Never Miss an Opportunity to Share a Good Illustration

Jesus often taught with illustrations.  He knew His audience and the illustration that would relate best.  He might use a story, or He would heal someone right there in front of His audience, or He would multiply the meal in a little boys lunch box.  He never missed an opportunity to share a good illustraion.  He knew that when He did, lives would be impacted and people would remember the lesson.   

We are a highly visual society today.  We watch television, look at our computers all day, search the world on our smart phones and tablet devices, and are bombarded with moving digital pictures as we go through our day. Visual information is always coming at us because those creating the visuals understand that we are more likely to remember things if we see them than if we simply hear them.  

In the 1960s, Edgar Dale studied the effectiveness of various teaching-learning methods.  He determined from his study that if we only listen to a spoken lecture (the common method of teaching in the university), we will remember 25% after 3 hours and only 10-20% after 3 days.  If, however, we read the material for ourselves, we can increase our recall to 72% after 3 hours, but still only 10% after 3 days.  But, if we receive a good visual illustration combined with the verbal information, we can increase recall to 80% after 3 hours and still recall 65% after 3 days. 

Jesus knew this, of course, because He had participated in creating us this way, ("Let Us make man in Our image." Gen. 1:26 ).  Teaching the way Jesus did means using good illustrations.  The more visual the illustration, the better. We have so many multi-media possibilities available to us today.  Effective teachers spend time throughout the week looking for ways to illustrate what they are preparing to teach. 

You and I may not be able to perform miracles as we teach, but illustrations are in abundance.  Personal stories, stories from literature, current news stories, song lyrics, poems, articles from magazines, paintings, photos, etc. all make great illustrations. The job of the teacher is to guide learners to discover the application by showing the learner something that will connect.  A teacher who waits until the night before the lesson to prepare will not have the tools needed to make the lesson come alive.  They may be able to prepare good lecture content and may be able to come up with a good question or two, but in order to be most effective in our teaching, we need quality illustrations that will stick with our learner long after the lesson is completed. 

If you are a teacher, and you want to teach the way Jesus did, use good illustrations.  Your learners will recall more of what you are teaching and will be able to meditate on it longer.  It will have greater impact in their lives and may even be something they can use to help another person in the future.  When it comes to making disciples, it is our responsibilty to do all we can to provide visually memorable illustrations to help the learner recall what Jesus really wants them to do with the information they have learned.  When we provide good illustrations, real change is more likely to occur in the lives of our learners.  As we teach, never miss an opportunity to share a good illustration. 

Next week: "Involving Your Learners in the Lesson"