Bible-Teaching Strategies from Women Leaders

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Rebecca McLaughlin
I have a disclaimer before I speak, which that almost nothing that I’m about to say is from the Bible. So you can feel free to completely ignore it. Except maybe for the moment when I quote Psalm 23. But we won’t worry about that. Everything Jen said almost everything Jen said, I mean, in the best possible way. Almost everything John said was from the Bible. So I’m glad you had your best fresh ears for her. For me, as I say, you know, take it or leave it, as you wish. But I’ve been asked to give a talk about how to give a talk that really kind of sticks in people’s minds. So if I, if I give a really boring, bad talk, so you don’t remember anything of it’s actually quite embarrassing. So we just won’t talk about it afterwards. Right? That can be the deal between you and me. I want to know your story to begin with of time, a few years ago, when the Lord did something, which at the time felt quite unkind to me. So I have recently had my third child. And I recently published my first book, and I was going to speak at a conference in England where I’m from, I was quite nervous about this conference, because in America, people think I’m intelligent, because I sound English. In England, I don’t have that kind of accent boost. And what’s worse, I was actually going to a part of England in the north of England, where my accent makes me sound like a kind of posh idiot. So I’m walking into the space. And I know that I’m going to give talks on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, this conference, my first talks on science and faith. My best friend in England, who’s not a Christian, have very kindly come with me to the conference. And that first morning, you know, we had breakfast together a little hotel. And then I said, I’m just gonna go up to our room to practice my talk. And I went upstairs, and there I am. And I’m thinking, you know, I’m going to not look at my notes for about, I’m just going to sort of see if I can get my introduction kind of flowing in my head prior to giving this talk. And as I’m starting my pacing around my little hotel room, starting to think about my talk, there’s a phone call on the hotel room phone, and I pick it up, and it’s the conference organizers saying, Where are you? And I realized in that moment that whereas I thought I was speaking at 10:30am, they thought I was speaking at 9:30am. And I’m at a hotel, that’s like, a good half mile away from the conference center. I have not yet been to the concert, I didn’t even know where it is. Okay. So I have to run out of that room. I text my friend just saying it’s now time for I literally run out of the room. I didn’t have time to find my notes. I’m running down the street, I’m asking people, where is the conference center, this little northern village in England, you know, where’s the Conference Center, and I get there and five minutes, you know, maybe closer to 10. But like somewhere embarrassingly late, I’m jumping up onto the stage and have to go 45 minutes will come science and faith. Did I mention the part about without my notes, it’s horrifying. What I discovered was the I forgot all the parts of my talk that were quite forgettable. And I remembered, you know, my opening illustration, I remember the four main points I was going to make, remember the conclusion. And somehow by the Lord’s grace and mercy, I got through those 45 minutes. And I texted my best friend who is a Christian in America, and I said, this terrible thing just happened to me, I was like, thrown up onto the stage by the Lord to give a talk without my notes. And she said, Oh, I randomly woke up in the middle of the night. At the time in England, when you were given that talk with a strong sense that I needed to pray for you. It was like, pray for Rebecca. She prayed for me. And she went back to sleep. And I thought, Okay, Lord, I’m getting little, little message here, that maybe this is something that I need to get more comfortable doing. The reason I tell you that story, is number one, because I want you to know that in the hard times, as well as in the happy times, anytime you’re trying to minister, God’s Word, the Lord is with you. Even if it feels kind of unkind at the moment, even if you’re sort of he’s with you in ways that you wish you almost wish he wasn’t with you. And also to encourage you towards the first point that I’m going to make in this little talk here, which has to take risks. And I’m going to break all the rules of Christian speaking by saying telling you I have five points, not three, not four, but five, are you ready. And the first one is take risks. Second is plant flags. Third is make metaphors. Fourth is tell stories. And fifth is create contrasts. But there are going to be very quick because I’m told I need to finish in about 15 minutes. I usually have a countdown clock so I can be sure I’m entering at the right time. And today I just have a clock so I have to be intelligent enough to figure out what the time is. So if I’m still talking and people are like falling off their chairs and dying on the ground, like when Paul was preaching for