Talking About Talks..

by Englishman 15 Replies latest jw friends

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  TR

  I was always nervous as hell before a talk, but once I got up there on the platform I became "DOGMATIC GESTURE MAN!"

  With flowing WT emblazened polyester cape in tow, I transformed into the caped crusader of public speaking at the kingdom hall. Alas, my career was cut short. For just weeks after my final #4 talk,(I actually did one Sunday public talk) I exited the tower never to return.

  I think I would have made a great convention speaker. I timed my talks well and used a good portion of humor along with big doses of righteous indignation along with flailing arms. Pauses were used to build anticipation, with the next sentenced at near yelling volumn. I tried real hard to keep the attention of the sheep, sometimes making them laugh and or jump. I got a kick out of that. Ahhh, memories....

  TR

  "Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
  --Benjamin Franklin, 1759
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  RunningMan

  I always find that there is good and bad to giving a talk. I dread writing the talk, and always put it off until the last minute. However, once I get up on stage and begin to relax, I enjoy it. It is kind of a high, if it is going well.

  Actually, giving talks is one of the only good things about being a Witness. Whether you liked giving them or not, it helps you develop a skill that most people never hone. The only way to get comfortable speaking in front of a group is to do it. For some people, it takes a lot of practice. This skill has been extremely useful to me in business.
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  Abaddon

  After I left, I found other people nerves at speaking in public/in front of a class/whatever quite amusing.

  I can get up, say what needs to be said, and sit down. Notes? I laugh at notes. Actually, if we are talking software I HATE Lotus Notes... big pile of poo

  People living in glass paradigms shouldn't throw stones...
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  NeonMadman

  I enjoyed giving talks very much, and was always regarded as one of the best speakers in the congregation. Oddly, I was most comfortable speaking from a manuscript rather than an outline, but I didn't read the talk. Basically, my talk-writing style was to write the whole thing out, then boil it down to an outline afterward. Well, unless I was working on "use of outline" or such, I was usually too lazy to cut the notes back to outline form, so I talked directly from the manuscript. I usually didn't follow it very closely; used it as one would use an outline and said what I wanted to at the moment. It was a pretty unusual way to give talks, but it worked for me. Occasionally, an elder would notice what I was doing and try to counsel me on it, but, given that my talks were better than most anyone else's in the congregation, there wasn't much he could say.

  Toward the end, I got more liberal in handling the material, too. I would make the talk what I wanted it to be, using the assigned material as the base, but branching out more or less where I wanted to go, bringing in what the Bible said, not actually contradicting the Society's position, but definitely expressing scriptural concepts in ways not usually heard in Kingdom Halls. In one of my last talks, I concluded by suggesting that the next time the audience looked at a picture in one of the publications of Jesus nailed to the stake, they should say to themselves, "That should be me up there...He suffered and died that way because of my sins." Very unconventional stuff for a Kingdom Hall. When I walked back through the audience, a few people had tears in their eyes.

  Tom
  "The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure; to live it you had to explode." ---Bob Dylan
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  Angharad

  Hated every minute of it.

  Congrats on your win Eman
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  D wiltshire

  WHile I was an elder I had about 20+ 45minute outlines that I would regularly give.
  I never liked giving talks and never stuck to the outline or the scriptures in the outline. Sometimes I get in trouble for not sticking to the outline, but not enough to worry me.

  At circut assemblies rehersals the CO would usually tell me that I wasn't prepared enough, and that was true, I didn't like preparing and needed the pressure of last minute to knuckle down and get it done.

  My best talks, ones that I got the most compliments on were, never prepared well and was me just winging it. One elder told me not to prepare my talks to much because they were so much better if I didn't.

  Near the end of my going to meetings I just hated the public talks, because they made little if any coherent sense, and because they seemed to be just reading an outline and looking up scriptures with no meaning being given for the scriptures read. I would alway bring something to read durring the meetings because the talks were so stupid and unenlightening.

  If someone lived a trillion X longer than you, and had a billion X more reasoning ability would he come to the same conclusions as you?