We can all benefit from more effective public speaking guidance and direction. 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 15 declares, but sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that's within you with meekness and fear. Now, the mission I first trained under was Hospital Christian Fellowship, founded by Francis Grimm. He used to say, a missionary must be ready to preach, pray, or die with a moment's notice. Are you ready to preach, pray, or die at a moment's notice? That's why bishops used to wear red or purple tunics because that was to indicate the blood of the martyrs, that they're ready to die for Christ. If you meet a bishop, Ask him if he remembers why they have that colour, red or purple. And is that bishop ready to preach, pray or die at a moment's notice? The moment you start speaking about public speaking, people have excuses. According to statistics, people are more scared of public speaking than even death. Statistically, People are more afraid of public speaking than death. So at an average funeral, the average person would prefer to be in the casket than the one giving the eulogy, statistically. But statistically they say, more than anything else, people fear public speaking. So when Moses was told by God to go to Pharaoh, he came up with the excuse, oh my Lord, I'm not eloquent, neither before nor since you've spoken to your servant, but I'm slow of speech and slow of tongue. That sounds like a very eloquent argument that is not eloquent, yes? The Lord said to him, who has made man's mouth? Who has made the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth. I will teach you what you are to say. And when the Lord still tried to get, Moses still tried to get out the Lord's call, And he requests, oh my Lord, please send by the hand of somebody else. We read that the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. God was angry with his excuses. Maybe he thought it was humble. No, I'm no good, I've got no experience. But it doesn't matter what excuse, God is angry if we try to disobey his call. If God commands us to do something, he will equip us. God's servant is God's responsibility. The will of God will never leave you, but the grace of God won't keep you. where God guides you, he will provide for you. Unless the Lord builds a house, they labor in vain to build it. All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and it is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work. Are you complete? Are you thoroughly equipped for every good work? You can be if you know the word of God. I charge you therefore before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge the living and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom. Preach the word. Be ready in season and out of season. Convince, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and teaching. Notice, there's many aspects to preaching. There's the convincing, there's the rebuking, there's the exhorting or encouraging. And we've got to do it all with longsuffering, real patience. For although we walk in the flesh, we do not walk according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but they are mighty in God for the pulling down of strongholds. In our preaching we can be mighty in pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments, every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. So the first question to ask, if you get an invitation, who are you going to be speaking to? It makes a big difference if you're speaking to a women's group, a young group, an older group, whether you're speaking to established Christians or a hostile audience. Is it a university group? Is this a group of businessmen? You would prepare very different messages depending on who the audience is. The more you know your audience, the better will be your preparation. What concerns do they have? If you are being invited to a group of young people, it might be appropriate to deal with things like sexual purity, to deal with love, courtship, marriage. These may be things that obsess them. Social media, how to be disciplined about your time, not to let the technology ruin your life and rule your life. You've got to think, what are the concerns? What are the needs of this particular audience? What would your host like you to speak on? Now, if your host says, the reason, then you know what you've got to do. I've sometimes been told, we're about to do a missions outreach, say into Mozambique, and we'd like you to motivate people that we have more volunteers to join us and give us some insights into the needs in the country. Okay, I've been to Mozambique. I can speak on that. I know what they want. They want missionary volunteers. My job is to motivate people to join this mission outreach. Or the past may say, we want you to have a baptism service. I want you to speak on the importance of baptism. Well, now you know, and that's straightforward. You go to someplace to say, we want you to prepare our people for a particular outreach we're going to do on the college campus. Fair enough. Okay. When you know what's the results, they're looking for volunteers, they're looking for candidates for baptism, or they want to increase the mission giving of their church. They've got some results they're looking for. If I know what the results are, it'll help. They'll know what to plan for. Where does your audience stand on these issues? Now, if I'm going to a pro-life group, I don't need to convince them that abortion is murder and life begins at conception. They're a pro-life group. So I don't need to convince her. I might guide them how to be effective pro-life witnesses and mobilize them for the March for Life, but I don't need to convince them. If I'm going to a secular group on a university campus, I will have to convince them. They will not be pro-life. They will be mostly pro-choice, pro-abortion. They may be evolutionary. Do they believe in God or not? Sometimes I've been invited to speak on blasphemy at the University of Cape Town. Now, the people at the University of Cape Town believe in blasphemy. They were putting me there just to shoot me down, actually, so I was going to a hostile audience. So it makes a big difference when you know where your audience stands. If I'm going to a missions group, and all missionaries