Required Listening: Talk Like the Most Effective Communicator Who Ever Lived with Charles Stone | Jesus Smart X, Ep. 379

Jesus was the most effective communicator who ever lived. Dr. Charles Stone, a pastor with a background in the neuroscience of leadership, breaks down the brain science behind how he taught, connected, and moved people to change. Connection. Emotion. Memory. Action. This conversation will change how you talk to everyone in your life.----------See the full episode transcript below.👉 Enhanced show notes: JesusSmart.com/379👉 Explore more episodes: JesusSmart.com/podcastIf this episode gave you a fresh perspective on Kingdom Living, share it with someone who needs encouragement.Be sure to follow the podcast. Each episode is designed to help you think more clearly and pursue the kind of life only Jesus makes possible.Stay current via The Smart Edit newsletter—Elevate your faith. Live smart. Make an impact. Free. Weekly. 5 minutes to grow. Sign up at JesusSmart.com/smartedit.----------EPISODE TRANSCRIPT: Talk Like the Most Effective Communicator Who Ever LivedBrian Del Turco: Hey there, friend. Welcome to the podcast. This is Brian Del Turco, and this is Jesus Smart X. I'm glad you're here.This is episode 379, and you can find the show notes for this episode at jesussmart.com/379. This is a special required-listening episode: a recording from the past that we're surfacing again, because it's about communication, and communication makes everything work. Jesus was a master communicator, and we have a lot to learn from him. Here's Dr. Charles Stone, an expert on neuroscience and communication.Dr. Charles Stone helps us explore what it might look like if Jesus gave a TED Talk: eight neuroscience principles the master teacher used to persuade, whether in one-on-one conversation, small clusters, or massive crowds. We'll survey all eight briefly, then dig into a few in more depth, including creating affinity, leveraging emotion, and stimulating real life application. Dr. Stone is a pastor in Canada with an executive master's in the neuroscience of leadership, and he's currently working on his PhD. Here's my conversation with Dr. Charles Stone.Meet Dr. Charles StoneBrian Del Turco: I'm really excited about our guest today. He's an expert on neuroscience and leadership as it relates specifically to ministry, though I think there's application here across every life domain. Scripture tells us to love God with all our mind, to be transformed by the renewing of our mind. Is it too much to say that the mind of Christ in us involves a kind of neuroplasticity, that we can actually grow in the mind of Christ?Dr. Charles Stone: Not at all. The way God designed us to learn is through actual changes in our brain, and those changes reflect our values, our beliefs, and our convictions.Brian Del Turco: Communication makes the world go round. Does this apply beyond the pulpit, to relational communication in family life, friendships, teaching?Dr. Charles Stone: Absolutely. God wired us to communicate in a way that isn't just for someone standing up front on Sunday morning. Our brains are wired to pay attention, to respond, to feel safe or unsafe around others, regardless of the setting. Biblical communication principles apply across the board.Dr. Stone holds degrees from Georgia Tech, Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Trinity Evangelical, plus an executive master's in the Neuroscience of Leadership. He's the author of *If Jesus Gave a TED Talk*, a title he borrows not because Jesus gave neat eighteen-minute talks, but because he masterfully lived out the best ways to communicate and make truth stick. He was God, so we don't have what he has, but we can still learn from how he taught.The Forgetting Curve That Sparked a BookBrian Del Turco: What prompted you to write this book?Dr. Charles Stone: As a pastor spending fifteen to twenty hours a week preparing a message, I had this nagging feeling: what difference is this actually making? None of my seminary professors ever taught the theory behind what makes a message stick. Then I came across research from a German psychologist, Hermann Ebbinghaus, who invented nonsense words, memorized them, and measured how quickly he forgot them. That gave us the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve, and it's since been repeatedly confirmed: people forget more than 95 percent of what they hear in a teaching session within a week's time. That was a wake-up call. Are there tools, principles, that communicators can apply to increase retention? Absolutely. That's why I wrote the book, and why others are studying the neuroscience of learning and communication.Eight Qu