Launch 'Em -- Don't Close 'Em Down

Book recommendation: Boring to Bravo

I highly recommend Boring to Bravo: Proven Presentation Techniques to Engage, Involve, and Inspire Your Audience to Action, by Kristin Arnold

I have recommended other presentation books in the past, so why do I recommend you study this one?  The main reason: the focus on interacting with and engaging your audience.  This is an essential skill for presenters and teachers today.  Presentations which change minds and lives must be engaging.

Kristin Arnold is a good writer, so you'll enjoy the reading time.

I particularly appreciate her comments about the mindset you need to cultivate in order to engage an audience. The book is written more for professional speakers and trainers, but you'll find most of it applies for small group presentations and teaching times.

If you want to be selective in reading this book, study the chapters on stories, use of humor, illustrationss, interacting with Q&A, and calling for decision/action.

Boring to Bravo delivers the promise implicit in the title. Get it. 

Vocal Projection!

Brian Croft has an excellent blog post on vocal projection for preachers.  This applies equally well to teaching the Bible in many settings.

If you want people to understand you -- that would be necessary to teach to change lives! -- then put his recommendations into practice.

Handouts -- Yes, No, How to Use?

Worship Before You Teach

Let me stress this to those of you who want to teach the Bible to change lives: worship before you teach.

It's true that our whole lives should be worshipful. (Equally true that they aren't.)

Before you begin teaching a class or leading a small group discussion about God's truth, create some time and space for personal worship. Consciously reconnect with God through praise and celebration! Listen to music, sing songs, pray aloud with hands raised high, whatever you can do, but get your whole mind and heart and body engaged in worship that pleases God.

Having worshipped the living God, your teaching can flow from that. And that's teaching that can change lives!

Ministering to People who have Mental Illness

Note from Glenn: This is another post by my friend Marda.  Great information!

Ministering to People who have Mental Illness

 

In this country, mental illness is more common than generally believed.  Many people suffer with various anxiety disorders and with depression, seasonal affective disorder and other mood disorders.  In the last few years the prevalence of diagnosed bipolar disorder (what used to be called manic-depressive illness) has increased.  In addition, there has been a movement to become more open about mental illness and to remove some of the stigma that has traditionally been linked with it.  Since society in general is becoming more aware of this population it seems reasonable to assume that at some point you will encounter someone with mental illness or at least someone who has close family or friends with mental illness, in church ministry.

 

Mental illness is, in many ways, an invisible disability since it is often under medical control or is episodic in nature, meaning that sometimes a person will manifest symptoms of the illness and sometimes will not.  Exacerbation of symptoms of a mental illness can be brought on by increased stress, need for medication changes and other factors.  In this series of articles, I will begin with general comments regarding all mental illness and then go into more specifics on how to deal with various conditions.

 

First, there are two major views of mental illness.  The most commonly practiced one is the medical model, which tends to use drugs as a means of relieving symptoms.  In the medical model, mental illness is thought of as a disease like a physical illness.  Psychiatrists are medical doctors who generally work within the medical model, working with the patient to find the correct medications to ameliorate the symptoms.  In some of these illnesses, such as schizophrenia, schizo-affective disorder and bipolar disorder, where there is clearly chemical imbalance in the brain, medications can be extremely helpful.  Sometimes medications will stop working or a new and better medication will come out and those things as well as other factors can necessitate a medication change.  In some instances, this needs to be done under medical supervision in a hospital, often in a psychiatric hospital or psychiatric unit of a general hospital.  In these days of shrinking insurance coverage, most such hospitalizations will only last a week or two at a time.  But if a person misses church and you know they have a mental illness, it is possible that they are being hospitalized.

 

The most important thing in dealing with hospitalization, taking of medication or other kinds of symptoms of mental illness is that the mental illness is not the person's fault.  It is not a simple matter of telling someone to pray more for healing of their illness and have more faith.  Telling a schizophrenic person to stop taking their medicine is the same as telling someone to stop taking their blood pressure medicine.  You man not notice immediate deterioration but the person is a time bomb waiting to go off and more than likely symptoms will return.

 

The second model says that mental illness or disorders are caused by other factors such as environment, personality, reaction to stress and so on.  The primary treatment modality of these people is psychotherapy, which is often referred to as "talk therapy" though there are many other kinds of therapies and alternative healing methods.  In cases of serious mental illness there is often a combination of therapies including medications as well as other treatment approaches. 

