Proclaimer Blog
To fly to serve part 2
You may already think I am making too much of my extended metaphor – in which case, take a week off from the blog and come back next Monday. But I have found that when we are training men and women to be Bible teachers – in limited amounts of time – it can help them have a simple illustration which works at many levels, a parable if you like. Yesterday we saw how the pilot needs to be clear on the destination. Today:
Step 2:Take off. How you start really counts. Imagine your transatlantic flight on the runway. Probably some passengers are nervously excited, anticipating the journey. Others want it to be over already. Others still are dreading what might happen. The take-off is key. Your job is to get the plane in the air so that the long, demanding work of being gripped by the text can start.
So, you need to build up speed quickly. Many Bible speakers make this mistake. They spend so long in the take-off that the plane never gets anywhere. Dick used to call this waggling on the tee before he embraced my plane metaphor (only joking!!). And the take-off needs to be appropriate – it gets you going in the right direction. Your listeners don’t want a funny story that has nothing to do with the text. The careful pilot accelerates quickly down the runway and then climbs quickly to his cruising altitude and direction. He avoids abrupt turns. Sure, if he climbs too quickly he’ll stall and crash. But too slow and he may not clear the trees.
Those who teach others need to begin well. What this looks like will vary according to audience, but most of us cannot get away with the John Owen approach, “As I was saying last week….” The start needs to relate to the whole in terms of direction. It must not overwhelm the whole – there is a long journey ahead. And the start is only the start: don’t make it more than it is – necessary to get the plane in the air, but it is not the journey itself.