there, I don't need to convince them of the importance of missions. They know the importance. I need to direct them to where the needs are best and so on. Am I speaking to a hostile audience? I've spoken to many a hostile audience. where you go in and everyone there is an atheist, or a pro-abortionist, or a Muslim, or a communist, and obviously you have to have a different attitude to a hostile audience. They're not interested in your message to start with, so you've got to really get their interest from the beginning. Is this group undecided? We're going to talk on subjects like whether it's evolution, creation, where they stand, are they pro-life, are they not pro-life, where they stand on the issue of abortion, are they saved, unsaved, I must speak to people who really share my convictions, and I don't need to spend time convincing them of things they're really committed to. How many, well, how will this meeting be advertised? I've been to meetings that were not advertised at all. And I can tell you there's some serious cases of presumption, so once I was invited to a North Dakota, one of the worst meetings I've ever had in my life. So the people invited me. The person's name was Norman Grubb, and I assumed it was the Norman Grubb who wrote this great book, Intercessor, and also on Pioneer and Cricket and Pioneer on C.T. Studd, C.T. Studd-Sunwall. But this was another Norman Grubb. So I allowed myself to be deceived by a famous name, but it was not the same person. I should have asked questions. I asked no questions ahead of time. I got there, and the people had said, now, because you've got such an important message behind the biggest hall in town, and the biggest hall in town happened to be the St. Mary's of the Sacred Hearts or something, some Catholic school hall. Now, of course, I'm not Catholic. My hosts aren't Catholic either. They didn't say who I was, where I was from, because they wanted everyone to come. But people don't come to nothing or no one. So it was just a public meeting at the Holy Convent of... a blessed virgin of the sacred heart, something like that, a convent school. So no Protestant's gonna come to the meeting, because it's a Catholic venue. But no Catholic's gonna come to the venue either, because they know it's not one of their meetings, because their priest didn't mention it on Sunday. So this is like a dead certain nobody's gonna come to this meeting. Massive venue, easily 800 people can fit into this hall, they've set up the chairs and everything. The advert they put in the media was so vague, important to overseas guest speakers to speak on a matter of high importance, didn't give a title, didn't give a subject. They didn't even mention I'm from South Africa, because they thought that might discourage some people. But you know, controversy sells too. If they just mentioned something, but there was nothing, nothing, nothing. But the man had his ace up his sleeve. We've got a radio program beforehand, and he showed off to people here in the radio, everyone's going to come to this meeting tonight. Problem was, we go to the radio station, I've had a lot of radio programs, and some weeks I could have... up to 15, 20 radio programs in one week. So I walked in and I quickly got the idea, this is not a live program. You have live and you have recorded. This was obviously a recorded program. I could tell the way he was talking about it. And so I asked the question, when will this be broadcast? The man said, Tuesday next week. And my host drained of color. Oh, he was... This was his hope for the meeting, the radio program. But it's recorded. It's not live. It's going to be broadcast next week. The meeting will be over. I'll be out of town already. So this was a disaster, beyond a disaster. Massive hall that they've hired, huge amounts of chairs that they've hired as well, everything set up. And there were eight people in the meeting. My host, his wife, in-laws, some relatives, there was nobody, nobody, nobody from the town as large there, because they didn't advertise sensibly. And I've had people do this before, we went to Trompsburg once, out in the Orange Free State, and the man concerned would invite us. He made enemies of every church in town. He hates churches, he thinks churches are bad. You get Christians like this. In South Africa, there are two million Christians, born-again Christians, who don't attend church. It's shocking. It's a shocking thing. More and more you're seeing people who are unchurched who think they are... I can't go to church because the churches are compromised and the churches are hypocrites. Well, you know, better to go to church or not. And these people, instead of being a member of the church and trying to reform the church from within or doing something good, praying for revival, no, they just criticize the church and don't attend. Now, sadly, my host was one of those people. Every pastor in town was sick. You'd just hear this man's name and they'd close down. So him being my host was the worst thing I could have done. I should have known it, but speaking to pastors, realized, you know, this character here, he's just organizing church, speaking against the church. Nobody wants to cooperate with him. So it's my bad fortune that I'm being hosted by somebody who has aggravated every minister. But he hired the football stadium, hired the football stadium. Can you imagine how many people a football stadium could fit? But there were not even 20 people because he had a band that he'd hired for music. He had a few of his, and I'm counting them in the 20, my team, which is four of us. And we spoke to, I can say, I preached in a football stadium. There's nobody there. This person, if he'd had a house meeting, he could have filled it with the people who were there. But no, he could have organized with a single church, but no, he wasn't a member of a church. He messed up so badly. Why would people come from all the churches in town to Phyllis Football Stadium when their pastors don't want to promote it? This man was the wrong host. So you can sometimes have a disaster if people don't advertise, if they don't promote, if they don't have a title. I once drove vast distance to get to a meeting where they had a person saying, come for an important message. tonight and they had the