Speaking to Teenagers

The subtitle of this book is: How to think about, create & deliver effective messages. From this, I thought this book had a lot of promise, that it would show you the in's and out of preparing a talk and giving a talk. Kinda like David Cooks preaching pyramid with some oratory skills in delivery. This book does seek to do this, but it dealt with lots of extra things, which in my mind may have lost its main focus and put too much burden on the speaker.

Thinking

Section 1 is on how to think about talks. The main communication framework this book uses is the classical model put forward by Plato on the Ethos, Pathos and Logos of the speaker. The speaker must be trustworthy and come across confident in what they are speaking on (ethos), the speaker needs to show that they actually believe what they are talking about and show this with their emotion (pathos) and the talk must have a logical dimension (logos). This was ok, kinda a traditional secular model of speaking. The book then went into detail about how you can go about bridging the gap in communication from the speaker to the audience. This involved knowing the audience, overcoming your fear of public speaking, working out what your body language is saying, ways to open up the audience and working out if you are trying to persuade for conversion or for a stronger connection with God and His word. In almost every chapter there was some sort of framework like this one having to do with premises that shape communication:

1. Tap into their needs and you can talk into their hearts
2. Speak to the big questions and you'll speak to their souls. Ask "Am I loveable?" (community), "Who am I?" (character), "Why am I here?" (calling), "Is there really a God" (communion)
3. Speak to the whole life and teenagers are more likely to listen
4. Take their commitments seriously if you want them to take commitment seriously
5. They're not just hearing your message; They're creating your message

There was even a whole chapter on how to find articles and file them away. One of the authors uses paper and a filing cabinet and has a volunteer take those clippings and stores articles under certain headings he makes up for each article. This book was written in 2007, I'm sure EverNote and OneNote existed then. This wealth of articles are to help with giving examples and facts and stories in your talk.

Creating

Moving to Section 2 of what I thought would be the guts of the book on how to create your talk. They used a method called S.T.I.C.K which stands for Study, Think, Illustrate, Construct and Keep Focused. I think I was drastically let down in the Study chapter, so the rest of this section and the whole book in my view was tainted. 

Their only involvement with the Bible was in the Study phase taking up about 11 pages. Three pages were on how to pick a passage and the difference between a topical talk and a textual talk, four pages were on commentaries and using other sources for insight, one was on prayer and one page was on reading and re-reading the actual passage. In another section, they use twice as many pages talking about using personal and cultural stories in talks than understanding the text in front of you. That worried me in where the emphasis of their talks may land.

The example they used was 2 Kings 2:23-24 as I guess it's a funny story for Youth group, with Elisha calling on bears to maul some teenage boys. Their use of the passage was to moralise it and say it is about anger. This showed a severe lack of Biblical theology - not seeing the passage in the Biblical storyline. Not pointing out that Elisha was a prophet of God and the teenage boys are taunting this prophet and what judgement they get for not listening to the words of God. You could even draw a longbow and look at the ultimate prophet and see what taunts He bore and who got the judgement of death even though they were the Word of God. While reading and re-reading the passage is a good start, what they miss in picking and choosing passages is the whole Biblical storyline, and so the model they presented using the Bible to preach morals and not the Gospel.

When constructing a talk they rave on an inductive way to communicate your message. That is, you want to lead them along a journey and land on the point, rather than being forthright and saying this is the point and then explaining how we got there. I'm not against this method, but the framework they raved about they took from Andy Stanley using the flow of Me -> We -> God -> You -> We. You move from engaging their personal dilemma, assure them they are not alone in this issue, then see what God says about this problem and then move to a challenge of what you are going to do about it and resolve with what could happen if we all did this. My main issue is that seems like a very person-centred way to preach, and I get that we are communicating to people so people need to hear and engage and be challenged, I kinda felt that people were shaping the talk and not the passage and what God says.

Delivering and conclusion

In the last section, it was all about delivering the talk. By this point, I started to see that this book was really pragmatic and it really started to worry me. There were about 6 pages on room design and seating layout, pages on body language, use of facial expression and hand gestures, 2 pages on the pro and cons of using a wireless mic or not, a few more pages on using notes or dot points, etc... none of this was unhelpful, in fact, I often give some pragmatic advice to our youth leaders. This term i told a leader maybe next time don't print your talk on double-sided paper and staple it, as turning a page while holding a mic is awkward. It was just by the time I got to the end of this book I thought the emphasis was a little off and placed a huge burden on the speaker. 

If getting a life-saving message across to teenagers is all up to the speaker I can see why people might be stressed out about the lighting and the powerpoints, about room temperature and the seating arrangements. You will want all the tips you possibly can get, for it is a matter of life and death. In the parable of the four soils, it seems like much more than just eye contact and using a mic on a stand is going on... However, I felt the Holy Spirit was greatly ignored in this book and His work, which was ironic as these guys come from a more charismatic stream than I do, but I felt like I put a lot more in the Spirit work than they do. I don't mind if a youth leader has to stop and turn a page, or if the chairs aren't laid out in the most effective communication layout. I trust that the Spirit will do His work in that situation, as long as His word is used correctly, ie it is understood by the leader and communicated clearly.

If you wanted a better book on communication strategies I would sugged Preaching as the Word of God by Sam Chan. It is harder to read than this, but instead of leaning heavily on Plato on the Ethos, Pathos and Logos in communication, it leans on Speach Act theory and clearly places the responsibility of the speaker (the perlocutionary act) in the domain of the Spirit.

A better book on preaching with a model on how to think about and craft a sermon would be Expositional Preaching by David R. Helm. Biblical Theology by Nick Roark, Robert Cline in the same series also wouldn't go amiss.

I have another book on my "to read" pile also on giving talks to teens. I hope it is going to be better than this one...