 

So what do you do when a person comes into your Bible study class in a clearly manic state or a schizophrenic psychotic episode?  Patience is paramount.  The person is not likely to just snap out of it.  What you can do is ask for compliance with general rules of courtesy and respect.  A quiet "Someone else is speaking now and in this class we don't interrupt".  Make your statements brief and concrete.  Do not challenge a person's fixed delusion.  It doesn't work and can only make the person more agitated.  If the person continues to be disruptive you might have a designated person to escort him or her from the room and talk to them individually.  Some churches train volunteers to do this kind of thing.  If they are caring and nonjudgmental, possible guilt and shame can often be avoided.

 

If the person says they are hearing voices that are telling them to kill themselves or someone else, there are several things you can do.  One is to have trained people who can take the person aside and deal with the issue.  Such a trained person will ask if they can talk back to the voices and tell them no, they're not going to kill or whatever the voices are demanding.  Ask if the voices are in the background or are so loud that they can not be ignored.  Generally, the person will say that the voices are distracting and sometimes loud but will often say that they can handle them.  If a person seems to be becoming violent and can't be calmed down and if that person appears to be a threat to him/herself or others, it is time to call either the person's psychiatrist, psychologist or social worker or call 911 and explain the nature of the emergency, where it is taking place and so on so that the appropriate personnel can be dispatched.  While waiting for help, it is best not to leave the person alone unless you think you are in immediate danger.

 

Most often this drastic action will not be called for as the person can often function in spite of psychotic symptoms.  Sometimes they will be confused and their communication will be unclear.  If words are coming out that don't make sense, a condition unofficially referred to as "word salad", it is best not to demand a clearer explanation.  Just say something like "thank you for that contribution" and move on and if the problem persists, say something like, "We're discussing something else now so it's time to listen" or "That's interesting.  We need to have another person talking now."

 

What other kinds of manifestations of a mental disorder can happen in a church setting?  Since anxiety disorders are so common, I will deal with them next.

 

One common anxiety disorder is panic disorder.  In this disorder, a person can have a panic attack, sometimes with no discernible cause.  Again, many anxiety disorders have a biochemical component that is not completely understood.  There is increased production of adrenaline which can cause increased heart rate or palpitations, hyperventilation, sweating, trembling, chest pains, gastrointestinal symptoms, fear of dying just to name a few.  Panic attacks can be frightening to the person having them and to those watching.  They usually peak within ten minutes or so but can sometimes last longer.  The best thing to do again is to have someone take the person to a quiet place and calmly reassure them that they are not dying, they are safe, the panic will subside and so on.  Then it is important to let the person know that you are not ashamed or condemning of them for having the panic attack.

 

Another increasingly seen anxiety disorder is posttraumatic stress disorder.  This diagnosis was first used when referring to symptoms shown by vets returning from battle who would relive combat experiences in flashbacks as well as being highly anxious or depressed and otherwise having difficulty coping with life.  The term was then expanded to include sufferers of all kinds of traumas, from car accidents, natural disasters and acts of terrorism  to prolonged and severe physical, sexual or emotional abuse.  Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has a wide variety of symptoms.  Most common are periods when the person is having difficulty in remaining in reality.  They may think they are in the original traumatic situations or they may be overcome with debilitating anxiety.  When someone is triggered into re-experiencing a trauma or aspects of it, they often need to be grounded, or reestablished in reality.  One way to do this is to have someone, either quietly in the room or in another room, have the sufferer take deep calming breaths, then try to have them describe the room, ask if they know who you are and so on.  Sometimes people use things like rubber bands on the wrist that they can snap or ice in the hand, to bring them back to the present.  Personally, I don't like either of those.  I prefer a reassuring voice telling me who they are and where I am.  If I am deeper into an episode, I might need something such as a smell to bring me back.  The main thing is to stay calm and patient.  These episodes are generally short but can be longer.  While you are with the person, ask them to look around the room and describe what's there, have them put their feet flat on the ground (thus the name "grounding") hold onto the chair, etc. and try to get a dialogue going in which you continue to remind them of where they are, what the date and year are, that whatever horrible thing they are experiencing is not happening now and so on.  Frequently, a person who has been living with PTSD for a long time will have developed their own coping skills and will be able to ground themselves.  Sometimes they will carry a "comfort bag" which will contain items with which the person can self-soothe.  So the extreme manifestations will not happen in every case.  Again, it is important to assure the person that you don't think any less of them, that you are there to help in any way you can, that God still loves them and that they are a worthwhile person.