names of people, but there was no motivation, there was no title, no subject. Why would people come to a meeting in the middle of the week without a title? Now the first thing that you should get is if people really think you've got an important message, invite the person to the Sunday morning service. If you can't organize that, Sunday evening service or the midweek service. Those are scheduled meetings and there'll be some people who come to it. But some people have such grandiose ideas, they hire out Wanderers football stadium in Johannesburg. Seriously. Had some person who had a vision that they were an apostle or prophet or something and decided to hire out the biggest football stadium in the country. Rugby stadium, actually. Well, it doesn't exactly help because that costs a lot, yes, but don't hire a stadium out if you can fit the people in a church hall, or the city hall, or the scout hall, or something like that, or in a person's home. And they had enough people there to fill somebody's living room, but they hired out a football stadium. Now, these sort of people run far away when you get invitations from people like that. They're people who don't have a plan. They don't have adverts, they don't know what they're doing. So you've got to find out what is being advertised, how is it being advertised, what's the theme, what's the title. If they don't have a title, a theme, if they don't have adverts and posters, and these days you should have social media, how is the meeting going to be? advertised. How many people are expected? Well, of course, then don't forget some of these people name it, claim it, and frame it. People are speaking to existence. Now, I'm trusting God for 100,000 people to fill a stadium. Well, that's fine. But realistically, how many of these meetings have you organized? What kind of a chance have you had before? We've got people who don't know what they're doing. How much time have you been allocated? That's also important. The worst thing, you get a public speaker, he stands up, and he's been rambling, rambling, rambling. You know, a funny thing happened to me on the way to the airport. I was at a massive auditorium, a big ministers' conference, thousands of ministers there. The speaker stands up, and he starts off with, a funny thing happened to me on the way to the airport. My wife and I, we've both got the same kind of notebook, I've ended up with her notebook, and she's ended up with mine, all my notes on my notebook, and so my wife's got my notes, so I don't have any notes today. And while I was sitting there, I was wondering what to say to you. That's very disturbing. The public speaker says, while I was sitting there, I was wondering what to say to you. This is a minister's conference. People have come from 60 different countries around the world, and the plenary speaker says, I was wondering what to say to you today. He hasn't prepared before coming in there. Shame on him. They should flog him and kick him out. How on earth can any man stand up and say, I was wondering what to say to you today? Shame upon them. But I've seen big speakers in massive events say that. And then they can ramble, ramble, ramble. Anecdotes about their wife, anecdotes about their daughter, this and the other. And then they've been going for like 40 minutes. And the man says, let me begin with, and firstly, Or worse than that, they turn and ask the host who's sitting in the front, how much time do I have? When a person says that to them, the host should say, your time's up. He's only going to get worse from there. How much time do I have? Find out before you get in the pulpit. The most stupid, ridiculous thing is to ask for how much time you have after you've been rambling for 40 minutes. She said, they should set that time, 30 minutes, you used it up 10 minutes ago. Get down. Sorry we have invited you. Honestly, it's disgraceful. What can you say, what can't you say? Now some places I've gone, like in Northern Ireland, I was told at the time, you can only use the King James. We don't accept anything but King James. If you're quoting a scripture, it must be King James. Everything must be King James, and you gotta watch out because a lot of your scripture is not on your notes, it's in your mind, and you might just quote. Now, if I know this church as a principle, it's gotta be King James. That night, I was sitting there, I borrowed a King James Bible, and I had to change all my notes and everything, and be sure that I was quoting King James. Now, I'm a Baptist, I'm a Reformed Baptist. If I'm speaking in a Methodist church or a Lutheran church, what can't I speak on? Baptism, obviously, because they believe in infant baptism or what we call dedication. We sometimes call what they do christening. So out of politeness, I'm a guest of a church that practices infant baptism or what we call christening. I can't speak on believers baptism by immersion, because that would be very rude in that I'm being a guest of it. So you've got to know what you're dealing with. Now similarly, if you're a Presbyterian and you're being invited to speak in a Methodist church, you should not be preaching on predestination. Methodists do not hold to that, they don't believe that they are a minion. So you've got to know what can I speak on, what can't I. There's lots of things you can speak on that is not going to clash across denominational distinctives. And as somebody who's been a chaplain in the army often, I've had to be polite on it. The more scripture you have, the safer you are, but you can't preach denominational distinctives. So for example, tongues is a very divisive issue. You can't be going into Pentecostal church and preaching against tongues, nor should you as a Pentecostal preacher go to Presbyterian church and start pushing tongues. That's a divisive issue. let's focus on what unites us. We all should agree on missions and caring for the persecuted church and praying for revival. Focus on a subject that isn't going to breach a denominational distinctive. So again, church government. If you go into the Bible, you will see there are forms of church government of all kinds of churches. So you will see congregational see Episcopalian church governments in the Bible, where Paul appoints Titus to appoint leaders in Cyprus. So, fair