overly long then just you know somebody dragged me off the stage it’d be better for all of us. So number one, take risks. When I stand in front of an audience, and when you stand in front of my audience, anytime you have the opportunity to do that, it can be too tempting to think that unless we are really boring, everybody’s probably listening to us. It’s a little bit like I don’t know if you can imagine a kind of spotty, nerdy 13 year old boy, who’s desperately in love with a beautiful gardener’s class. Like everything she does fascinates him the way she flips her hair, the way she reads a book, the way she chats with our friends. When we’re speaking to an audience, we tend to think that they’re kind of absolutely tuned into what we’re doing. In actual fact, we are like that spotty, nerdy 13 year old boy who is desperately trying to get the audience’s attention. Otherwise, they are, in fact, not listening to us at all. They’re thinking about their dog or their boyfriend or their lunch, or whatever it is, they’re not thinking about us. It’s a bit like, you know, when films when somebody is slowly bleeding out, and their friend is with them going, stay with me, stay with me, stay with me like this. If you don’t do that one way and another to your audience, they are not staying with you. And I’m going to prove it to you now. My guess is in this room, we have a room full of quite attentive sermon listeners, right? I’m guessing as well, we have a roomful of people who go to churches, where the preaching is actually pretty good. I guarantee that on Sunday morning, at some point you are thinking about your lunch, or your boyfriend or your grandchild, or whatever it is, or not, in fact, what the pastor was saying, Am I right? Your mind was wandering off someplace. And if you’re not fighting for your audience’s attention at all times, that is exactly what is happening. And however, brilliant and word soaked and wonderful. What you’re saying is, if they’re not listening to you, you might as well be reading the telephone book. So we’ve got to take risks, to make our audience actually listen to us. Now, why does taking risks help with that? I don’t know about you. But I love the Winter Olympics. I find it so much more fun than the Summer Olympics. Because in the summer, the question is, who is going to run the fastest? In the winter? The question is, who’s going to crash off the course completely? Or try one of those, like spins that they do on the ice skating and like for smack on their backs? Yeah, we’re watching because there is risk that something bad is going to happen. And as you watch me now you’re thinking, Oh, dear, something bad might happen. She might completely forget what our next point is. Yeah. So you’re sort of watching with that slightly kind of maybe I maybe you would enjoy if I fell flat on my back sort of sort of feeling. But you’re watching, because I am taking a risk with you. I am also worried that I’m not going to remember what my second point is. So you guys might have to help me with that. Now, speaking without any notes, is not the only way to take a risk with an audience. So reflecting earlier, when the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King gave us incredible, I Have a Dream speech, he had his notes right there. For Good lord knows he was taking huge risks as he stood there in front of that audience and said those things. So I’m not saying this is the only way to take a risk. But it is certainly one way to take a risk and to force ourselves to connect with our audience. Because in my experience, almost nobody wants to be lectured to. And almost everybody wants to talk. So in the various ways that we stand up in front of an audience and think I’m talking to a sort of faceless mass, and going to either kind of lecture them or or hide behind something, so that I don’t have to be confronted with them. We’re actually missing the opportunity to connect with the individual people in the room. And it’s in that connection that people actually learn. So number one, I would encourage you to take risks as you seek to communicate. Number two, is to plant flags. Now again, going back to that Winter Olympics, you know that I never quite know what it’s called. But when they’re skiing downhill, and after that sort of sideways, sideways sideways thing in between those flags, what’s that called? Slalom? Oh, that’s a cool word slalom. I use that again. The gentleman, the ladies who do the slalom as it’s called, they have to go down the course as quickly as possible by hitting each of those flags, right. And the flags are kind of slender little things with a bright red, you know, stunned little pointy thing with a bright red flag. On the top. I have all the technical language at my fingertips as you can tell. And as I think about preparing a talk, I tend to think in terms of what flags am I going to plant that will chart my course down this little mountain. And that will help not only me, but also you to remember what I said. Now, thinking about those those faces, I say they’re quite slender. When the ladies and gentlemen bump into them. They sort of Swizzle to the side. It’s also very technical term, swizzling and slalom

