Exploring the Fine Lines of Making Sermons Memorable

In the course of my higher education, I have only bumbled through two biblical survey classes, which were at best a broad overview. My understaning of scripture largely derives from late night wrestling sessions with brief passages.

Recently, I have been hungry for the words of Jesus Christ, aiming to allow His teachings to infiltrate my heart without letting my preconceived musings about Christianity pollute their ability to form my life. Though I could never claim to be a theologan or even a scholar, I have been gathering an undeniable truth from reading His sermons and parables night after night:

The words of Jesus Christ are memorable.

Well of course, you say (and rightfully so)… After all, the passages we have are the centuries-old, unchanged accounts that have spoken to the very roots of our family trees. I certainly am not trying to break ground by saying so, but we do have to acknowledge that the words of Christ are at once relevant and timeless, simple and profound, pervasive and direct.

As pastors, you toil relentlessly in the word, crafting several minutes worth of oration week upon week. Undoubtedly the goals of Christ’s communication become the paradigm of your constructions, and your backspace button gets as much exercise as any of the other keys as you commit yourself to a masterpiece of oration that will stand indelible and strong in the minds of your parishoners.

Why then do most, if not all, congregants forget what you said as soon as the yeast rolls pop out of the oven to make their appearance at the Sunday dinner table?

It is upon me to note that I am a classic example of the average sermon consumer. My deficit of attentiveness combines with the hyper-stimulation of movies, ipods, and digitized radio that pop culture so readily offers, and I regularly become the quintissential thorn in the side of my pastors – checking out the bulletin announcements, musing about nearby lunch options, and even occasionally nodding off. If I were a pastor, I wouldn’t be able to stand people like me!

Each week, I work to wrap aesthetic shemes around pastors’ sermon series ideas, creating visual touchstones that are wallpapered onto screen presentations, bulletin covers, posters, banners, and even temporary tattoos. (Okay, I have never actually produced a sermon logo that was henna dyed onto anyones forearm.) Sometimes these promo pieces become banners on the web, paid ads on search engines, and blocks in the local newsprint. The promotions serve their purpose, and the parking lot begins to fill in time for the 10:30 a.m. service.

So let’s say that you are facing a pew-ful of 500 or so. You are confident that you hold the reference to the bible passage the Lord wants you to communicate, and you can feel the passion of the Holy Spirit begin to pulse in your veins as you prepare to be the voice through which the Lord communicates.

Problem – Already, Irma Gladys is fiddling with her Tic-Tacs, Big Joe is eying the fresh supply of female visitors, and Susie-Q has commenced with her tradition of penciling gossip for her friends to read onto the stock of tithe envelopes. What do you do?

You might have tried raising your voice and other scare tactics. Maybe you like to form your points into clever acrostics that spell S.A.L.V.A.T.I.O.N., or E.S.C.H.A.T.O.L.O.G.Y. Perhaps you are into one-word sermon titles that evoke adrenalized images like ‘DRIVE’, or ‘IGNITE.’ Maybe all six of your bullets start with the letter ‘F’.

I have heard all such sermons, and I must confess that clever linguistic hooks, video clips, and yes, finely crafed graphics packages do occasionally help to gel the points into cohesion. Just as often though, these schemes can present themselves as stale substitutes for impactful, relevant truth that does indeed penetrate the heart.

Some look at a wheel of the finest bleu cheese and see a decadent, creamy experience offering sharp bite and brightly colored smoky, salty notes. Others see mold and stench. If you are a precher that favors weekly acrostics to get the point across, imagine that you cease this practice for whatever reason. Half of your congregants will hail you as innovative and daring, while the other half will bellyache about the loss of this memory aid. What is a pastor to do?

If bleu cheese is delight to one and disgust to another, I think it is safe to make the assumption that most creations of man will exist in this realm: embraced by some and disregarded by others. Maybe the key to crafting memorable sermons is to look to the one whose teachings can not in any way be labeled as human invention.

Jesus Christ is always concise, direct, illustrative, and is willing to say the hard things, even when the things needed to be said cause some to be offended. As you faithfully work to craft sermons that are true to the word of God and relevant to a complex contemporary culture, remember that Christ departed from conventions and expectations.