enough. Okay, you can proceed. You can see cases where Timothy is appointing leaders and so on. You can see where the leaders are being elected by the congregation, like in Antioch. You can see places where they've plainly got bishops overseeing other pastors, and you've got other places where it looks like this congregation is completely run on its own. So you've got top-down, you've got bottom-up. We've got a variety of church leadership forms seen in the Bible. Presbyterians see synods, and they can see the Presbyterian form where they see the elders leading. So you get ruled by the elders, you get ruled by congregation, you get ruled by bishops. So you can see Episcopalian, congregational, and Presbyterian type of forms of church governments in the Bible. It's no good going into one church and attacking the form of church government. or attacking their form of worship or their form of baptism. Those are divisive issues. You've got to know what you can and can't speak on. Now, why have you been selected to speak to this particular group? If I'm being invited because they want me to give my testimony of when I was in prison, then that's what they expect. I can't decide, well, I'd rather speak on the two natures in the one person. I can't start giving theology when they want me there for my testimony, and so on. Now, I've had the difficult situation of preaching in churches like Dr. James Kennedy's Coleridge Presbyterian Church. There's Dr. James Kennedy, one of the greatest preachers in the world, sitting in the pulpit next to me, and I've got to preach. That's seriously intimidating. I even had to preach at St. Andrew's in Florida, where R.C. Sproul, the greatest theologian of the 20th century, sitting in the front row with his wife, and I'm in his pulpit. Well, obviously, I can't produce theology to their level, so what do I do when I'm there? I focus on testimony. I give them missionary report back on persecution church in the field. I speak on the testimonies of Christians in Mozambique and Sudan, and I'm giving something that is unique to my experience. They didn't invite me there to give better theology than their pastor. I can't. They've got the greatest theologian on earth sitting there in their church. I mustn't try and be what I'm not. So when I'm in Dr. James Kendi's or R.C. Sproul's church, I give missions, persecuted church, testimonies of revival. I give them insights from my experience that nobody else could give. I'm not there because they think I'm a better theologian than in the past. I'm not. I'm there because I've got experience and insights and testimony. So you've got to focus on what is your strength and what you've been invited for. In what way are you going to benefit your audience? What information do you have to give that they're unlikely to receive from another source? Now, if you have got a unique insight into maybe it's witchcraft, maybe it's Islam, whatever your particular insights are, your insights to the persecuted church, your insights into how this youth ministry can be effective, you give them what they're unlikely to get from another source. There's no point me coming and teaching you about Swazi culture. You know about Swazi culture better than I do, obviously. So pointless for me to bring coals to Newcastle, or as they say, unnecessary for you to try and give the people what they already have. You want to give them something new, something different, something that they'll benefit from. So what actions do you want them to respond with? If your goal is repentance and baptism, like the Apostle Peter at Pentecost, what response did he want? Believe in Lord Jesus Christ, repent of your sins, be baptized. So that's actually the result he got at the end of Pentecost prayer meeting. What do you want to happen as a result of this meeting or these series of meetings? If you want to increase your church membership, if you want to increase your outreaches, increase your missionary activity, that's what you aim at. The whole point is you've got to know something about your audience, what their needs are, what their expectations are, what the goals are, what the results are. If you aim at nothing, well, if you short it, nothing. But you've got to have a target. The goal isn't to shoot and then see where the bullets fell and then go and paint the target afterwards. We don't decide the target afterwards. We decide the target beforehand. Appearance is important. Your appearance is important. Dress appropriately. So before you've even said one word, your audience will have formed a first impression of you by your clothing, your grooming, and your body language. No good coming in, as has happened, and the person's briefcase falls apart and all of his notes fall over the floor and he's scrambling around picking up. I mean, that happens, embarrassingly. There's all sorts of things. Some people come in and they look a mess. Sometimes I think, you know, did they sleep in their clothes? And sometimes they might have. and grooming. There's no excuse for being long-haired and messy and so on. I'm talking about men having long hair. Some of these people walk in their basket case, they look like a disaster. I've seen youth leaders walk in, they've got sunglasses propped into their head and hair, and they're walking wearing sunglasses. I've seen men, famous men, some of the most famous men in the world, preaching in a cathedral in Sudan wearing a baseball cap. Would they preach with a baseball cap in a church in America? No. But they're in the field, and they think they can stand in an Episcopal church in Sudan and preach with a baseball cap in their cathedral. There's some strange things that are done, very strange. And then you get these people who, they literally get a barstool up front and they sit on a barstool and dialogue with the people, emergence. And they think that's cool, open neck shirts and so on and so forth, in a formal church. Now, when I'm in a formal church, I wear a suit and tie and so on. You've got to know what's appropriate dress. For example, Livingston, 2013. This is the 200th anniversary of Dr. David Livingston's birthday. And we were at Victoria Falls on the 16th of November 2013, part of the Livingston 200 event. And I had people coming to me saying, you can take your jacket off. And I