Archive for month: August, 2019

Most of what I remember of my youth pastor from being a teenager his him giving talks. He and his small team would take it in turns to deliver the message each Sunday night. Some of these we would look forward to more than others because they would be funny or moving or poignant. Others, however, would just be boring or self-serving – thirty minutes to just get through before music and games.

The concept, however, was clear: teaching and authority is delivered from the front of the room.

Today I’m in a similar position. I deliver talks to my young people. I also give assemblies in schools, and a lot of my projects have that upfront teaching aspect to them. I have however, dialled back on upfront speaking as my main teaching style, and I’ve embraced more conversation, mentoring, group discussion, active service, briefing and briefing, Q&A, and try-and-see methods.

I’m going to briefly discuss some of the reasons I have come to that decision.

The de facto approach

I recently read a poll on a youth ministry Facebook page comparing the most effective methods of teaching teenagers. Of the 100+ full-time youth pastors that responded, well over half said that up front preaching is still the most effective method of teaching young people today. I was pretty surprised.

In the comments I suggested that the reason we think it is the most effective is that it tends to be the teaching method that we’re best at delivering, and the one we have the most experience with. We might be, therefore, measuring it’s effectiveness by how good we are at it, rather than how much our young people retain and apply.

Like me, many youth pastors grew up watching their own youth pastors preach and speak from the front. They possibly even graduated into volunteer youth ministry by doing some talks. At Bible College they started to learn how to public speak better, and they began finding their favourite YouTube preachers. Upfront speaking is what we know.

This de facto approach is highly practical, in that we don’t have to respond to the unknown and the spontaneous. It’s constructive, in that we can plan it meticulously and feed it into the context of teaching throughout a term. It’s safe, in that it is tidy and keeps surprises to a minimum. It’s also ego-stroking, in that it gives us the opportunity to make teenagers like us.

Does it work?

This might be the $1 million question. We can probably all think back to talks that had a big impact on our Christian walks. We can remember talks when great swaths of young people stood up to follow Jesus at the end. This might be why talks are still the main – if not the only – teaching method used at youth events and conferences.

But here’s another question: How many talks can you actually remember?

By remember I mean can you piece together the main point of a talk with all the moving parts it took to get there? Can you remember the three points and the applications? Can you remember the unpacked exegesis and the contexts they sat in? How many talks can you remember like that from probably the hundreds, if not thousands, that you have heard? What’s your retention and application percentage? Does that ratio feel like good stewardship?

If you’re a note taker then retention and application might be easier, or – if like me – you tend to plagarise other speakers anecdotes, then you might remember more – but even then some work has to be done in other teaching/learning styles before you get there.

American educational theorist, Edgar Dale, famously published what’s called the Cone of Learning, where he placed retention percentages alongside different learning methods.

Dale said, for instance, that the best way to learn something is actually to teach it to others, and if we can’t do that then we should emphasise discussion and practice over simply reading and listening. What was most shocking, however, was he said that the ‘lecture style’ or upfront speaking was by far the least effective method of teaching. He said humans tend to only retain 5% of a talk 24 hours later.

Dale’s ideas are certainly not watertight, and educational theory has come a long way since. But even if it’s just half true, we need to consider how effective our upfront speaking-heavy teaching methods truly are.

Is it biblical?

Now this is interesting because at first glance public speaking seems to be the main teaching method in the Bible. However, a deeper examination will reveal that this is just not correct.

The Patriarchs, Judges and Kings sometimes spoke to large groups, but more often we see them speaking to individuals or other leaders. Prophets spoke to crowds sometimes, but more often spoke to rulers, councils or individuals. There are other times when Kings and Prophets spoke to the whole nation of Israel, however, this tended to be to lead them in worship or prayer rather than teaching.

Some version of upfront speaking happened in smaller circumstances, like the head of a household telling an ancient story to his family, but that happened over a worship feast that they all joined in as part of the ritual.

In the New Testament Jesus is frequently mis-described as a crowd teacher and preacher. But this is actually a very rare occurrence. He does speak in the synagogues, but when He does this from the front it is almost exclusively limited to the reading of the Torah (with a cheeky sentence of personal commentary thrown in), and when in the outer courts, He tends to be answering questions and discussing with small groups of people in turn (like most Rabbis would).

Even classics like the Sermon on the Mount, or the Sermon on a Plain were focused times of teaching the disciples with a crowd ‘listening in’ rather than taught directly. In fact, almost all of Jesus’ recorded teaching happens in small groups and with individuals. The biblical Jesus is just not a crowd teacher or public speaker.

The book of Acts is probably the most interesting because proclamation was almost exclusively reserved for groups of unbelievers, whereas teaching through conversation and discussion were most commonly practiced with groups of already confessing believers. This is clearer in the Greek, but still we do this backwards don’t we?

Proclamation and preaching are certainly biblical practices, but they are by no means the exclusive, de facto, most effective, or even most usual method of teaching employed throughout the Scriptures. Upfront speaking was mostly reserved for the pubic reading of scripture or the corporate leading of worship.

Preaching as we know it today is largely a remnant of Christendom, rescued somewhat by the Reformation, helped along by the Edwardian era, but stunted by the Victorian Church, and then intellectualised by the Enlightenment. We need to look deeper and further to teach better.

So what else is there?

Allowing the Bible to speak with room for the Holy Spirit to interpret and apply should be the most important aspect of our teaching. The Bible historically been a conversant book, one read in community not just alone in isolation.

I favour facilitated Bible discussion, where a leader knows the passage well and has maturity to teach, but the content is discussed and then applied by the wider group. Truth is facilitated, and the discovery of the ‘true path’ is led by figures with the experience of mountain guides. They don’t do the hiking for them!

Having an experienced, mature, and trained pastor figure in the room safeguards against discussions dissolving into relativistic chaos, and they draws threads together helpfully without superimposing an unnecessary or tightly constricting agenda upon God’s Word in the gathering. This also keeps teacher-accountability on the table with the Bible.

This approach also opens up the importance of student participation in teaching, of mentoring, actual practice, abstract thinking, conversation, Q&A, try-and-see, briefing and debriefing, and open-ended discussion.

Proclamation is great! Public speaking is one of the key parts of my vocation and one of the things I’m best at. This does not mean, however, that it is the only, or even the best way that God can use me, or that speaking is the most effective way of teaching the people that God has put under my care.

We need to widen the net, broaden our skills, and embrace a bigger field of teaching methods, and we can do this without losing our biblical compass. The plans, character, heart, and purposes of God in our communities is big enough to warrant stepping out of our teaching-style comfort zones. Let’s get on it!