If your flock is settling in for a twenty minute discourse centered on words that rhyme with ‘HOLY’, you may want to consider telling a short story (parable), giving a few sentences of explanation, and sending the listeners into small discussion groups armed with application questions. Only one teacher who roamed the earth was fully God. As you add creative graphic solutions, language constructions, and poetic cleverness to your lesons, don’t rely on them. Be sure there is clearly room for Jesus Christ to dictate your style and approach, and your offering of truth will be far more memorable.

Part 2: Image Size and Resolution

Countless times when asking for a logo file, I have been directed to a ministry’s website where I can right-click on an image and save it onto my hard disk for later use. This seems like a logical progression: here is the logo looking crisp and wonderful on the screen, and how much better it is to get the artwork this way than having to dig through years-old discs to find the original file.

In my endless quest to never print another pixilated image, I am writing in order to take a touch of the mystery away from the issue of image sizing and resolution.

Imagine that you want to construct a 12” tall letter ‘A’ from building blocks. You can choose to create your masterpiece out of Lego blocks or Duplo blocks. (Remember Duplo blocks – the big, chunky building toys too large for toddlers to swallow?) You are limited by size (12”), and you want the edge of the letter to be as detailed as possible. You would definitely use Lego blocks instead of Duplos to form the shape of the letter because they are smaller and allow you to include more detail in the sculpture.

Digital images work in this same way. Each image file has two variables, its dimensions, and its pixel density. Two images may have exactly the same dimensions as each other but would yield drastically different print results if their pixel density values were different.

You may have heard someone mention the terms ‘DPI’ or ‘PPI’ (Dots Per Inch / Pixels Per Inch). Referring to image density, the terms relate to the number of dots (or pixels) that can be found in a horizontal or vertical inch of the file.

Let’s say your church logo is a square that generally prints in a 1” x 1” area. If we prepared the file at 10 DPI, it would mean that 10 dots would form each row of graphic data and 10 dots would form each column of graphic data, for a total of 100 dots. Now imagine if I gave you 100 white and black Lego blocks and asked you to build a version of your logo out of them. The result would be pretty jagged.

The relationship between the dimensions of an image and the image density works like any good old-fashioned ratio. If I have an image that is 1” x 1” at 100 DPI, I can change the size to 2” x 2”, and the DPI to 50, and the image would not change quality at all. There still would be 100 dots forming each row of horizontal and each row of vertical information.

Onto the ‘magic’ numbers. If you are designing a piece intended to print, the minimum DPI you want to use is 300. Many professional printing companies will ask for 350, 600, or in some rare cases 1200 DPI files, but for the most part 300 is adequate.

For web design, all that is needed is 72 DPI. This is a major degradation of the image compared to the resolution of print images that are over 4X the size. Why is this?

The information displayed on computer monitors only displays at 72 dpi (in most cases), which is not all that much. If you snuggle up with your display, you will see that most the letters and shapes on display actually have fuzzy edges. This is called anti-aliasing. An alias is a five-dollar word for a little jagged edge that is created when a shape is produced at a low resolution. This sophisticated anti-aliasing process occurs every time you type a single letter in your email program.

Distance is said to be the great healer when it comes to graphic issues, and when you sit a foot or two away from your monitor, what once was fuzzy appears clean and crisp. Don’t be fooled though, the graphic designer who constructed your website took your nice crisp logo and down-sampled it to 72 DPI which will ONLY look good when displayed on-screen.

Printing presses, and even home inkjet printers are capable of producing a much higher volume of dots per square inch. Our eye is much more accepting of low resolution on our screens than it is with any printed material. There is a lot of mind-bending science as to why, but the important thing is to accept that this is true.

Have you ever tried printing a graphics-heavy web page? What was dramatic and lively on the screen becomes a pixilated, jagged, lifeless mess. The DPI issue is one of the major factors in the disappointing printout.

An image down-sampling is a one-way street. An image with a lot of resolution can always be scaled down further. Once the degradation has occurred, the only way to get a larger version is to return to the original file, make another copy and down-sample it to the new desired size.

So next time you wish to have your logo produced on a brochure, don’t go running for your home page, and whatever you do STAY AWAY from the right-click button. Open up the bottom desk drawer and dig out the original source file. You’ll be glad you did.