How to use object lessons
Zoned out! Out to lunch! Deer in headlights! Mental wandering in a brainless wasteland! Are these the phrases that are used to describe your lessons? Do you have difficulty getting the attention of your audience? Object lessons can be a valuable tool or a harmful distraction depending on how you use them.
How do we think?
- In outline form . . .No
- In written form . . . No
- In principle form . . . No
- With pictures – When we find ourselves thinking we find ourselves with mental pictures
Ingredients of a good object lesson:
- Understanding the Audience
- What are their needs
- What are their experiences
- Using correct words
- What is understood
- Pieces of a puzzle that draw a picture
- Each word depending on the audience has a picture related to that word. What are the pictures that come to mind when these words are spoken?
- Cool
- Romantic Place
- Dream Car
- Many times our pictures are just a little bit different based on our experiences and yet we use the same word
- Each word depending on the audience has a picture related to that word. What are the pictures that come to mind when these words are spoken?
- Using God’s creation
- Using what I can see to explain what I can not see
- Milk of the Word
- Fruits of the Spirit
- Send laborers into the harvest
- Reap what you sow
- Using our experience in the world to teach spiritual lessons
- Washing the feet of the disciples
- Baptism
- Using what I can see to explain what I can not see
Dangers of the Object Lesson
- Preach the object lesson instead of the truth of the object lesson
- Assume that all aspects of the object provide good lessons
- Object lesson overwhelms the truth
- Object draws a different picture for the audience than the one intended by the speaker
Metaphors weld the imagination with experience
2 Timothy 2:1-6
Hebrews 5:11-14
Daniel 3
