As I pondered the audience responses to Debbie’s multisensory teaching, Tony’s multisensory teaching, and my own multisensory teaching, something significant occurred to me. There was a common denominator in all three: no audience boredom!

The audience in all three cases appeared focused, undistracted, and totally absorbed in the teaching. In fact, there seemed to be an observable anti-boring effect connected to multisensory communication. I was observing that effect with my own eyes, though my question at the time was this: Is this anti-boring effect real, and if so, can it be proven?

Audience boredom is the chief enemy of all communicators. It is especially the enemy of those of us who teach God’s Word, because what we teach has everlasting consequences. We cannot afford to bore our congregations, since eternal life and death are on the line. Haddon Robinson, considered one of the greatest biblical communicators of our day, warns about the deadly effects of boring our congregations:

Boredom is like anthrax. It can kill … Dull, insipid sermons not only cause drooping eyes and nodding heads, they also destroy life and hope. What greater damage can we do to people’s faith than to make them feel like God and Jesus and the Bible are as boring as the want ads in the Sunday newspaper?

Whoa!

Yet, such boredom is pervasive in many churches. In the same work, Robinson goes on to give this dig to many preachers: “More people have been bored out of the faith than have been reasoned out of it.” Ouch!

As far back as 1857, Anthony Trollope wrote of the pain of listening to some sermons. “There is perhaps no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries than the necessity of listening to sermons.” Trollope’s indictment on nineteenth-century preaching still rings true. Congregations often languish through sermons simply because the communication fails to hold their attention and induces a state of comatose boredom. It doesn’t have to be that way!

If audience boredom is the disease, then communication predictability is a major cause of the disease. Nothing spreads audience boredom like a communication style that is stagnant and predictable. John Killinger writes, “Considering how many sermons most preachers deliver in a lifetime, it’s easy to understand how sermons fall into formulas and patterns, and thus become predictable. But predictability kills interest.” This seemed obvious to me.

But multisensory communication is quintessentially unpredictable and filled with variety. It is the antithesis of falling into a communication rut. The wonder of multisensory communication lies not only in its power to engage multiple senses, but also in its capacity to be diverse and changing. The very nature of multisensory teaching keeps it out of ruts, formulas, and patterns.

The question, however, that was keeping me awake at night was this: Does multisensory communication translate into higher attention levels in our audiences and less audience boredom? Could such a correlation be validated?

Rick Blackwood, The Power of Multi-Sensory Preaching and Teaching (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2008), 25–26.

Resources to help you be more multi-sensory:

Teachers: check out my video preview of the Bible Studies for Life Sunday School Lessons at http://www.sundayschooluniversity.com/

Preachers: check out my new website http://stickysermon.com/ It is a work in progress, but here is what you can expect to find. Each sermon will include:

• A PowerPoint—most of them with embedded videos that make the point stick
• A 15 minute coaching video where I talk to you the preacher about what I have in mind for the message, and go over any visual aids I might use.
• A Good Question Bible Study Lesson to be used by your small groups to further reinforce the message. The same power that was at work in the Purpose Driven Life Campaign will be at work in each week’s message.