Teaching Students and Keeping Their Attention

Teaching is hard work, especially when there is a room full of angsty teenagers who feel like  they’ve already heard what you have to say. Speaking clearly while managing distractions and reading the atmosphere of the room, all while keeping eye contact and maintaining good non-verbal communication, can take a lot of effort. Good teachers never stop learning. This usually involves asking for loving critique. So whether you’re a fearful rookie or a seasoned veteran, take an honest evaluation and ask the Lord to help you develop as a teacher. Your goal, leading students to be transformed by the good news of Jesus Christ, is an excellent motivation. 

It is essential to work through the questions in the previous chapter prior (chapter 24 of Lead Them to Jesus is entitled “Preparing a Bible Message”) to crafting your message, or what you teach will only have a biblical veneer rather than being deeply anchored in God’s authoritative Word. Build off your notes from studying the text (remember the recommendation to answer the questions from the previous chapter in a notebook or computer document), giving extra attention to applying Scripture to their head, heart, and hands. Ensuring students can see how your message connects with their daily lives will help keep their attention. Pray for discernment.

Teaching Students and Keeping Their Attention 

Your goal will be to open students’ eyes to behold the grace of God poured out for them through Jesus Christ and for them to respond with genuine faith. This means resisting the temptation to include everything you’ve unearthed in your preparation. Instead, highlight the big idea of the biblical text. If you are committed to expository teaching, you will cover a wide range of biblical truths rather than repeating certain hobby-horses, so it’s okay to focus on the main point of the text and leave other points for another week.

Now, let’s explore how to deliver God’s Word in a way that will connect with students and keep their attention. 

Use Illustrations Well

This article is an excerpt from Lead Them to Jesus: A Handbook for Youth Workers by Mike McGarry, used by permission from New Growth Press.

Illustrations come in many forms—stories, metaphors, quotations, movie references, jokes—and can be a wonderful on-ramp for your listeners to connect with your message. In many ways, illustrations are like commercials: they may portray the significance of the message and pique the listener’s interest, or they might be so clever and entertaining that the listener forgets the point. Not everything that’s memorable is good or useful. 

Most illustrations fail because they’re dead on arrival. They were poorly conceived, or are too long, or they rely on insider knowledge shared only by a select group of people, or they’re simply delivered in a way that commands no interest. Others fail because they are so vivid or funny that they overtake their intended point and students become more captivated by the illustration than the message. Resist the pull toward illustrations to entertain or merely to keep attention. Use them to help students understand, see, hear, and feel the importance of what God’s Word is saying to them.

The best illustrations do not teach, they uncover. An opening illustration can help students realize they already have opinions about the point of tonight’s message. Another illustration can help students see the ways their lives already reflect the big idea you are emphasizing. Good illustrations connect something already present in the listener’s life to the biblical message you are teaching.

Example of a Tried-and-True Teaching Template

It is especially helpful for new teachers to have a simple framework around which they can build their message. The best-known speaking template for youth ministry is probably Hook-Book-Look-Took. As you discover your own teaching voice, feel free to create alternative models for your messages, so long as you are seeking honest feedback from others about whether or not your messages are connecting with students. 

Hook: Start off with a short illustration or story that introduces the theme of your talk.

Book: Read the Scripture passage you will be teaching.

Look: Explore the big idea of the text and help students see the truth and power of God’s Word. This portion of the message is often the longest.

Took: Apply the big idea to their head, heart, and hands so students can take the message home. Resist the temptation to make this only one or two sentences at the end of your message. Instead, weave applications throughout your message so you can emphasize them with greater power at the end.

There is no universally right answer to the question of how long to speak. It depends on both your speaking ability and the group’s attention span. Generally, the younger your students are, the closer to fifteen minutes you should stay; and the more experienced you are as a teacher, the closer you can stretch to thirty minutes. Within that time frame, honestly evaluate your effectiveness as a teacher and the attention span of your students. 

Technical Speaking Skills

One of my preaching professors taught that we should pay attention to the Four P’s: Pitch, Pause, Pace, and Punch. When your pitch rises and falls, this keeps you from being monotone. Using a well-timed pause, usually after saying your big idea or something that will take an extra second or two before it sinks in, will serve your listeners well. Sometimes your main point is well-emphasized by speeding up your pace, other times by slowing down and letting your students lean into what you have to say. And punch means accentuating a keyword for emphasis. This doesn’t happen by shouting or yelling, but by giving a certain word (or a certain syllable) slightly extra umph to make it stand out.

Also be aware of your filler words and annoying tics. I cannot wear a watch while I teach, or it becomes a fidget toy. I can be prone to saying the words like, so, and right when I stray from my notes. Because people have made me aware of these bad habits (and have listened to recordings of my messages), I can be thoughtful about avoiding them. When you find yourself about to fall into one of these habits, just take an extra second to pause, collect your thoughts, smile, and then move on. If you aren’t aware of your tics or annoying habits, ask some people you trust to speak honestly and gently with you. I’m sure they’ve noticed a few if they’ve heard you teach more than half a dozen times.

Don’t Assume the Gospel

Finally—and this cannot be emphasized enough—resist the temptation to assume the gospel. This can happen when you simply talk about “the gospel” without explaining what it is and anchoring your message in it. Assuming the gospel usually means you’ve suspected that everyone in the audience either is a Christian already or has heard the gospel so many times they don’t want to hear it again. So you give in to the pressure to come up with something fresh and new that will capture students’ attention. 

You will never preach an original sermon—and if you do, it’s probably some ancient heresy wrapped up in modern clothing. If you are bored with the gospel, maybe it would be better for you to take a break from teaching so someone else can step in and allow you space to revive your intimacy with Jesus. Always lead students to Jesus, and study biblical theology enough that you know how to do that in a way that isn’t the same message every week.

When we begin to assume the gospel, we stop proclaiming it.