said, no, I can't. It was a sweltering hot day. Beyond sweltering, it was steaming hot. Everyone had their jackets off and so on, if they had jackets. But I didn't think I could honor David Livingston preaching on anything less than a suit on that day at Victoria Falls. And people offered to stand with an umbrella over me because it was very, very, very hot. And I would have felt stupid having somebody standing holding an umbrella with me while remembering David Livingston, who walked across Africa wearing effectively a suit and tie, hiking through the bushes. And he dressed smartly. How could we honor him by coming in a safari suit or something like that? And here, one of our missionaries, he's dressed in a suit at a chaplain service in the Sudan army. And that might look like he's overdressing, but not really. The army's got a dress code, and it's good for the chaplain to be dressed in a smart way. Maintaining good posture is important. You should stand up straight, not slouch. I mean, the amount of people who are sloppy and slouching, don't lean on the lectern. And some of these people rock the lectern. Don't rock back and forth. There are these people who rock back and forth with their feet while they're talking. And then there's nervous movements which distract. I don't know if you've come across people like that, but we've had people fidgeting with their jewelry, especially ladies. There's this one lady speaking at a public meeting, and she has the whole time flicking her hair out of her eyes. You know, get a damn hairband, really. I mean, she has the whole time, pushing her hair. Her hair kept coming back like a dog with hairs in front of the eyes. And, well, just, you know, prop it up with something or cut it. But the idiocy of just the whole way through. We couldn't remember a thing she said because we were so distracted by this person fiddling with their hair. And then you get these people jangling with their jewelry or hands in their pockets. They should, like our teachers in school in Indonesia, they would take the ruler and smack us over the knuckles for putting our hands in our pockets. You don't put your hands in your pockets while you're preaching or singing hymns. Disgusting. No, you should have a ruler and put out your hands, wham! Don't put your hands in your pockets. And clasping your hands, crossing your arms. This is such a closed body language, isn't it? You know, a person sitting there with their arms folded, it means I'm close to you. It's very negative. And then you get these people who scratch themselves like they're apes or chimps the whole time. Just scratching, scratching, scratching, literally. All the way along. I've seen people like that. It distracts people. If you're doing any strange movement, ask your friends to warn you. There's strange things we do. And then speak to people's needs. Avoid cliches. What are the cliches you get? God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. Again, what have you communicated? Or, we serve a good God. Amen. Well, I mean, those are cliches. Or, we're living in the last days. The whole congregation, amen. I mean, those are cliches. We've got to have something more meaningful to say than that. And the stock phrase, meaningless repetition. If you watch the God's Not Dead films, they've got this, you know, God is good all the time. All the time, God is good. And, you know, that's been done to death now, and let's not carry on with these cliches. There's a certain amount of things you can't just carry on saying that. And these people, it's like, instead of um or er, they just throw in these, or you get these people, hell yeah! It's like, instead of saying, I'm more ill, I'd say that's in danger of going to blasphemy. Because you're not taking the Lord's name seriously. It's just being used like a filler. The person's not thinking, he doesn't know what to do, so he just puts it out there. So let's avoid meaningless repetition. Our Lord Jesus spoke about when we pray, it should not be with meaningless repetition. We should not do that. Put yourself in the position of the people you're speaking to. It would be nice if you said something meaningful. and original and not just keep repeating cliches. What are the concerns of your audience? What are their needs? What are the issues they're facing? Can we speak to these issues? That will be most relevant. You know, when you start off with a person like, what are we so worried about? Now you name what we're worried about. Or the fear of death, or you're tackling the economy, or how do we manage in this and that situation? Or how should we respond to the transgender movement? That's an issue of concern people have, or crime and punishment, whatever it may be. But think of what is their concern. What must I do to be saved? How can I be sure that I'm going to heaven? These are issues and concerns that you might want to address. Now, here's an example. The Apostle Paul on Mars Hill gives an example of evangelism in a hostile environment. And he finds something in the culture to use as a stepping stone to capture their attention and to awaken their curiosity. He starts with God and creation. He has to start with creation because he's dealing with people who don't know anything about God. They're polytheists. They worship many gods. They're idolaters. He's not speaking to Hebrews who know something about the law and of God's creation and of the prophets. He deals with the spiritual longings and the need for repentance. So when you receive an invitation to speak on any subject, you should brainstorm. Write down briefly with a few words and symbols everything you can think about that subject. So I've got a notebook and I write all sorts of things in there when I'm thinking about a new Bible study or sermon or whatever. You think of sources, scriptures, principles, examples, illustrations, action items. Action items are important, and you should review your ideas and then organize them. Start with the problem, and then the scriptural principles, then the illustrations. from the scripture, then from history, then from contemporary, and then from your personal experience to illustrate the issue. The most important thing is you've got a subject and you've got a goal. Now, okay, what stories are going to resonate to the people to