In my last post, I made some suggestions about the nature of preaching and teaching and offered some ways of thinking about those tasks that might help increase our effectiveness. Now, let’s look at some more specific ideas. I want to use my approach in the previous post to get into our subject. How did I engage you in the subject of preaching and teaching effectiveness? At what point did I begin to make suggestions and claims? How did I help you prepare for my suggestions? If you recall, I began by asking you about your own experience of preaching and teaching effectiveness. I did this to help you engage with the subject and see its importance to you so that we might discern a gap or a knowledge need which I would help fill later. My second step was to ask you not only about your present preaching and teaching effectiveness but to ask you about prior experiences of preaching and teaching so that you would begin to surface your own understanding of the subject, as well as your prior knowledge. In short, the first two sections focused on creating an appetite for the new material and helping you create mental space for my input in order to evaluate the suggestions and potentially integrate them into your existing understanding and practice. Finally, I began making suggestions. I believe that our preaching and our teaching would benefit from this sort of approach that takes into account hearers’ prior knowledge, helps them see the need for the information or new learning, and helps them create mental space for that knowledge so they might integrate it better.
Let me begin with suggestions that apply to preaching and teaching. The first few come from the perspective of a pastor, while the others come from the field of education.
Keep in mind that preaching and teaching are a matter of sacred partnership between you and the Lord and a cooperative effort with the people. Neither may be done adequately apart from the Lord’s empowering work.
Stay aware of the seriousness of handling God’s Word and the stewardship of the Word and the message or lesson, as well as the hearers and their response to the Scriptures and to God based on what you preach and teach.
Be committed to prayer for the preaching and teaching. Pray over your own life, potential sin that could hurt your effectiveness, God’s anointing for the work, and the understanding and application of the passage and its truths in your life. Pray for the hearers and for God to work powerfully in the preaching and teaching times. Recruit prayer support for the preaching and teaching if you can.
Wrestle with the Scripture yourself, refusing to keep it “at arm’s length.” Before you ask the “So what?” for your hearers, ask it for yourself. Insist on going deeper than information, to the level of life principles. Evaluate your life according to what you find, and make it a matter of response and prayer.
In preaching, stay aware of the difference between the message and the sermon – the heart of what is to be conveyed and the form it takes. In teaching, stay aware of the difference between the heart of the lesson and the teaching form or strategy.
Teach the people how to use the Bible and how to respond to it in prayer by example. For instance, as appropriate, indicate the context of passages and how the ideas in those passages interact with other parts of Scripture. Also, in your closing prayer times, lead the people in prayer that includes responses to and application of the principles in the text.
I would be happy to share with you some of the education theory behind the following suggestions, but, for now, I will draw upon that field of study simply to make some suggestions about how we preach and teach. Obviously, some of these can be fleshed out more fully in teaching environments than in preaching contexts.
Familiarize yourself with Bloom’s Taxonomy and think about how it relates to your preaching, teaching, and other discipleship efforts. If you are not familiar with this tool, it is a hierarchy of progressive stages of learning and using knowledge. I would suggest we need to help our people work toward the higher levels of understanding and knowledge use.
Begin your preaching and teaching with questions that prompt your hearers to identify and reflect on their own experience with the subject and / or passage. Statements may be used, but they tend to be less effective.
Early in the lesson or sermon, incorporate appropriate questions regarding frustrations or challenges your hearers have faced, are facing, or may face relative to the topic and / or passage.
Communicate in a manner that conveys collegiality as a fellow learner and makes appropriate application of the principles for yourself and your hearers. [Caution: Be very judicious here. Do not share doubts, struggles, or other information that Satan might use to harm the faith or walk of your hearers, and be aware that different audiences, age groups, and settings call for differing levels of openness and sharing. Collegiality can open doors with some people, while with others it may undercut your leadership or make them think you are talking about yourself too much.]
Ask your hearers to reflect on what you have shared and how that challenges or reinforces their own understanding of the topic, as well as how the principles might be implemented in the their own lives and life settings.
Consider using the preaching and teaching content as the subject for discussions in other settings, and look for opportunities to apply the Word, including what has been preached and taught, in the larger life and work of the church.
How does what I have presented align with or differ from your current understanding of and approach to preaching and teaching?
Which of these ideas would you like to implement in our own practice?
What are some practical steps you can take to do this?
What obstacles will you need to overcome in order to implement these ideas?