After every attempt, always post mortem.
Today, I’ve come to realize something ironic. Using powerpoint can relinquish power from the speaker and hand it over to the audience.
It is unmistakeably true that every message spoken by a real messenger of God is empowered by the Holy Spirit. The speaker is but an instrument; a faithful servant is a mouthpiece. But the message itself, and its power to edify, comes from God. The degree of effectiveness of the message depends on the working power of the Holy Spirit.
However, I believe it is necessary for every speaker to evaluate himself after every delivery. Not so much because the quality of the message is directly proportional solely to the amount of human effort put into it. Believing so will put the strength of man above reliance on God. We don’t want to be doing that.
But we still need to constantly check ourselves for areas that need improvement. It’s just a matter of personal responsibility.
I’ve come to realize that using powerpoint may not necessarily be advantageous. The advantage that every speaker has lies in the fact that the audience does not know what he is going to say, or what he plans to say. Whatever comes out from the speaker’s mouth is totally in the speaker’s control. Even if the speaker decides to say what he has not planned to say, or if he chooses not to say what he has prepared in his speech, it is totally in the speaker’s knowledge only.
The audience, on the receiving end, will never know.
That is power!
But when you use powerpoint slides, you’re letting power slip away from your hands. I can give you 7 reasons why.
- You have to spend more time preparing powerpoint slides. More work, more trouble.
- You better make your slides look professional, or better don’t do it at all. Additional burden.
- If your powerpoint slides are not effective, they will draw attention away from you instead of towards you. That tempts a backfire.
- Your powerpoint slides openly show what you have planned to say. It’s like playing poker, and you’re holding your cards facing out.
- When time is running out and you don’t use all your slides, it will look like bad planning on your part. Not good.
- If you press on to finish all your slides, you’ve overstayed your time. No audience will like that.
- And of course, if technical glitches happen, it will make you look really bad.
Therefore, powerpoint slides can make you lose control of your own speech. It hangs you out in the open for your audience to see.
Anyway, if it was an acceptable excuse, I was overworked this week. Constantly battling exhaustion, fatigue and sleep deprivation, it was hard to cram in quality preparation time. I knew I didn’t do a good job right after delivering it. Only after a proper sleep, a good bath, and a square meal, did I realize so many angles that could’ve made significant improvements.
- If I had focused on one theme only, instead of cramming two themes into one message, I could’ve done better.
- If I had chosen not to use powerpoint, I could’ve used the time I saved to build more on the first theme.
- If I had thought of tying the first theme with the church theme for the year, it would’ve been more relevant.
- If I had not wasted time on doing a powerpoint, I could’ve done a revision on the first draft.
In my experience, the first draft is usually the biggest mistake. But I did not have time, so I had to go with the first draft.
True enough, it turned out to be a mistake.
Sigh. Anyway, I hate to give excuses. It’s better to learn from mistakes, and not to repeat the pattern that leads to those mistakes.
A few trends that I find noteworthy…
a) Don’t ever cram two themes into one message. It almost never turns out well.
b) If you must use powerpoint, use just 10 slides. If you spend 5 minutes to deliberate on each slide, that will be a 50-minute message. Don’t con yourself into believing that you have the discipline to breeze through each slide in 2 minutes. It never happens.
c) If you can’t do it in 10 slides, then don’t do it at all. It’s not worth the risk, nor the effort.
d) Always, always revise your first draft. Failure to do so is tragedy.
e) Any common audience may not share a similar appreciation for theological acrobatics. If you must need a sounding board for theological discussions, it’s always wiser to do it within small groups.
It’s a wonder why I can see those patterns, but I still find myself repeating them. Indeed, the human brain can sometimes be slow to lean and quick to forget.