understand this issue or subject or applies? And that's the most important thing. You've got stories, you've got principles, and you've got applications. You should prioritize the most important ideas, starting from the least important to the most important. So when you're giving your arguments, you start with the least important one first, so that your last one is the best, the biggest, the flamethrower napalm that clears the field, wipe out the enemy, whatever that may be. So we call this BOP, brainstorm, organize, prioritize, B-O-P. That's what you're writing. And that should be done in the study, not while you're sitting on the front pew at a major conference thinking, what am I going to say when I get up there? That is so shameful, that person should be flogged. Aim for results. Consider what attitude you want your audience to develop considering your subject. Determine what actions you want your audience to do as a result of this presentation. Then consider what advantage are you offering them through the material you are pre-presenting. You've been asked to speak on the right to life for people and babies, say. And so you start with the principles of life begins at conception, biblically, scientifically, medically. The attitude you want, people must be hostile to abortion. I'd never consider it. I must counsel people against it. I'd never vote for a political party that supports abortion. You think of your subject. And then what advantage are you offering? Now, you might have had some experience in abortion, maybe you've counseled somebody. In my case, my mother was advised, was counseled by the doctor to abort me because she had had Thalidomide tablets, which were the wonder drug to stop any kind of morning sickness. But the babies were being born deformed, without arms, legs, without eyes in many cases. And so she is advised to have an abortion. So, okay, I've got some personal experience. My mother was told she must abort me, and she chose not to, obviously. That's some personal insight I can give. My mother was a medical nurse. She works in maternity most of her life. So I can think of some things I could put in there. But I've counseled some people who have come from abortions or been a product of a rape and people said she should have been aborted. But meanwhile, of course, the person who does the rape should be the one who gets killed, not the victim or the innocent victim. The child's not guilty. No child should be put to death for the sin of the father, as Ezekiel 18 tells us. So we think of the scripture, we think of the principles, choose life's You and your children may live. Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves. Rescue those being led away to death. Hold back those staggering towards slaughter. We gather our scriptures. We get the medical facts. Life begins at conception. At three weeks after conception, the baby's heartbeat can be measured on an EEG. At six weeks after conception, the baby's brainwave can be measured. lifelong brainwave. So if the absence of a heartbeat is a sign of death, the presence of a heartbeat should be a confirmation of life. The absence of a brainwave is a confirmation of death. Well, the presence of a brainwave should be a confirmation of life. So we think of our arguments, what we want the people to do, make your presentation come alive relating a Bible story, and we just think now, When Moses was about to be born, the deliverer, Pharaoh issues an order, all the male children are to be killed, thrown into the river to be eaten by crocodiles and so on. When the Lord Jesus is about to be born, King Herod issues the order that all male babies under two are to be killed in Bethlehem, and so on. So you think of Bible stories. There's the pharaohs and the Herods of this day who tried to kill babies as well. The menace of the manger. Think of historical illustrations, personal anecdotes. Help the audience understand and relate to the principles you're communicating. Life begins at conception. Abortion is murder. And you energize your audience. to put your faith in it, there are three basic requirements for all public speaking. Number one, have something worthwhile, important, and relevant to say. Is it important? Is it worthwhile? Is it relevant? Then you can go further. Now, for example, a true love waits message for, you know, you should not engage in sexual relations until you're married, that may not be appropriate if you're called to speak to an old age home. People in their 80s and 90s don't necessarily need to hear that. They're kind of past that. This is a message for young people. Similarly, you can think of some messages that are appropriate for a girl's group, but not for a boy's group. There are things appropriate for a man's group, not for a woman's group. You've got to think, is this relevant? It's not just, is it important and worthwhile? Is it relevant to this particular group? Number two, explain and illustrate what you say. You say what you mean directly and preferably what the scripture says, but then you illustrate. You've got to have a story that goes with it. It's the stories that people remember. So have appropriate stories and explain what you say. Thirdly, know how to start and how to finish and when to finish. Not 40 minutes into message, how much time do I have? Or even worse, I've seen guest speakers say this in conferences, can I have some more time? Which, it's very manipulative. You're asking a host in the middle of a service, you've gone over time, you haven't been disciplined. He said you've got to stop by this time. Now you're asking, can I have more time, and so on. That's not appropriate. You can ask for more time before the service, but not during it. That's very rude, I think. How to start, how to finish. One of the problems is these people who don't know how to start. They come, good evening, hello, I'm so-and-so, and I come from this place, and so on, and then they ramble, ramble, ramble, waffle, waffle, waffle. Get on with it, start with it. If you don't know how to start, there's several ways you can just start. I like to start with the scripture, or with the title. Or you can start with a problem. What must I do to be saved? You can start with some issue, but just start, for goodness sakes. These people who carry on and on, and