 

After an episode, or before an episode happens if you know about the person's mental disorder, you can ask what you can do to help should symptoms occur.  Most people will know and be able to tell you.  Remember that you are dealing with another human being, not just a diagnosis.  They are not weak.  They are not malingering.  They are not seeking attention, for the most part.  They do need to know God's love because so often they have experienced little love in their lives.  Try not to fear them and their conditions.  They are children of God, part of his family like you.

Engraved

There are some verses and passages you go back to time and again.  Isaiah 49:16 is one of mine:

"See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands"


A few thoughts to encourage you:

God is speaking to his children of Israel, and by extension, we who have been grafted in and adopted as heirs.  Think of how sensitive your palms are, and how visible they are to you.  They're never more than an arm's length away!  "Engraved" suggests permanence and lasting effect.  This is not magic marker or ball-point pen scrawling to remind you of something ephemeral.  What is engraved?  Not a picture of story of my ancestors, but me.  What a precious statement from the God of the Universe!

"See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands"

First Day of 2012 -- May I Offend You?

Happy 2012, dear Bible teachers!

Let me start off the year and risk offending some of you.

Here's my challenge for you: leave the study Bibles and commentaries on your bookshelf.

Go for days and weeks without checking footnotes and commentaries -- simply and prayerfully invest yourself in the Word.

Get a simple Bible, without all the study notes.  Read it in depth, read it in breadth.  Pray as your read.  If you find this difficult, it's a sure sign you need to do this!!

I promise you that you'll learn much more, and be shaped more by God.  This pays HUGE dividends in your teaching ability (at least if you want to teach to change lives, not just entertain people).

Let me be clear, ok?  I'm not opposed to study Bibles and commentaries.  Great Bible teachers use them, but use them as reference tools, not as primary sources.  (See my recommended list of Bible study tools.) We have only one primary source: the Word of God itself.

Go ahead, take me up on this challenge.  And let me know how it works for you.

How to Teach the Bible with Confidence

Great conversation with D. A. Carson, Tim Keller, and John Piper talking about teaching the Bible confidently.  Worth watching!

How to Read the Whole Bible in 30 Days

Teach the Whole Bible?

I received an interesting question recently by email: "Mr. Glenn do you teach the whole bible? I was always taught  that I should live what I wanted to teach first, is that a factor in teach to change lives?"

Here was my response:

Thanks for your question!

A few things I think we can agree on:
1. The whole Bible is the Word of God, and is for us individually and the Church
2. God can speak through even a verse or one story to transform a person
3. It's part of discipleship to study the whole Bible over a period of years
4. Teachers teach more effectively out of personal understanding and experience

Are teachers limited to teaching only what they've lived or personally
experienced?  I don't think so.  I've never been to Israel, but use
mapbooks and commentary descriptions to help my students understand
the geography and history of the land and peoples who lived there.  I
myself don't struggle with every sin, but struggle with some and can
speak to the transforming power of Christ's love to overcome any sin.

I believe that God puts some things on our hearts because He does want
us to teach those. That can certainly be a factor in your decision
about what to teach.  My counsel is to prayerfully ask, "Lord, what
does this class need to learn from You and Your Word?"  That's better
than settling first for what I prefer to teach.

Hope this helps.

Teach to change lives,

Glenn

One Secret to Teaching The Same Material Repeatedly

I recently watched a vendor give a presentation, and was very impressed with his delivery style and energy.  It was clear that he’d given this presentation many times, but it seemed fresh.  Afterwards I asked him how he was able to present the same information over and over again.  “It’s not about the material,” he said.  “I focus on the fact that I have a new audience.” 

If you’re teaching something that you’ve taught before – even many times – there’s a tremendous insight there for you: focus on the new group of people.  

Merry Christmas!

