TED TALK 5: Sam Burrows: Is the Age of the Monologue Over?

I began my little spiel by explaining that I am seldom engaged in the ‘teaching/preaching’ part of a church meeting because I feel like I’ve heard it all before and can even predict the points the preacher is going to get to before they give a whiff of them. But more than that, sitting and listening is not how I, or many other people learn. Research shows that people only retain 10% of what they hear in a monologue, but if a visual factor is introduced, most people will retain 20%. If they are able to listen, view and write then most people will remember 40%, but there will be an 80% retention if they can talk about it on top of that. The question then becomes, why do we simply stick to a monologue?

Social media has ushered in the age of dialogue over monologue, and this was what the early church was like by and large. The NZ curriculum has responded to this and encourages teachers to take on more of a facilitation role within this new information landscape and to let students find content themselves. I encouraged people to think about creative ways in which we could go about teaching and learning in a church environment in acknowledging this information. I suggested different group activities and experiences in a service to engage people better when learning.

Feedback

Most people welcomed the ideas presented, expressing a dislike for being talked at and agreeing that interaction is better for engaging with material. There was an openness to a change of format and a desire for question and answers and for chances to get involved in what is said from the front. Some suggested that multiple monologues may work well instead of just one from one person.

There were some questions raised as to how this would actually work in a big church, and that is a good question. There doesn’t have to be huge amounts of change though, more of an acknowledgement for a need to be more conscious of people’s attention spans and to have them more involved somehow, rather than just passive listeners. People were also (rightly) concerned about a move away from preaching from a centralised base of authority to more of a dialogue based environment, unsure of how that was to work in relation to heresy. How do you encourage discernment within this?