somewhere along the line, they say, well, let me start. Or firstly, people think, you know, I thought you were getting close to finishing. And here this person talks about firstly. Firstly, and you know, we've been going 40 minutes. This is pretty bad. What do you mean, firstly? Now there's some bad things people do, and then they don't know how to finish. It's like they take this plane round and round, they can't land it. So how do you conclude? Sometimes you can just say, let us pray. And that's one way of definitely stopping. You can also start by saying, let us pray. That's also acceptable. But knowing how and when to finish is important. If anything, if you do nothing else in your servant preparation, you should have your final conclusion, your last paragraph, your last statement written down. Because the last thing you say should be concluding. It really wraps up. It's powerful. So if you haven't worked out your first words or anything, maybe you think, I've got these three stories I'm going to tell. There's these three points I'm going to make. Have your first sentence and your last paragraph written down so that you know exactly where to go. So to give you other principles and effects of communication, your appearance, your clothing, your grooming, your accessories, the better you're dressed, the better. Because if you've got a serious message, dress seriously. So like for funerals, you would be in a suit. If you were in clerical gear, you would wear clerical garbs and accessories. Your personal appearance, your cleanliness, your neatness, your clothing, are an important part of your message. People can't take a man seriously if he's not dressed seriously. Your posture, your body language is key. Your gestures, your eye contact, your facial expressions, your tone of voice can either undermine or enhance your message. If you have a serious message, being too jovial undermines it. You get these people who, especially the Americans, have got to start with a joke. Well, there's a place for jokes, but is it appropriate and is it relevant for that particular audience? And sometimes your message can really undermine what you're saying by how you look. Your gestures, sometimes there's a need for challenging people. And occasionally, good arm and hand movements make a difference. Eye contact is what they call the visual handshake. that you look at the people in the eye when you're speaking to them. Your facial expressions, you set the tone, whether it is serious or whether it is not serious and so on. Your voice, this pitch, volume, inflection, pace, you can't always keep going at the same pace. And the people who can make even exciting messages sound boring just by how they say it. Sometimes it's so tedious as a person just drags out every word, and you just sit in there in agony. Then there's these wasted words, well, um, er, like, you know, and these people are coming along with, we serve a good God. We're living in the last days. And it's like, sorry? I didn't hear you. You can say the devil is a liar. Oh, the devil is a liar. Yes, that's another good one. Now your personal involvement works better. So when a person is invested into your life and cares for you, my father-in-law, Bill Bethman, 67 years of missionary, even in his 70s, going up to Sudan, right to the battlefront. Now this man, you could see when he was in the field, the people loved him because he had sacrificed, he'd risked his life for them. Eastern Europe, going behind enemy lines. When no one else cared or dared, Bill Bethman was there for him. So he could say anything and the people were hanging on his words because he had shown by his life And so it's not our words that matter as much as our deeds. It's what we've done. And the people know this person's invested. They've helped. They've put their life on the line. Now, in Sudan, the people there know and love me because I was coming there early, early, when no one else was coming, and ministering to them during the dark days when the church was being bombed and so on. That's more valuable than anything I could say. We need to identify with our audience, and we need to respect the integrity of our audience and not insult them. I came across a revival speaker recently who spent a lot of his time insulting the audience. He said, nobody knows these things. Nobody does this. I don't see anybody taking the Bible seriously. He just would pound and pound and insult. To assume that your audience are all idiots and hypocrites is just destructive. Nobody's going to be listening to you if you carry on insulting them. And so it's important to respect your audience and be natural. It's important, God doesn't have a mold. You don't all have to be like Billy Graham. You don't all have to be like Teddy Jakes or whatever it is that people have as their models. Be natural, be yourself. By the way, this is my youngest son, Calvin. I took him up on some mission trips with me because from age six, he had memorized Evangelism Explosion. He could have led the EE presentation we did just now, the marching song. So I took him to show people in Zambia how even a little child can memorize a lot of scripture just through repetition. Now, there's a place for humor. Sometimes you can relax the people who've been too tense or hold their attention with some humor, but don't overdo it. And then it's important to have questions, but it's important in question time to listen what is a person saying and try and respond in a relevant way. Now sometimes you're in trouble because people whisper. I mean, just take the other day when we were, yesterday morning, we were introducing. And most people mumbled what they were saying and you couldn't hear what they were saying. They have no idea. And have no idea who they are, have no idea where they come from, have no idea what church they represent. They just mumbled a few words and you couldn't hear it. So that's pointless. If you can't be heard, it's sometimes necessary to say, excuse me, pardon, could you repeat that? Or if a person's rambled, I'm sorry, I missed it, what's the question? Because sometimes a person's made a bit of a speech, but they haven't asked you a question. If it's question time, you sometimes need to reiterate what is your question or ask the person to clarify. Or could you