. Every time you speak, somebody's sitting there thinking about someone who really needed to hear what you had to say. Go ahead and address the person who is there but who knows somebody who should have been there. Suggest ways for them to get your message in front of that person, tactfully.

We

Like you, I love to wrap up a message with an emotionally charged story that punctuates the main point in a way that leaves the audience gasping for breath and reaching for their Kleenex. And every once in a while, God graces us with those closing illustrations. But for the other 51 weeks of the year, we need something else. That's where We comes in.

This final component of the message is an opportunity for you to rejoin your audience as you did in the beginning of the message when you circled up around your shared frailty, questions, misgivings, or temptations. We is really about vision-casting. It's a moment of inspiration. It's the point in the message when you paint a verbal picture of what could be and should be. In this closing moment, you call upon your audience to imagine what the church, the community, families, and maybe even the world would be like if Christians everywhere embraced your one idea.

Imagine a church where "love one another" was the theme rather than a memory verse for children. Imagine a community dotted with homes where husbands really loved their wives like Christ loved the church. Imagine what would happen in the culture if thousands of teenagers abandoned the lie that purity was optional and basically irrelevant. Imagine what could happen in one week if everybody here treated everybody they came in contact with like someone for whom Christ died. Imagine what would happen if, for three months, we all managed our money as if everything we own and all of our time really belonged to God.

Dream on behalf of your church families, singles, kids, churches, and the kingdom. This is when you remind your audience that the Scriptures were given not just as a means of making our individual lives better. They were given so that as a body, corporately, we could shine like a beacon of hope in our communities, our neighborhoods, and in the marketplace. Imagine what We could do together.

Getting Started

Okay, that's it. But that's a lot. And I imagine the MWGYW outline process is different from the way you're currently outlining, so let me close with a couple of suggestions.

Take your last message, or even one you're working on now, and write these five words in the margin where they apply in your current way of outlining. For example, if you typically start your messages by diving right into the text, write God out to the side of that section or sections. Write You out beside your application. When you're finished, take a shot at rearranging your material around this approach. Use your current numbering system. But just rearrange the parts so that they follow the MWGYW paradigm. Now go back and add the ones you're missing.

Once you've done that, turn your paper over and see if you can think through your message one section at a time. I bet you can. People ask me all the time how I preach without looking at notes.

Now you know. But don't tell anybody.

This article is adapted with the permission of Multnomah Publishers from Communicating for a Change (Multnomah, 2006), by Andy Stanley and Lane Jones.

Andy Stanley is the founder and pastor of North Point Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia.