Reducing Distractions in Your Presentation

Your teaching time is not a performance. You are not trying to draw attention to yourself, but to God through His Word. Therefore you have an obligation to reduce things in your presentation which would be a distraction to those listening to you.

Here are seven recommendations:

1. Memorize the first 2 or 3 sentences you will say, and practice saying them. This will give you a strong opening "presence" instead of mumbling and "Uhm"-ing. (It also helps you push through any immediate fear that might grip you.)

2. Organize all your stuff before you start speaking. If you're pulling our papers, trying to balance your drink by your Bible, futzing with a microphone -- you are giving people a busy visual image that distracts from your words. Organize the stuff you need, then look at their faces while you begin.

3. Work to eliminate "filler" words which do not carry much meaning: just, like, uhm, you know, etc. (Peter Mead has a nice blog post about filler words.) These cheapen your statements and questions.

4. If you have an itch, please don't scratch it. If you need a drink, take one without making a lot of noise. Your hair is how it is, you don't need to be making frequent adjustments during lesson time.

5. Look at people when you are responding to them. If your eyes wander all over the room, they may be distracted by looking where you are looking, and then they aren't going to be hearing what you say.

6. Take things out of your pockets that would tempt your hands to play with them -- pens, keys, coins.

7. If you know you're going to look at multiple Bible passages, mark them ahead of time. We don't need to see you fumbling around in the minor prophets. If you're not fumbling, you can patiently help people find the passage.

By reducing these distractions in your presentation, people will be less likely to miss the message God wants them to understand through the teaching time. Remember, we're teaching to change lives!