A couple of years ago I was teaching through a series that I developed in order to help our people understand their role in the world as children of God. I remember being very excited about the series before we started, but after about two messages, I was completely bored. Hey, that is not a good sign when you, AS THE TEACHER, are already bored! What must the people in your group be thinking??? After the second message, I stopped for a minute and thought about where I was going wrong…I realized that the problem was not with the material or the truth of the INFORMATION that I was sharing. The problem was with the fact that my presentation was more concerned with INFORMATION than it was with TRANSFORMATION. I was simply telling people WHAT God said about this or that, without taking the time to argue for WHY this truth from God was actually true. I started to think about the role that an attorney plays in the courtroom. Hey I’ve been in enough of these to have learned something from the process, and I do believe that the experience is VERY transferable to what we, as teachers, do in front of our congregations.
See, in a trial, you get to chances to address the jury directly. The first opportunity is called the ‘opening statement’. Here, we get to simply tell the Jury what we are going to present to them over the next few days or weeks. We are not allowed to insert our own opinion or argument into this portion of the case. We are only allowed to forecast the witnesses and the evidence that we are about to present. It is a rather straightforward presentation of what our INFORMATION is going to be. But after all the witnesses and evidence is presented, we get another chance to talk to the jury. This is called the ‘closing argument’! It’s here that we get to make a case for what all this information actually proves. Here we get to make an argument, make a case, in hopes that the jury will be better able to see the truth, maybe even to change their mind about what they believe. Here, in the closing argument, we hope are interested not only in INFORMATION, but also TRANSFORMATION.
Now that is what my problem was with the series I had developed. Sure I was accurately presenting God’s word to my people. But there are always skeptics, even in a crowd of believers. And for those who are NOT skeptical, they too have people in their lives who are critical of the Christian worldview. That’s why it is so important to not only dispense truth, but provide an argument, an apologetic, for everything that we talk about. This way, the skeptic has the opportunity to rationally reconsider, and the believer has a tool with which to reach a skeptical friend. No more opening statements. Let’s all aim for closing arguments…
Jim
Please visit us at www.PleaseConvinceMe.com
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