A Simple Change to Be Less Boring When You Teach The Bible

Training In Paragraphs (TIPs) 68

To any of you who really look forward to my weekly emails, I’m sorry I’ve missed the last couple weeks.

Life and ministry have been especially full, and substack is a much lower priority for me than my family and my local ministry. Hopefully you resonate with that.

Thanks for hanging with me. Here’s my preaching tip for this week…

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One of the worst things we can do when we teach the Bible is bore our people, and we’re probably all doing this more than we think. And while there are countless strategies for keeping your teaching engaging, many of them require skills that takes years to develop. We can’t just decide to start telling compelling stories, thinking up powerful object lessons, or being funny, but not too funny. I hope to grow in these areas, but I think there are more readily available ways to avoid boredom in our listeners. For today, I’ll mention one: changing your tone of voice.

It can be easy, especially for less comfortable teachers, to speak in the same tone for 20, 30, 40 minutes straight. This can be difficult to listen to, but it’s also easy to change. In everyday life, most of us speak in a variety of tones depending on the situation or type of conversation. (This is why one tone for half an hour bores us—it doesn’t sound natural). My encouragement is to find ways to use that variety in a single message.

This isn’t just about changing volume, it’s about sounding different. It’s about re-arresting people’s attention when they perceive you’re switching to a different type of talking. Hearing a change in tone snaps us back in if we’ve drifted away.

The most common example I can give from my own teaching is that I tend to do this when I switch from my natural teaching voice into a very casual tone, as if I’m talking with a friend in my living room. I think this works to retain attention because when there are hundreds of people in the room and you’re on a platform with a mic, a casual tone is surprising.

But here’s the catch, this only works sparingly. If I spoke casual the whole time, that wouldn’t fit my church context, and it would be boring. The point isn’t what your natural tone sounds like, it’s that you’re to be able to switch. So before you listen to another podcast or ask AI for engaging illustrations, maybe try bringing more of you into your next sermon.

People often talk about “finding your voice” in preaching. This usually refers to your style, or way. But I’d also submit that in the literal sense, you have not just one voice, but a few voices that each sound like you, but sound distinct from each other. When you can find ways to use all your voices in your teaching, you’ll keep people engaged with all you’re saying.

As always, I’m still learning and growing in this area. If you have thoughts, share them with us. I’d love to hear.