Learning to preach from the world

Preachers and Bible teachers spend a lot of time trying to hone their craft. There are some great books out there to help you with ideas and techniques whether you're giving a talk at a camp to teenagers, or preaching in a formal setting to hundreds or thousands.* But there's another place we should be looking to learn how to communicate better - the World!

There are some very gifted communicators out there - some of them communicating to make us laugh. Some of them to make us wealthy, or better businessmen. Others wanting to convince us that their philosophy is worth believing in. And all of them are able to draw immense crowds who pay good money to sit and listen. Here are just three things we can learn from our contemporary orators:

Comedians

A great comedian - Michael McIntyre, Miranda Hart, Lee Evans - can fill the 12,000-seater O2 arena for five nights running. And the show they offer is just them, alone on the stage and the words they speak. One highly effective technique comedians use is the running gag - a story line or point that keeps cropping up, and often gives a sense of completeness to a stand-up routine by drawing it to a close. A great example is >Michael McIntyre's routine talking about Tripadvisor and holidays. Notice the clever way he rounds it all off.

TED

If you've not come across TED, you should spend time at this site. The acronym stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, three broad subject areas that the organisation believes is collectively shaping our future. TED runs conferences around the world which are basically a series of cool, trendy lectures that offer insights into life from these areas. Here's a good example. The talks work from a pretty universally secular mindset, but they also showcase the very best in presentation skills. They follow some masterful ground rules - they only present a single idea, they have a very tight specific time limit, they put time and effort into visuals and they practice, practice, practice them before they are delivered. See >this blog post for more detail on this.

False teachers

Yes, you read that right! False teachers... I won't name names, because false teachers have a habit of having rottweiler lawyers ready to unleash against the unwary critic - but you know who I mean. Some of them masquerade as believers, some are peddling ideas and philosophies that are distinctly un-Christian. But all of them really know what makes their audience tick. They have tapped into the deep and often unspoken hopes and aspirations of their audiences. They know what they are desperate to hear, and shape their message and its emotional content to appeal to them. And they do it to great and tragic effect.

My point is this. If we ignore these deep seated desires in our audience, we both miss the mark with our wholesome and healing teaching from the Bible, and also leave them open to falling for false teaching. So pick a false teacher and spend some time watching and listening to them online. Not to 'tut' at their fake remedies, but to ask why they are so appealing, and to ponder how the one true gospel is the real answer to their needs.

* Oh, and have a look at two books we have recently published: Messages that move and Gospel Centred Preaching. They'll both help you preach and communicate God's Word in a more faithfully effective way.