Off the Agenda: Conversations for Building Church Leaders

Several months ago, BCL’s Rachel Willoughby interviewed Nancy Ortberg for a download on BuildingChurchLeaders.com. Nancy had some fantastic things to say about how to lead and teach well. Below is a brief excerpt of Rachel’s favorite section of the interview. To access the full interview and other insightful articles on the theme of teaching adults, click here.

Rachel: As you prepare to speak, how do you plan to engage the audience?

Nancy: You have to think provocatively while you're preparing the message so that you are prepared to use stories or something from your research to put a new slant on a familiar idea. When you're speaking to people who have been following Christ or have been in church a long time, familiarity with a passage is sometimes your worst enemy. People assume that they know what a passage says and how to live it out.

Scot McKnight writes that people change in two circumstances: when they're on a quest or when they're in a crisis. Now, I can’t send people on a quest, but I can create a crisis. Part of my job as a communicator, then, is to create a rhetorical crisis in the lives of the listeners. The stories I tell, the questions I ask, and the tension I set up should cause some cognitive dissonance in people's minds, so that they walk away thinking about the message.

What about you? When you prepare to speak, how do you go about setting up a “rhetorical crisis?” As you listen to others teach, what moves you most?