3 Effective Techniques for Dealing with Distractions

You have had it happen more times than you would like. There you are preaching away to a room full of students, when all-of-a-sudden, there is a group of three students to your right who are completely disconnected from your message and carrying on a mini-conversation of their own. You feel your blood begin to boil. Not only are they distracting each other, they are begging to distract those around them. What do you do?

Recently, I was having this coaching discussion with a couple of speakers. We were giving feedback regarding a talk that had been given by one if them, and brainstorming some different ways of handling the "distracting student" situation. Here are three different techniques we discussed:

1. Awkward  Eye Contact

Make direct eye contact with the student(s) who are being distracting. Speak directly to them for an uncomfortable, awkwardly-extended period of time.

2.  Involve them.

Ask them a direct question requiring their input and feedback. This should pull them into the discussion. If they are completely disengaged with the topic at hand, there will be a tinge of embarrassment involved and you will have positive peer-pressure working in your favor.

3.  Call them out.

If  implementing the first two ideas doesn't work, call them out directly for the distraction they are causing the rest of the group.

How do you involve students who are distracted during your talk?

Jedi Speaking Advice from Josh Griffin

Youth Speaker's Coach recently had the honor of sitting down with student ministry veteran, Josh Griffin. Josh is the High School Pastor at Saddleback Church in Lake Forest, CA and author of the student ministry blog, More Than Dodgeball. We spent more than an hour discussing tips, tricks, and tools to becoming a more effective communicator to students. Here are some helpful and practical excerpts from that interview:

Youth Speaker's Coach (YSC):  How do you study and prepare leading up to your weekend message?

Josh Griffin: I use a team approach in preparing and refining my message. Here's how it looks during the week before I speak:

I spend time on Mondays studying the text and beginning to put my outline together.

On Tuesdays, I put the finishing touches on my rough draft manuscript, then I send it out to a team of people for their feedback and input. That team usually includes a volunteer youth leader, a student, a fellow staff member and a communicator-in-training. They hack it to pieces, edit, brainstorm creative illustrations that I haven't thought of, and help me say things in a much more effective manner. 

By Thursday, I am running through and rehearsing the second draft of my message, timing the message length and memorizing key illustrations and stories.

After delivering the message during our first student service on Saturdays, I sit down with my team and receive feedback on how to make the message even better.

Finally, by our student services on Sunday, I have a well-prepared, student-friendly, Biblically-solid message.

When I started out in student ministry, I was the only person involved in the preparation of messages; now, I wouldn't have it any other way. The team approach not only helps me become a much more effective communicator, but helps the others on the team become much better communicators as well.

YSC: What is one of the most memorable or impactful messages you have ever given and what made it memorable?

Josh Griffin:  What comes to mind is actually an illustration I used during the close of one of my messages. We were doing a series about secrets. During the series, a member of my team had come up with the idea of using transparent black light paint to have students write their own on secrets on a back drop we were using on stage. Then, at the close of the message, while the band began to play, our tech crew turned on the black light and all of these secrets showed up behind me. 

The Holy Spirit used that moment in a powerful way in the lives of the students in attendance that weekend. We actually had an hour-long line of students after the service who wanted to share their own personal stories and secrets with an adult leader and pray with them. 

YSC:  What is the Josh Griffin secret Jedi-trick for speaking to youth?

Josh Griffin: Wow, that's a great question! I would have to say this...

If you find yourself going over on time when you speak, you didn't prepare well. 

Being well prepared helps both you and your students. It helps you be confident in the message that God has prepared you to deliver and it helps your students because they feel valued that you took the time to prepare the most effective message possible. When you are unprepared, you tend to ramble, babble, and rabbit-trail. This ends up distracting from the message you are trying to give. Make sure that you take the time to prepare, rehearse, and practice your message. No more "Saturday NightSpecials!"

How do you "feed the sheep?"

In thinking through John 21 and Jesus' command to Peter (and us) to "feed the sheep", how do you ensure that you are leading the students to green pastures? Share some of the practical tools that you use as a youth pastor or youth communicator in developing or delivering SOLID messages from God's Word. Comment with your ideas below...

