How do you engage visual learners and help them to remember what you have said in a sermon. Well, one obvious way is to use visual aids. That might be as simple as including some powerpoint slides with images. Generally speaking, I’m not a fan of PowerPoint in preaching. It risks asking people to dual process, to engage with more than one method of communication and a lot of preachers struggle not to switch to lecture/presentation mode. Having said that, a well placed and carefully chosen image or two can be helpful.
However, that won’t always work. In fact if we get hung up on finding images for our presentation, it can become a bit like the old preaching expectation of finding points that alliterate. It can easily become forced and distract from the point you are making. Sometimes it’s hard to find a genuinely fitting image (I know from trying to find illustrations for articles here). So are there other ways that we can make our preaching feel more visual? Here are some further thoughts
First, we can delegate out the responsibility for making things visual. What about encouraging people to draw their response to a talk. You could create space for this in your handouts if you provide them. If there are particularly artistic people in the church you could get them to create something as you go along. This could be displayed at the end.
Similarly, if you encourage people to share prophetic words in your church, why assume that this is something for worship time. What if you allowed space for response after you have preached. That might include people sharing pictures they have had. We have certainly seen this happen in our life group discussions.
However, there are other ways we can be visual ourselves. That might include bringing physical visual aids in. I’ve used a brick previously. I’ve also passed out small stones followed by some playdough to get people to see and feel (for the kinesthetic) the difference God makes when he gives us new hearts that are not hearts of stone.
We can also paint pictures with our words and include more story telling. Apparently, “let me paint you a picture” is one of the most captivating phrases you can use. The key thing is to use vivid, concrete language. Finally, we can use our own physicality to create visual aids, acting out the narrative, using hand gestures and facial expressions etc.
What would you add?
Faithroots 