WARNING: If the student hasn’t learned, the teacher hasn’t taught.
This is a good saying from a long time dean in the school of education where I was first taught the need to communicate your objective. The truth is that you cannot call it teaching if your class/audience/students don’t walk away having understood your primary point. You can call it lecturing. You can call it giving a talk. But it’s not teaching. You may have TRIED to teach, but if the student doesn’t get it, you haven’t accomplished your objective.
You can prepare the best content in all the world, but if you don’t speak to your audience in a way that connects with them, they’ll never get it. In that case, it’s nice that you learned something for yourself, but you’ve squandered a great opportunity to communicate truth to the next group. Of course, we know that we are utterly dependent on the Holy Spirit’s work to truly enlighten the hard hearts of any of us to spiritual truth. What I want to do is simply give some practical thoughts to help you remove barriers to effective communication. We want to teach in a way that removes unnecessary hindrances and paves the way (as imperfect as our best efforts may be) for the work of the Spirit. As Paul says in Ephesians 4, our words have the potential to minister grace to the hearer, and it is a precious privilege to join with Him in His work.
With that said, here are some practical points.
1) Communicate your OBJECTIVE. What one main idea do you want students to walk away with? Don’t walk in with an overabundance of points to communicate. The 18 point outline is overwhelming. People often can’t remember any one thing because they are overwhelmed trying to remember every different thing. Also, don’t allow yourself to wing it or to just speak a stream of consciousness from the heart. That kind of talk has its place in certain circumstances, but it’s usually not the mainstream teaching environment of a class or retreat. You need to know the specific principle from Scripture you want to communicate and gear your outline to reinforce it to your class.
2) Teach to the back row. This may sound weird, but let me explain. In the stereotypical class setting, the easy students sit at the front and stare at you with attentive eyes (madly taking notes) the whole lesson. The temptation is to focus there. The back row has the stragglers, those likely unsure about being there at all. Teach to them. In a large group setting when you are speaking from a podium, make eye contact with the back row. Talk to your audience as individuals rather than a mass. If you work to reach the back row audience, you will also reach every audience in between.
3) Less is more (handouts, powerpoint, gimmicks, cutesiness). Often, an audience remembers a gimmick but forgets the message. I discussed this in part 1, but it is worth repeating here. Don’t underestimate the power of the Word itself to change hearts. Use as much in the way of powerpoint or handouts that will support and communicate your main objective, but guard yourself against using gimmicks that end up distracting instead of supporting your points.
4) Consider other modalities of learning. Not everyone learns best the same way you do. What communication style works best for you? You may need to actively concentrate on reaching students with different learning styles. If you can, incorporate multiple modalities (auditory, visual, tactile). For some people it is really helpful to have room to write notes. For others, it’s most helpful to have the notes already written down for them so they can just look at you and listen. I am a literal, logical, analytical thinker and speaker. I tend to drop the ball when it comes to global thinkers who need to see the big picture. It’s a place I have to actively work.
5) Think about the best teacher you ever had. What did you like about their teaching style? How did they communicate their objectives?
6) Figure out the base line of your audience. This is REALLY important. Define your terms. Get your audience on a level playing field. Proverbs 14:6 says, “A scoffer seeks wisdom and finds none, But knowledge is easy to one who has understanding.” Knowledge is easy to one who understands! Don’t talk over the heads of your audience. Don’t impress them with theological terms they don’t need to know. They will understand your objective when you communicate your points in clear words your audience understands.
7) Consider all of the ways your words can be misinterpreted. Don’t be naïve. It’s a cruel world out there, and some victim of it is sitting in your audience ready to challenge you out of their pain. Know your audience. Think through their issues. One of my current pet peeves is the wealth of teaching to women on being a wife and mother as their highest calling that completely ignores the state of a very large percentage of godly Christian women who are single or infertile. If you don’t acknowledge this issue and paint it correctly in light of the gospel, you can hamstring women who are already struggling with the goodness of God and His sovereignty over their circumstances. Think hard on how your specific audience will receive your words and what you can do to make sure you (and more importantly, the Word) are not misinterpreted.
8) Humor, honesty, and sincerity. Redeem the pain in your own life. Be honest about your struggles (without revealing too much). Don’t set yourself up as the expert, but recognize that by default you will become a living example of what you discuss.
9) Finally, teach it to the microwave first. This is a really practical point. Don’t just prepare an outline. Teach your outline. To the microwave, your dog, or whatever piece of furniture in your house or tree in your yard that you can do it in peace. I watch the timer on my microwave because the time of your lesson is important in so many settings. I can’t tell you the times I finished in 20 minutes what was supposed to last 45. I hadn’t done appropriate prep work and didn’t make use of the time the people listening to me allowed me to have. I have learned to teach through it several times from beginning to end visualizing my audience as I practice—not memorizing it because that always comes across as insincere (in my humble opinion).
So those are some practical things that have been helpful to me in the past. I am personally well out of practice, and I review them now in preparation for my own re-entry into the world of teaching. May we all as teachers prayerfully consider how we can remove barriers and stumblingblocks that will distract our listeners from the God-given objective we most need to communicate.