And in my experience, if somebody’s talk points are, you know, number one, Jesus is the sacrificial king who came to save all the world by His death on the cross for us. So wonderful thing to say. But if that’s point one, nobody’s going to remember it, let alone points two and point three, you need something that’s actually quite boiled down and sticky for them to remember what it is that you said. So I would work really hard on what your flags are. And here’s the beauty of planting those flags. So I said, not only did they help you to remember what I said, they also helped me to remember what I’m going to say. So when I was flying up onto that stage in the north of England, I at least knew what my four main points were. And so I could organize my turret material around them. And when I came to moments, and this has happened to me multiple times, in all the times that I’ve been speaking in front of a audience without notes, when I genuinely have forgotten what comes next. I take a pause, which for me feels like an eternity. And for the audience feels like a sort of, you know, pregnant dramatic pause. And then if I can’t think what comes next, I just say that point again. Plant flags. And it serves as Repetition Repetition, by the way, is another really useful way of getting information into other people’s minds where we’re all actually going to remember it. redundancy is your enemy in speaking and writing repetition is your friend. Think back to Martin Luther King’s I Have a Dream speech. He said, I have a dream. So many times I forget. It’s like 15 times, but it was like more than 10 times. He also said Let freedom ring multiple times in the course of that speech. Repetition is a way that we can be also planting those flags in people’s minds. So if I stand up there, and I think I couldn’t remember what comes next. I set the point again. And usually the next thing comes if it doesn’t, I just move on to the next point. And nobody has any the wiser, except that now I’ve told you, you’ll know that when that happens later on this afternoon, you’ll know oh, gosh, she just forgot what she was gonna say next. So number one, take risks. Number two plant flags. Number three, and here’s where we get closer to the Scriptures. So Jen will be proud of me. Make metaphors. What is the most memorable Psalm? Thank you, somebody Psalm 23. I know that was the answer all of you really had not the one that you’ve sat down to memorize. But the one that most people will think, oh, yeah, The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want. That Psalms start with a metaphor. The Lord is the shepherd, David, and we as God’s people as his sheep. And David works through the psalm, sprinkling that metaphor along the way, He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, He restores my soul, his rod and his staff, they comfort me, we see that initial metaphor, unpacked in various different ways, throughout David’s short Psalm. And that is something that’s sort of known in the speaking trade as a central explanatory metaphor. It’s a metaphor that you you introduce early on in the talk, you come back to it multiple times in the talk, and maybe even end with no, not necessarily, but it’s something that gives people kind of central sense of where you’re going, and what you’re saying. And metaphors are a really powerful way for us to invite the audience to connect with what we’re saying, both intellectually and emotionally. Jesus use metaphors more than almost anybody else, if you think about it. Often with this famous, I am saying, I am the good shepherd, I am the light of the world. I’m the true vine. And when we make metaphors, we invite the audience to to remember what we’re saying, and often actually, to be moved by what we’re saying. And here’s the good news with metaphors. A bad metaphor, is better than no metaphor at all. Now, let me qualify that slightly when I say about no one that is actively misleading. But whereas there is a platonic ideal of the metaphor that is very kind of emotionally evocative and powerful, and, you know, absolutely unforgettable in every possible way. Most of us when we’re sitting down to write a talk, or even to lead a lead or Bible study, and we’re sort of trying to think of a good metaphor to illustrate what we’re saying, we may not instantly have those Shakespeare moments. We may just come up with a kind of mediocre metaphor, and that’s okay. I’ve sometimes when I’ve talked about how to give a talk, use the example of going to the grocery store and getting all this delicious food and then not having any bags to take it home in. And if you prepare a talk that is filled with biblical riches, but you do Don’t have any metaphors or stories or sort of memorable ways for your audience to pick it up and take it home with them. They’re just having to leave all that delicious produce at the store. So you want to make metaphors, even if they are as unromantic as a plastic shopping bag, which by the way, is a metaphor, I just use kind of a lame metaphor, but I’m guessing that you remember it because it’s sort of weird and lame. So let’s see if we can get the points. You’re gonna help me with this. Number one, take risks. Number two, number three. Number four, tell stories. We’re gonna spend a ton of time on this because it’s something that’s obvious in Jesus’s ministry. I was chatting earlier with some folks over lunch. And we were reflecting on the fact that some false teachers in our society today do a really good job of telling stories. There’s some Harris’s and really unhelpful ways of thinking, have been packaged in great stories. And you know, whether it’s a story of somebody’s life, or just that they’re wonderful storytellers. And so it can make those of us who were deeply invested in God’s word feel kind of reticent to use stories. But actually, let’s not do that. Because who told the most wonderful stories? Jesus, right. So we should absolutely be telling stories. And leave that there. The last one, I hope did we get did we get to? Was that four. Excellent, fantastic. So the last one, number five is create contrast. I don’t like roller coasters at all. But I do love my 11 year old daughter. And this last summer, we were at amusement park that had this big roller coaster and she needed somebody to go with her. And I said that I would. And the thing with roller coasters is they generally really fast, right? The velocity you in, on average is very quick. But it’s not just helter skelter all the time, you have this sort of slow up to the top. And then you have that terrifying moment at the top where you’re like, ah, shivering and shaking, and then it’s down and up and round and all about Yeah. When you’re giving a talk, there’s an extent to which you want to be taking people on a rollercoaster ride, because remember, remember this you got to keep them with you. And if you create the contrast between when you’re speaking quickly, and when you’re speaking slowly and when you stop, maybe because you’ve gone what you’re gonna say and maybe not, they just don’t know. It will give them that that roller coaster experience, you will create the contrast. You can also create contrast in in the ways that you that you form sentences. Famously, when Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon, he said, One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, creating a sentence will paracentesis that had a contrast of ideas between the first and the second, we can sculpt individual sentences that give us that sense of contrast and really borrow into people’s minds. So we need to create contrast, both in how fast we speak, how loud we’re speaking, how quietly we’re speaking and drawing them in. And the rate at which we’re speaking, all of these can give them the roller coaster experience that keeps them with us. And lastly, it’s really helpful if you’re giving a talk to return to your opening at the end of this sort of sense of completion. So I’m going to finish off oh, wait a minute, I already Oh, this is embarrassing. Okay, I was going to finish off the first story by telling you about my friend waking in the night to pray for me. And I chose to do that rather than to tell you the really embarrassing thing that was also true that day, but because I squandered that conclusion I’m gonna have to study the embarrassing one. As I mentioned, I had recently had my third child and those of you who have multiple children may know that it will be sometime after having multiple children running is not to be advised. If you if you want to keep your trousers extremely dry so I literally had to make the decision in that moment as I was running out of the hotel room. Do I walk and revive 15 minutes late or do I run and arrive till five to 10 minutes late but with the risk of things having happened so my last piece of advice is wear black or at least dark blue trousers so that when everything goes horribly wrong, you’re at least not completely humiliating yourself. Thank you