You can find the original John 21 post HERE.

A Brief Thought on John 21

Reading John 21 this morning:

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?” “Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.” 

Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.” 

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?” Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?” He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.” Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. (John 21:15-17 NIV)

Charles Jefferson expounds on this passage in writing:

That the feeding of the sheep is an essential duty of the shepherd-calling is known even to those who are least familiar with shepherds and their work. Sheep cannot feed themselves, nor water themselves. They must be conducted to the water and the pasture.... Everything depends on the proper feeding of the sheep. Unless wisely fed they become emaciated and sick, and the wealth invested in them is squandered.... When the minister goes into the pulpit, he is the shepherd in the act of feeding, and if every minister had borne this in mind, many a sermon would have been other than it has been. The curse of the pulpit is the superstition that a sermon is a work of art and not a piece of bread or meat. (The Minister as Shepherd, pp 59, 61, 1980)

As we seek to sharpen our skills in communicating to students, it is imperative that we remember our chief goal in shepherding the flocks that Jesus, the Great Shepherd, has entrusted to our care...

 Feed the sheep.

Old School Yet Relevant Advice on the Art of Preaching

When the Yale Divinity School was celebrating the one hundredth year of it's founding, Dr. Charles Reynold Brown gave a series of lectures on the Art of Preaching. Here are a few excerpts:

Brood over your text and your topic. Brood over them until they become mellow and responsive. You will hatch out of them a whole flock of promising ideas as you cause the tiny germs of life there contained to expand and develop. . . . It will be all the better if this process can go on for a long time and not be postponed until Saturday forenoon when you are actually making your final preparation for next Sunday. 

If a minister can hold a certain truth in his mind for a month, for six months perhaps, for a year it may be, before he preaches on it he will find new ideas perpetually sprouting out of it, until it shows an abundant growth. He may meditate on it as he walks the streets, or as he spends some hours on a train, when his eyes are too tired to read. He may indeed brood upon it in the night-time. It is better for the minister not to take his church or his sermon to bed with him habitually—a pulpit is a splendid thing to preach from, but it is not a good bed-fellow. 

Yet for all that, I have sometimes gotten out of bed in the middle of the night to put down the thoughts which came to me, for fear I might forget them before morning. . . . When you are actually engaged in assembling the material for a particular sermon, write down everything that comes to you bearing upon that text and topic. Write down what you saw in the text when you first chose it. Write down all the associated ideas which now occur to you. . . . Put all these ideas of yours down in writing, just a few words, enough to fix the idea, and keep your mind reaching for more all the time as if it were never to see another book as long as it lived. This is the way to train the mind in productiveness. You will by this method keep your own mental processes fresh, original, creative. . . . Put down all of those ideas which you have brought to the birth yourself, unaided. They are more precious for your mental unfolding than rubies and diamonds and much fine gold. Put them down, preferably on scraps of paper, backs of old letters, fragments of envelopes, waste paper, anything which comes to your hand. This is much better every way than to use nice, long, clean sheets of foolscap. It is not a mere matter of economy—you will find it easier to arrange and organize these loose bits when you come to set your material in order. Keep on putting down all the ideas which come to your mind, thinking hard all the while. You need not hurry this process. It is one of the most important mental transactions in which you will be privileged to engage. It is this method which causes the mind to grow in real productive power. . . . 

You will find that the sermons you enjoy preaching the most and the ones which actually accomplish the most good in the lives of your people will be those sermons which you take most largely out of your own interiors. They are bone of your bone, flesh of your flesh, the children of your own mental labor, the output of your own creative energy. The sermons which are garbled and compiled will always have a kind of secondhand, warmed-over flavor about them. The sermons which live and move and enter into the temple, walking and leaping and praising God, the sermons which enter into the hearts of men causing them to mount up with wings like eagles and to walk in the way of duty and not faint—these real sermons are the ones which are actually born from the vital energies of the man who utters them.