Once in a blue moon we'll have a speaker at our congregation give an excellent public talk. Excellent meaning that he would be a good speaker, superb teacher and would expound upon the scriptures. Humble and modest as well. These types are far and few in between. Extremely rare. He would have the audience with him all the way through and would make the 45 minutes fly by and seem like only 15 minutes.
However, I would hear grumbling after the meeting...from our elders. They would say that they speaker only brought attention to himself.
Can I say "JEALOUSY"!!??
that would be me then...(especially the humble bit..lol)
actually little toe makes an interesting point...i must have given all my talks dozens of times...but i never got bored of giving them..i would always use an interesting illustration...not the usual cliched ones..but something that would get the audience thinking..and i would weave this thru the talk and keep on drawing on it and making more applications to it...
i think the only talk i didnt find very interesting was one that i hadnt done this with ...and so i redid the whole talk..and presented it as a court case..(interestingly the case that franz spoke at in edinburgh scotland. i used the wt articles on it which i now know to be suspect but i did make it exciting at the time.)
just before i was df....i had just started giving a talk which i probably enjoyed the most..it was based around a bill bryson travel book in which he described the effects of hypothermia..i think i only gave that twice which was a shame even if i say so myself..
i did have one elder tell me once in a kind of dismissive way that you can have too much of a good thing..(referring to me..so a bit of a backhanded compliment)..i remember thinking that we expect to live in a perfect world so there was something quite amiss in his reasoning.
but it is true that the basic information given in the talks doesnt change...so the speaker has to find interesting ways to present it..sadly most elders had neither the ability nor the inclination.
i used to apply the motto from the movie jerry maguire...'mostly they just want to be inspired'
if my talks didnt move or inspire people than i would think i had failed..and i didnt want to fail