Elizabeth Woodson
so I’m gonna start with a fun question. When y’all were children What did you want to be when you grew up and don’t say Bible teacher because

Jen Wilkin
important loved

Melissa Kruger
I wanted to be an eye doctor.

Rebecca McLaughlin
Pediatrician to be clear,

Melissa Kruger
doctor because he changed my life. I thought the trees were just blobs and when I went and he gave me glasses, and I was like, oh, so one way to do that for other people. As

Courtney Doctor
a horse trainer, I was trainer.

Jen Wilkin
I also went through a major horse girl phase where my horse course girls at.

Elizabeth Woodson
Okay?

Jen Wilkin
Yeah, I did want that too. Okay,

Elizabeth Woodson
I didn’t have that face.

Rebecca McLaughlin
She’s not judging you.

Jen Wilkin
I didn’t feel that at all. Yeah, it’s

Elizabeth Woodson
not too late. That’s according to me. It’s not too late. Thank you. Thank you. I wanted to be a businesswoman. I dressed up as a businesswoman for Yeah, yeah, that briefcase and all that.

Jen Wilkin
I want it to be. Yeah.

Elizabeth Woodson
All right. Serious question. How did you come into this space of teaching the Bible? Did you go to seminary? Did you just come up in the local church, kind of what is everyone’s journey to the place that you are now?

Courtney Doctor
I was late 20s, early 30s. I had known the Lord for less than 10 years. And a pastor in the church where we were invited me to co teach a class with him. And he said he would we were going to teach through a book. And he would help me learn how to do it. And he did. And he continued to invite me into places to teach and encouraged me to do it. And I think that that initial encouragement was huge in and training and equipping, but giving me the opportunity. And then that kind of repeated itself. In my 40s, we went to see my husband on which seminary together and which is why I always say we so I have to explain because it sounds so funny. We went to seminary, I’m not using like the royal way we two of us together went seminary. And it was again some professors that were just very encouraging of that and created space for me to do that in that setting. And so it was it was people creating space and inviting in.

Melissa Kruger
As I said earlier, I was I became a Christian at 14 and it’s 16. Yeah, how young life has this campaign or groups. I don’t know if any of you there like the small group Bible study of young life. They decided to limit who could go to it. So only like eight special high schoolers could go to it. I was not one of those eight. So we decided at 16. We can do this. And so we just had our own. We call that campaigners, but it wasn’t with young life. It was just what we what we knew to call Bible study. And so we started our own. And I had no training, and really not. Yeah, and the Lord just kept putting me in places where I ended up saying, why not. And we just do it. And thankfully along the way, he has provided great training. But But I haven’t been to seminary, I call myself theologically homeschooled. And I have a great partner, my husband, who we have a lot of great conversations. And I just really believe you can learn a lot just by reading the Bible every day.

Rebecca McLaughlin
I was coming to I was studying a PhD in in Shakespeare, love Shakespeare. And I was chatting with a friend who is my scariest non Christian friends who are like my other non Christian friends, I’d invite them to a thing at church and they would politely excused themselves. This friend would tell me why she was ideologically opposed to everything my church stood for. And she and I were chatting about what we might do next. And she has gone on to be a professor of in her discipline, she’s fantastic. And I said to her, you know, I’m not half smart enough to make it as an English professor. In less I sacrifice, like everything for that, and probably not even that and but like if I would have to sacrifice everything for that. And I just I’m not passionate enough about studying the getting the stretch to sacrifice everything for that. And she said, Well, what would you sacrifice everything for? And I said while telling people about Jesus? And I thought, You know what? Maybe I should go to seminary. So I emailed the lady who was the women’s ministry at our church. And I said, I’m thinking I might go to seminary. And I honestly, I was saying kind of as a joke, like, not as not exactly a joke, but I did it. Like the reason I’m doing this is because I was pretty sure she was gonna say, I think you may not have noticed that you’re not a boy. And so you’re definitely not going to seminary. And she replied, and she said, Oh, I think it’s great idea. I’ve already talked to Mark, our senior pastor, we’re like putting you forward and I was like, Oh, I was sort of joking. But then I thought the Church of England spends his money on a lot of really stupid things. So minus mal spend on giving me a theological education. So

Jen Wilkin
it’s just true. It’s just Am I your scariest Christian friend or?