The 3650 Challenge -- Not Your Ordinary "Read the Bible in a Year" plan

I commend this challenge to you -- a wonderful opportunity to step up your Bible reading!   From Tim Challies:

"...read or listen to 3,650 chapters of the Bible in 2012. .... I plan to use Professor Horner’s Bible Reading System to read the Bible. This system calls for 10 chapters per day, with each chapter being drawn from a different part of the Bible. This means that over the course of 2012 anyone who uses the plan will go through all the Gospels four times, the Pentateuch twice, Paul’s letters 4-5 times each, the Old Testament wisdom literature six times, all the Psalms at least twice, all the Proverbs as well as Acts a dozen times, and all the way through the Old Testament History and Prophetic books about 1.5 times."

Go for it!

Do You Have a Folder Like This?

Need a short devotional?  Kevin DeYoung's commentary on the name of Jesus would fit the bill nicely!  Great content, easily adaptable to different settings.  

Don't need it right now?  Print off a copy and file it in a folder named something like "Source Ideas for Devotionals"  A few minutes work can put you on a path to having a rich library of ideas.

Add This To Your Library: Better Beginnings

This is a terrific book that I recommend you add to your library: Better Beginnings.  

One of the four best ways to improve your Bible teaching is to strengthen your opening, the hook.  I've been studying presentation techniques and strategies for several years now and have never found anything better than this book on the opening.  

This book is focused exclusively on better beginnings to speeches and presentations.  Intense, practical, imaginative.  I read through it quickly once, then turned right around to read it more slowly the next time.  I liked it so much I scheduled it for a third read later this month when I have some time off from work.  

Though the author is writing to all kinds of presenters, not just "church" people or "religious" settings, nearly everything here will apply whether you're giving sermons, teaching in formal settings, or in a small group study.  

There are only two negatives I want to point out.  First, it's not a cheap paperback.  It's an extremely high-quality hardback, thick paper, gorgeous photos and graphics.  Second, it's hard to find.  As I write this, it's not available on Amazon.  But if you can get your hands on a copy, get it!  

Be Bold!

Here's my challenge for you today:

Be bold in your teaching!

You are teaching from the authoritative Word of the Lord of the Universe (and more).  When you read Scripture you read God-breathed truth, not fanciful stories and collected opinions of idiots.  Re-set your confidence in Christ, and teach boldly, forcefully, passionately!  Let your choice of words, your tone and inflection, your body language accurately reflect the amazing Bible and our beautiful Lord Jesus Christ!

No more mealy-mouthed mumblings that go nowhere.  Speak directly into their eyes and hearts, dear teacher.

How to Structure A Bible Lesson

Some Practical Advice About Eating Before You Teach

Food and drink are fuel for your body, so be mindful about what you eat in the time leading up to your teaching.  We want to be as sharp as possible mentally, and physiologically, so we can give this our best!  

Here are some my recommendations and guidelines. 

• Drink clear liquids.  Drink plenty of water to be hydrated. Stay clear of milk in the hour before you teach; milk leaves your throat feeling "coated" and does affect your speaking voice.  
• Eat in moderation.  Too much, you'll feel lethargic.  (It takes a lot of energy to digest food.)  Too little, you might be hungry enough to be distracted.  And stomach growls while you're teaching are pretty embarrassing!
• Watch out for the blood sugar "crash" -- this is particularly a problem for people with normally low blood sugar levels like me.  You eat something sugary, or high in carbs before you teach, like that tempting muffin snack Mrs. Smith brought to church.  Yum!  But in about 35-45 minutes, your blood sugar drops down again, and oh my.  If that "crash" happens before you're done teaching, you just made it more difficult to end well.
• Understand how caffeine affects you.  Most teachers are little nervous teaching.  For many people, caffeine can make that nervousness worse.  If you are used to caffeine, but concerned about it, try consuming half of what you usually do.  
• Test out warm and cold liquids to see how they affect your speaking voice.  There's a lot of variation in how people respond.  Understand your situation and you'll know what to avoid.
• Try to avoid eating something you've never eaten before in the 24 hours leading up to your teaching time.  This is particularly important if you're traveling.  The majority of food-related "blah" and "yuck" problems are with unfamiliar foods.  

These are my recommendations.  Pay attention to what works for you.

Keep on teaching to change lives!

Did Jesus Have Bad PR?

Back in 2006 I gave a Christmas devotion for the seniors group at our church. I tried to help people think about the terrible public relations job around the birth of the Messiah. From a human perspective, this was a PR disaster! Listen to it here: http://www.teachtochangelives.com/christmasdevotion.htm