Teaching needs even more preparation than preaching. However, unless noted, the things that I will share here are equally applicable and important for both.
1. PrepareIt is important that you first need to have a conviction from God, in your heart, about the Word you must share. Most of the times God will just drop a word or sentence in your spirit about something, or you may actually know that the message you are to speak needs you to be inclined towards a certain topic or area. Either way you will usually need to prepare than just give confused talk in the name of God’s guidance. Food that is prepared through recipes and right channels is good. Food not well prepared may cause constipation and many other gastric disorders. Likewise a good word but unprepared may cause problems for both speaker and hearers. This does not mean you do not sometimes give impromptu speeches or simply prophetic messages which flow from your heart. It does not mean also that a prepared message is not prophetic.
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| 3 Principles Of Teaching Exceptionally Well |
Take the Biblical text you want to preach on, or topic through the scripture and find what other Biblical texts say about it. Read and reread the Biblical text until it becomes a part of you. It may also be very important for you to meditate upon it. If it is a scripture it may be important to know about the author, reasons of the book, the cultural and contemporary milieu of the time of writing, the original audience and effects of the message to them, and related issues. It is also important to know the background of the particular text, for example by reading the preceeding and successive chapters and compare Bible versions. This will give you a clear understanding of the text or topic. When you are teaching it would be of importance to go on to look at other extra-Biblical or the technical sources like Bible and language dictionaries, commentaries, concordances, lexicons, history books, maps, newspapers, magazines, journals, written sermons and the like. I also highly recommend speakers to have books which talk about the cultures of different people with special emphasis on the Bible people. Having a visit to the land of the Bible is also good. However you should keep a proper balance of the Biblical and the technical. Our message is from the God via the Bible and not from the technical sources. We are primarily spiritual communicators. Technical sources are used to simply support the Word of God.
3. Contextualise
After going through this you will, then, need to contextualise the information. Ask yourself what the text and interpretations mean to you? Personalise the message before you can bombard us with it! It must first affect you, since you are not just a preacher or teacher but a Christian. It does not help to just give us historical facts of the Bible without telling us how that applies to us in the 21st century. Church is the House of God not a history class! The information is not to make congregants know that you are learned but to help them better understand the message.
Your message must be properly put in an organised system and must be delivered as such, in introduction, body and conclusion.
By Apostle Pride Sibiya