Rebecca McLaughlin
No. You’re auditioning for

Jen Wilkin
trying. Keep trying. It’s great. I was I have an English degree, and I come from a family For teachers, and I thought while I’m not doing what they did, because I want to be important, wouldn’t you have loved to have known 21 year old Jen was a delight. So I got an MBA and worked for Foley’s department stores, 55 retail outlets, and I was in the buying office for men’s dress shirts. And then I had my first child, and I quit my glamorous retail job, it was not. And I was invited, excuse me, was invited to my first women’s bible study at the church, and I needed a reason to put on clothes, and go somewhere. So I went and they had childcare. And don’t get me started on the importance of childcare when you’re doing Bible study. But I seriously would not be a Bible teacher, if the church had not watched my child. So if your church could do it, I highly recommend it. And I was in a small group, and I was talking too much. My apologies to all of the small group leaders in the room. And Jackie Jackson ducked her head into my room and said, Can you come out here for a second? And I thought, I’m about to be sent home from Bible study. And she said, Have you ever thought maybe you have a teaching gift? And I was like, I don’t know. And then she asked me to fill in, in her women’s Bible study her women’s Sunday school class, and then she ended up leaving the church. And she said, could you just do this until they find the replacement for me? And I was like, Yeah, I mean, I guess so. And I taught the class for eight years. And so I had to show up every week with something to say. And, yeah, it was just really formative for me. And so I sort of discovered who, who I was in that room. And, and then Jeff always likes to point out that I didn’t want to teach because it wasn’t lucrative. And then I taught for free for 20 years. So in honor of you, hon. And then and then we’re just learning like trying to get educated. I knew how to I was a reader, you know, from from studying literature, I knew how to read books. So it was not intimidated to pick up theology books or anything like that doesn’t mean I necessarily was doing a great job absorbing it all. But for my 30th birthday, Jeff, the Die Hard romantic gave me Louis Berkhof, systematic theology. And that kept me out of most ditches. So

Elizabeth Woodson
I was working in business, I am an accountant by trade. So if you love numbers in Excel spreadsheets, you’re my kind of people. And I was volunteering for my local church, and they needed somebody to teach Sunday school. And they asked me if I would teach Sunday school, and I just fell in love with it. I’ve always loved helping people understand things, whether that’s how to budget, their money, or how to read the Word. And we did inductive Bible study. And I was like, Man, I want to know more. And so 2010, quit my job, sell my stuff, and went to seminary, and took a risk on the Lord, which is never really a risk. And just he kept opening up doors for me to serve and for me to come on staff at my local church. And a lot of times, what I’ll tell people is, it was the opportunity that nobody else wanted. And the Lord use me and grew me in those rooms to be able to learn how to teach his word. Rebecca, I’m gonna give this question to you, since you just told us all your wonderful little tricks of the trade of speaking, because it is a craft, right? And there are some really practical things that we have to do to form our messages and to be able to prepare to teach the Bible. And so when you think about practically, you know, outside of the five points that you gave us, what is what does it look like for you to be ready to do what you just did in front of us in terms of preparing to speak or teach the Bible?

Rebecca McLaughlin
Honestly, it really depends. So sometimes, it’s just because of the nature of my particular ministry. It’s relatively rare that I’m asked to teach a specific passage or the Bible like as a Bible passage, and it’s delightful when I love when I get to do that. And when I when I get to do that, it’s completely like everything has been tailor made to that particular talk, because it’s all for that particular passage. Most of the time when I’m speaking, it’s a little bit like when you make a meal out of leftovers, and you’re like, Oh, I’ll take the you know, the leftovers from there and the meat from there and I’ll put some soy sauce on and some you know, boil some rice and here we go. So it’s not that every every element is prepared for that specific space, but it’s kind of taking things from different places, reorganizing them adding some fresh things so that they they fit and the longer you go on. Doing that the more leftovers you have, it’s like such an unromantic mess for I’m sorry. But also if you only You find yourself recycling stuff, I think it gets very tired and boring. And ultimately, you’re not really loving your audience well, if you’re not putting particular attention to working to serve them. So, yeah, I try to just kind of continue to learn and bring that into what I’m saying as I go along.

Elizabeth Woodson
I think the best teachers are those who are listening to other great teachers teach. So we’re always refining our craft. How about you, Courtney?

Courtney Doctor
I think that well, and Rebecca and I have gone back and forth on this through the years. So I am a manuscript girl. So here’s where Rebecca and I agree, we agree with connection and risk. So the goal is to connect with Jesus people, we do agree on Jesus, agree on Jesus. So I am much more methodical about it. And I do predominantly just teach a passage that is I don’t do a lot of teaching outside of that. So I print it off, and I read it and read it and read it and read it and mark it and circle and make connections and start asking questions and thinking through it. And then I look at the structure of the texts, because the structure of the message should match the structure of the text. And I put it out in that structure, and I start thinking about and a lot of times, I will actually write down, not that I actually go back and do all of these, but I will write down explanation, illustration application under each part of the structure. Because for me, it reminds me I do not intuitively illustrate, I explain and I apply. And so if I want to have good metaphors and good stories, and all of those things, I have to put them in my outline. And then I start filling it in and I start thinking about it and, and kind of playing with it and trying to come up with the the ways that you can cut you can phrase it in a memorable way memorable for me, and then hopefully memorable for anybody that I’m teaching. And a lot of times I’ll come up with this really finally fun, great, memorable way. And I look back and I’m like that’s not actually in the text. And so you got to let that go and start over with that. But yeah, so it’s just a lot of, but for me, it’s it’s much more methodical. And then I ended up I ended up with a manuscript

Elizabeth Woodson
coordinator. Jen, are there any other like, I think every speaker, sorry, Courtney, Melissa, I’m sorry. Don’t do this. Are there any kind I think every speaker has those like unique things you do in your process. And so you both are seasoned teachers, or there’s just new, unique things that you’ve learned to do over the years at work for your personality teaching style that you do every time to prepare?

