Five Ways to Prepare for Effective Student Communication

Great communicators make profound concepts simple and simple ones profound. They are students of their audience. This allows them to predict and answer questions in the audience minds during the presentation. Don’t let that thought be too intimidating because it is a learned ability.

Every student ministry leader can be an effective communicator if they are willing to spend time in preparation. The communication of the Word of God is the most important truth we could ever deliver.

Preparation of our lives, content and communications skills paves the way for effective communication.

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Often we know what we want to say but have not prepared the content, studied the audience or honed our personal skills so our sincere attempts falter. We feel like failures.  The problem does not rest with our sincerity, burden or passion: but a lack of proper preparation.

Realizing we all want to be effective in our ministries, I suggest Five Ways to Prepare for Effective Student Communication:

1. Determine the big idea for your content and stick to it. Keeping your outline and points concise will assist your students with engagement and learning.
2. Spend one-on-one time with students to gain greater personal understanding. You will not learn student culture, language, pressures or heart-needs from a distance.
3. Pretend you are talking to a student attending your church the first time…Every Time! Would they understand? If not, then define the terms so they can. For example, it’s okay to say Jesus came back to life rather than only using the term “resurrection”. (Use the word but define it.)
4. Prepare every devotional, lesson, lecture or sermon like you were speaking to children. I am not suggesting dumbing it down; I am suggesting you break it down to its basic foundational truth and then build from there depending on your group.
5. Make a fresh commitment to teaching the Bible. Students can understand doctrine and difficult passages of scripture. We need to creatively build bridges making the truth accessible and dynamic.

What are some of the ways you prepare that help you communicate more effectively with students?