It’ll take a few moments for the audio to download, but the whole presentation is below.

The title of my seminar will be Learning, growing and sharing: The use of media in mission

- The media of the twenty first century has its part to play in mission, giving new opportunities for sharing the gospel as well as keeping folk at home up-to-date with the latest news and building support. Find out how mission is changing with technology and where you could play your part.

I’m currently conducting some research which I hope will form the basis for the seminar. You can contribute to this by filling in the online survey.

The results of the research will first be released at GO2010. If you can’t make it along to the seminar I’ll make sure that a summary of the findings appear here soon after the event.

Iain Dale transcribed a recent talk he had given on speech making. Opening with the line, “The best speeches are made like I sing in the shower. With no notes. Anne Widdecombe taught me that.” That’s food for thought.

One thing that is making an impression is the power of stories. Right now I can think of two presentations that I heard today. The first told stories and I can remember the basic content, from that I can then piece together the facts of the presentation. The second talk tried to convey a lot of facts, most of which I couldn’t recall no matter how hard I try. In fact, it would have been more useful to have the content of the second talk in an e-mail to refer back to when I needed.

I need to think some more about this. It’s really easy in my job to want to convey the detail, but I’m not sure that I’d expect someone outside of Wycliffe to remember the number of people still waiting for Bible translation to begin. What they may remember are the stories about individuals, such as the one in my last newsletter.

A pastor’s simple request

A knock at the gate drew me outside. I expected to find my co-worker waiting there but to my surprise I saw, instead, a man I didn’t recognize. He seemed almost familiar, yet not quite. Who’s this? I thought to myself as I went to greet him.

The man at the gate turned out to be a thoughtful old pastor from a border city 100 miles north of my place. He had travelled all day on the back of a motorcycle over dusty, pothole-infested roads just to ask me one question: can you translate the Bible into our language?

“When did you become a Christian?” I asked.

“I was born a Christian,” he replied.

I thought about that. If he was more than 75 years old, as he claimed to be, his parents would have been alive at the tail end of the ministry of the first missionary to go to his area. The Bible had been translated into the national language, and was at that time being translated into the wider regional language. But when the local people requested a translation in their own language, the missionary said, “Your group is too small,” implying, it’s not worth the effort.

This pastor desperately wanted God’s Word in his own language. As he was talking about his dream to a colleague from another village, the colleague said, “I know some people who do Bible translation work. Let’s go ask them if they’ll help.”

So the colleague carried the elderly pastor on the back of his bike all the way to my place to ask for help.

“Do you speak the area minority language?” I asked. He said that he did, but the hesitation in his voice led me to think otherwise. For the next four hours, I administered some language evaluation exercises to determine whether or not his language was similar to other languages in the area. I discovered that it was entirely different and would need its own discrete translation.

After finishing the assessment tests, the pastor innocently asked, “When will the translation be ready?”

I had to tell him the sad news that, in situations like his – a language that is not accessible to linguists, a people group without higher education to assist in the process, and other factors that impact translation work – the average time for completing a translation is 15 to 20 years.

He then looked at me, steady and calm, and asked, “So when can we start?”

Here are the notes:

How to become a better presenter

1. Tell them what you are going to say. 2. Tell them. 3. Tell them what you just told them.

1. Prepare

• Know your subject matter
• Know who you are talking to
• Know the key points you need to communicate
• Decide on the best method of communication / illustration
  • You can use, your voice, flip charts, overhead projectors, PowerPoint, music, film, and other tools, for making your presentation more interesting.
• Aim to keep it as short as possible. 20 minutes is roughly the maximum attention span without changing styles.
• Practice your presentation.
• Get someone else to listen, video yourself, or stand in front of a mirror if it helps.

2. The Presentation

• Arrive early and check everything – computers, sound, stage, lights, audience, etc.
• Keep calm
• Speak to the audience, don’t read, don’t turn your back.
• SMILE!!

3. Review

• Review what you have done
• Get feedback
• Make the next presentation even better.

Other resources

PDF guide on how to put presentations together and deliver them from the University of Bolton.

Most presentations (and I’ve seen a lot) are absolutely horrible. They’re not horrible because they weren’t designed by a professional, they’re horrible because they are delivered by someone who is hiding what they came to say. The new trend of tweaking your slides with expensive graphic design doesn’t solve this problem, it makes it worse. Give me an earnest amateur any day, please. Seth Godin

A presentation is a precious opportunity. It’s a powerful arrangement… one speaker, an attentive audience, all in their seats, all paying attention (at least at first). Don’t waste it.

The purpose of a presentation is to change minds. That’s the only reason I can think of to spend the time and resources. If your goal isn’t to change minds, perhaps you should consider a different approach. Seth Godin

The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint – Guy Kawasaki