Jen Wilkin
Well, I mean, I’m with, I’m with what’s her name? Sorry. With Courtney, with the repetitive reading, I really think that the most underutilized skill in both Bible reading and in teaching the Bible is repetitive reading, I will say it so my dying day, because you just have to give it time to start soaking in. And so I, I preach, oh, my gosh, I teach sorry, guys, from an annotated copy, what happened? I teach from an annotated copy of the text. And so the work that I asked the student to do is the work that I’ve done to prepare the message. And then one of the things that I do to keep that copy I’m teaching from as clean as possible, because I’m a very visual learner. And so once I actually get an annotated, I can’t throw it away and start over, it has to be the one, I can use Whiteout, but I can’t. So if you’re wondering who’s still buying white out in 2023, it’s me. And then, if I need to cross reference, if I’m gonna go to a passage that is going to help with the passage that I’m in, I keep all of those pulled onto a separate page that has a little flag at the top, and they’re numbered so that I can find what I need to bounce over to them when I’m teaching that way. I have less content right in front of me when I teach. Is that what you are? Is that the kind of thing you were looking for? That’s great. Thank you. Great, thank you. But I do not manuscript and I have a lot of opinions. I actually think most of my opinions about it are based on I think it’s your personality, everybody has to do what works for them. That’s the truth.

Melissa Kruger
I’m with Jen on repetitive reading. And I even mean that for the whole biblical text. Read it, read it, read it, read it. And here’s why. I mean, and I read it separate from my actual preparation to teach it. And I think that really matters just over the years. Just keep reading the text, keep reading the texts, because all of a sudden, you’re going to be walking in your garden, and you’re gonna see something happen, and you’re like that’s the best way to explain that. You know, I’m sitting there doing dishes and my plum tree Ray is staring at me and I’m watching things happen. And I’m like, Huh? It just bears fruit and it didn’t get to eat the fruit. It never benefits from the fruit. But it’s a plum tree. And it just bears it, and I get to enjoy it. Now I’m having a whole conversation in my head about what’s the Lord doing a knee when I abide in him, and he’s bearing fruit. And I’m learning. Yeah, so all everything becomes my classroom, when I’m in the word every day. And when the whole world is my classroom, I’m going to have illustrations to share when I’m teaching a text. And so being in the text every day is going to influence the way I see everything that God’s doing in the world. And it all starts to matter. It all starts to be things we can pull from that we can say, this is the way I can help explain that better. So let’s say actually being curious and confused about the text. Or going to you being personally curious. I’m constantly What is that about? Who are those giants? What are they called? Mmm, like? What are in though? Yeah, all that now see,

Rebecca McLaughlin
I have the word slalom.

Melissa Kruger
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Jen Wilkin
Did you mean the inophyllum? Because I’d love to talk about that. All of them. Just you could just preach?

Melissa Kruger
I mean. I’ve written in my Bible for years, what are those one day I’m going to research it I just haven’t gotten around to it yet. And so just being continually curious about the text is going to help you as you teach. But then I’m, I’m a big believer in outlines. It’s the flags. Like, what am I going to hang this message on? How do I make sense of it. And so I’m manuscript, but I actually rarely read my manuscript, but I’m teaching because I have my flags. And so it’s there just in case because I’m not as okay with getting loss, just in case, I have my lifeboat ready to go.

Rebecca McLaughlin
So here’s the thing I’m manuscript to, I wrote, I fully wrote out the talk just for now and filaret at the top of this afternoon, but I’m not gonna have them with me. And so something a little bit different will happen. But I’m also manuscripta for

Courtney Doctor
Becca has been known to text me as I’m getting on an airplane to go speak, what are you risking? What are you risking?

Jen Wilkin
It’s the worst. I also I wish I’d known what she was gonna say before I taught you earlier to was so great.

