Often I am asked to preach in Chapel for school services. David Campbell, Chaplain at Fettes College, added these tips to his website [LINK], which I think are helpful and true...
Here are ten of Campbell’s handy tips:
- Long-windedness, in this context, as perhaps everywhere, is invariably a disaster.
- Knowing what you want to say and going for it without anything written down is usually best.
- Eye contact is everything.
- Having just one central theological point and reinforcing it with a cheerful or challenging illustration always makes sense.
- Humour is grand, but never for the sake of it – the troops remember the jokes and not the underlying message.
- Using too many biblical or even classical allusions is rarely successful – the troops just don’t know them and get it.
- Christian clichés such as ‘salvation’ and ‘redemption’ or other advanced technical terms are also best avoided in such a short homily.
- So is trying to be something that you are not – and so is patronising.
- If you’re middle-aged and greying (as I happily am now) please don’t pretend to be cool and trendy – it is, as the kids say, “awkward” or worse than this in the scale of teenage crimes, “cringe.”
- Be sincere.
No comments
Post a Comment