summarize that in a question? Because sometimes a person isn't making a question, they're just making a speech. In fact, in some cases, they should have advertised for their own meeting, hired their own venue, because they've got a totally different message to give, not even relevant to what we gathered here for. Now, if you've got visual aids, like I've used Ovid Projector, but you can have clipboards. You can use the flip charts. I see here there's boards that you can write on. But if you've got photos, artwork, handouts, literature, that does help. Like small Paul with his artwork, he draws people to Christ, literally draws using chalk chalks. But I think he's come to this area before. You know him, or his son Tiny Tim. This is small Paul. You can get an audience almost anywhere for things like artwork, especially if you're a confident speaker. And the Jesus film, my early years, I many times opened up meetings by organizing film evangelism. People would come, and at the end of it, people would invite you to come and speak at their church or their school, and you'd have a ministry all organized. But the first step was public evangelism through a film evangelism. I could go in a village I've never been to before, and just by that, draw people in. we've got PA system, we've got generator, there might be power failure everywhere else in Mozambique or Zimbabwe, but you've got the only show in town, people come and they will hear the gospel. And we had preached before and after each of the film showings, so we'd have opportunities, especially 16mm, four reels, you'd have five preaching opportunities. And that's a powerful way. We can also demonstrate. You can see in the Bible how the prophets would sometimes walk through town with an ox yoke or demonstrate things, set up models and destroy them in town to communicate. So we set up little coffins and crosses and flowers on the 1st of February of the year at Parliament to make a protest against the government legalizing abortion in South Africa. So demonstrating life against a conception Abortion stops the beating heart. Babies have been killed. So these small coffins and crosses help. We are visualizing outside Mary Stope's abortuary. We make a stand. This abortion is now closed by God's grace. It took years of protest and prayers, but making a stand. don't you like, they call it reproductive health care. They kill babies and they call it reproductive health care. What is healthy about killing babies? What is reproductive about killing babies? But the internationally preferred reproductive health care. That sounds better, I suppose, than saying infanticide international or something like that. And here we've got posters, we've got coffins, we're demonstrating making a stand against an abortory that also doesn't operate anymore. They've closed down. You can have banners plainly with scriptures. Even a few people can make a big impact if you've got well chosen and designed posters and banners. And then of course, what is your conclusion? Aim for your goal. What must you do next? Every sermon should have a Now what, what do I need to do? So you've got to make it so clear. It's not just that you gave some principles from the scripture, but at the end, repent, believe, be baptized, go into all the world, preach the gospel. There's got to be some action item, next step of action. For example, in Geneva, after William Farrell had evangelized Geneva, debated the bishop, taken over his pulpit, gave the people of Geneva a challenge. Do you want to stay with papal superstition? or do you want to join with the Protestant Reformation of going back to the Bible? And the citizens of Geneva said, we are for the Reformation. They put their back on the Pope and they said yes to the Bible. And so Geneva became a Protestant town. They remember that in Geneva regularly. When John Knox went back to Scotland in 1860, he called the people to reformation. And you can see the people expected action. Look, they came to church with their helmets and their pikes and their swords, their banners, and they weren't disappointed. John Knox called them to action to retake Scotland for the Reformation. no more papal superstition, no more Mary Queen of Scots and her adulterous affairs and murdering her husbands and all the rest of it. We're going to make Scotland Protestants. And they went out and they smashed idols of Mary and they smashed idols throughout the churches, they pulled down crucifixes, they demolished altars, they replaced them with the Lord's table, and you could see Scotland was brought to the Reformation. John Knox had prayed, give me Scotland or I die. And the sermon was not aimless. It was calling the people to action. And they took action. And Scotland was revived and sent out how many mysteries, including people like David Livingston and Robert Moffat, Mary Schleser, how many great mysteries went into foreign fields from Scotland. But Scotland had to be called to action. And in St. Giles Kirk in Edinburgh, John Knox in 1860 called the people to action, repentance and reformation. Basic guidelines for all public speaking. Stand up to be seen. None of this dialoguing, sitting on a chair. Shame on these pastors today, these emerging pastors, sit with their gelled hair and all that, and they're sitting on a stool. Stand up to be seen when you're preaching. No preaching sitting down, please, ever. Speak up to be heard. No good mumbling. And do you know what often happens in these churches? There's a little old lady sitting in the back row, and she comes to you after and says, I've got poor hearing. I couldn't hear you. Well, ma'am, why were you sitting in the back row? Maybe you should have sat in the front row and switched your hearing aid on. But nevertheless, bear in mind, the people who can't hear very well tend to speak in the back row. You must project your voice. You must speak to be heard. No good mumbling like we had from many people yesterday in the introductions. And shut up to be appreciated. This, by the way, is Ian Paisley, one of the most powerful gospel preachers I've ever heard in Northern Ireland. And his preaching was like that. It's like hammer blows. Here he's got a hammer, and that's exactly the way he preached. So stand up to be seen, speak up to be heard, show up to be appreciated.