Rebecca McLaughlin
All right, I’m still going to become friends with

Elizabeth Woodson
madness with this one. And, Courtney, I’m gonna ask you to give us some wisdom, a short piece of wisdom. Because understanding why we need to hone our skills and prepare to teach the Bible makes sense. If you think you’re going to do those things, and if you’re teaching to large groups, but what about the woman who says, I don’t want to teach? Or I won’t ever teach a large group? What encouragement would you have for her,

Courtney Doctor
we are all teaching the word, we are all teaching the word, you might be teaching it to another woman sitting at your kitchen table, you might be teaching it to a three year old, you might be explaining it to your neighbor. But we are all we all need to rightly handle the word of truth. And so understanding, you know, Melissa and I have taught a cohort for a couple of years and, and she even the first time we did it, and she was talking about how even to facilitate a small group discussion, she goes through the exact preparation that I go through to prepare a message, because she wants to be ready to rightly handle the word of truth, truth. And that was really convicting to me. And so this, this place right here is really a very rare place to teach the Word. I mean, this is not even where I predominantly teach the word I. I’m in discipleship relationships, and I have grandchildren and children, and we’re speaking the word of truth to each other, and I want to rightly handle it. And as I preach the Word to myself, and I remind myself of the gospel, I want to rightly handle it. So I think we all are, we’re all teaching and preaching the Word in various faiths.

Elizabeth Woodson
Amen. Amen. Thank you ladies. Can we show them love for their wisdom? Their

hair up, am on there we go. Stay up here because we do have a little time. Just a little time for q&a. So if you have your question, we’re about to trade mics so they work so I need to trade this mic with you.

Courtney Doctor
Oh, Gus is hanging in there. How was Gus was the question and guesses

Melissa Kruger
he’s doing okay. If

Elizabeth Woodson
you have a question, what I need you to do is stand up and come to the front. Elizabeth is gonna have the mic and you can ask your question to her.

Speaker 1
I’ll let you ask the women directly about her. have a microphone.

Speaker 2
Oh, genius. Okay, so my question is, I started with helping build a church from the ground up. So it’s very, very tiny. And I’m volunteering for the women. So I write Bible studies, teach Bible studies and do messages. And although that was wonderful and good for me, so I loved it. I’m catching an issue of, I’m growing, but the women are growing slower, and I’m gaining more like baby believers. And so would there be wisdom in me as a leader stepping back from creating and using even like Lifeway things, so that I can more intentionally disciple one on one with women to grow because I’m struggling doing it by myself. So it’d be wiser to step back in creating and growing women up to then be able to help me with everything else. We

Speaker 1
would encourage you encourage using Lifeway products.

Jen Wilkin
Can I ask, Can I ask a follow up question about how many women

Speaker 2
we have about 50 women that are better there? So I have a three year old, a two year old, so don’t put too much on me. Okay. Okay, just start there.

Jen Wilkin
So I would say I would say that it’s if you have 50 women, then you have roughly five small groups that need to be happening. And that would help but also, the absolute hardest thing to do is write curriculum, can I get a witness. And so if you are not in a state, that is why I’m I’m willing to put my stuff out. Because I know how hard it is. And if you’re not ready to I started using someone else’s curriculum, I would imagine we all did. And then as I began to develop a sense of how I wanted to teach, then it made more sense for me to write my own. But the fact that other people can use it, I really want it to be available for people who just aren’t ready yet to to take that on themselves, or who maybe never will. So that you do have the freedom to do that to major in the things that you do have time and energy to major in, but I would say if it’s 50 women, whatever gathering you’re having needs to have a small group component to it, so that they are getting care, not necessarily from you, but from a small group leader. Did you guess?

Speaker 3
Okay, so my question is a little different. I think part of like leading women is also equipping them to use their gifts of like, into cultivate that. So beyond just like us who have maybe like the gift of leading and teaching, I’ve kind of a two part question one, what would be like the, what would you recommend as far as like a spiritual gift inventory or like assessment, preferably free, if you know of one that we can use to help equip our women? And then two would be how do you like, use the like, Melissa, you had mentioned this, when you’re talking about like that you had vision and like, wanting to use that across and use it somewhere within the church or to help with the body of Christ? What do you do with the gift of encouragement? What do you do with the gift of discernment in the church? And how do you help those women grow in those giftings as a leader.

Courtney Doctor
I say as you recognize gifts in women create space for them to use them. So if you recognize the gift of discernment in somebody invite her into conversations where the discernment is needed. If you recognize gifts of teaching, give her an opportunity to teach but with the with the foreknowledge that that there will be a feedback loop. And you’re going to speak back into that. And so you are giving opportunity with feedback for growth, to test out gifts and to see if they’re actually playing out like that. I mean, we all need that. And we need the confirmation and affirmation from the body, as our gifts sort of become a little bit more known. To know Yeah, that’s actually a place that can serve and bear and it bears fruit by God’s grace. And

Melissa Kruger
one thing on that where people are most frustrated, I often think is the place maybe they’re supposed to serve. So they may you know, if you’re sitting if they’re like that teaching was not good, am I? Well, you’re probably supposed to do it then. Or if they don’t like how something’s been done, or planned, often, I’m like, what, rather than take it as a critique? It’s an opportunity, hey, well tell me how we could do that better. And often, that’s exactly the part of the body they’re gifted for. And so sometimes I’ll look for the frustrated places and say, well, let’s do this. Let’s let’s come along and help. And we

Speaker 1
do have a spiritual gifts assessment for free on lifeway.com. I think if you just type lifeways in spiritual gifts into Google, you’ll find it okay, cool.

Speaker 4
Hey, this is specific for Jen. You mentioned the six years at the village church that were so hard and you know, the hard six years what led you to stay at that church for those six years? I’m

Jen Wilkin
terribly codependent. No, I may be I don’t know, you can decide when you hear my answer. No, at the time that that was all happening. My kids were plugged in my husband plugged in serving and so of five out of six Wilkins were thriving that the village and if you’ve ever had kids who are right in that middle school early high school phase, and they’re doing well, you don’t you don’t go look around for another place. And I think it was the Lord’s kindness to me, because I probably would have wanted to bolt. And so I really see it as I keep tethered me there because of those things. And so I it sounds like super noble to people. I think sometimes that I didn’t leave, but there were very practical family considerations that I think the Lord had to keep me in that space for this years. Yeah.

Speaker 1
Hello, I was wondering if you have any thoughts on how you practice humility in leadership, like personally? Like, do you have any suggestions for someone who might deal with prideful thoughts in a leadership capacity asking for a friend?

Courtney Doctor
Well, we’re going to answer for a friend.

Elizabeth Woodson
What I would say one thing that has helped me kind of pull down those pride moments is having people around me, who will remind me that I’m not as great as I think I am. And really, you know, people that can have those spaces of accountability. And so whether it’s a thought, or my reflections on an event, or the ways I’m being critical, I’m still centering myself. That person can bring me back to a place of humility, but also just, for me, biblical self examination. So asking the Lord continually, where am I off? Where am I centering myself more than I ought to? When we ask the Lord to humble us, he frequently shows up immediately. So it’s those two things spiritual, like formation habits, but also community has been helpful. And

Melissa Kruger
can I say, also, pride can come in two ways. Pride can come in thinking you should always be the one on the stage. But it can also come in in thinking, because I’m not well, while I was going to use you, sorry. Because I’m not Jen Wilkin. And I don’t teach like her, I’m not going to do it. You know, I struggle with this. So pride can come in different ways. Like, I don’t write like that person. So what good is my book? Like? I don’t ask questions like that. So for me, it has been the willingness to actually get on the stage at times. So just check your pride both ways, and have the humility to maybe be the third best teacher in your church. But you’re going to do it. Yeah. I would

Rebecca McLaughlin
just very briefly add, the Lord may just humble you, repeatedly, in ways you didn’t want, which is what happens most frequently to me.

Just it’s something that happens with regularity. Often connected with if I’m about to give a big talk or something. I will give something not not the dog thing, but a something that hits me in a way which reminds me that I am absolutely not all that. So you may not even have that problem. Because the Lord may be doing that. Thank you.

Speaker 5
i This questions for Becca or everybody? I guess. I just wanted like to ask like what, how do you incorporate apologetics when you’re teaching women? I think it’s so core specialties for forming Gen Z and alpha. And I’ve so appreciated your recent book. And so I just wanted to know like, how would you ease in apologetics when you’re teaching lay people?

Rebecca McLaughlin
I think the reality is almost every Christian right now is facing apologetics questions whether they realize it or not, whether they will use that term or not. But whether you are a grandmother thinking, How do I relate to my 13 year old granddaughter who’s just told me she is non binary, or whether you are a 13 year old going into a public middle school and needing to figure out how to stand as a Christian in in the midst of of all sorts of things. You’re facing apologetics questions. So I think the realities of what the apologetics needs have been have changed in the last 20 years, even in the last 10 years, even in the last five years, actually. But if we are watching for the things that are stopping people from considering Christianity, the roadblocks that mean they’re not even Jesus isn’t even in the field of consideration for them, because of course, how could you be a Christian? In light of all the abuse scandals or how could you be a Christian with all the racism that we’ve seen in the church or how can we To be a Christian, with all the hateful ways in which Christians have treated LGBT people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, those are going to be the places where actually people are really struggling. And they’re often places where you know, those who’ve been raised in the church or have been to church for years, they go to church, and it’s like, nobody realizes this is happening. All they’re hearing from the pulpit. Is those crazy people out there doing those bad things. And everybody’s sitting in the pews thinking, okay, but this is my granddaughter, or this is my dear friend from college, or this is whoever it is. Those are the spaces where we need to be identifying the apologetics needs, and then opening our Bibles and seeing what does the Bible say? And how does it relate to here? Because it is extraordinary quite how contemporary and relevant the scriptures are in the year of our Lord 2023. As we face all of these things.

Elizabeth Woodson
I would add to that, just really quickly, one way that I do that to kind of ease it in is I’ll use it through my illustrations or my stories. So if I’m trying to make some theological point, then I will create a bridge to culture to talk about that issue, and then giving people a way to explain so I think that’s kind of like a simpler way and then being able to invite people into spaces where you able they need the deep dive