DavidCox

I am a independent Baptist Fundamental missionary in Mexico City Mexico since 1986.

Ways to “Hook” your audience

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This post was provoked from my reading this post on “TEDS talk takeaway: 8 ways to Hook your Audience” by Gavin Mahon.

Great hooks, like McGonigal’s provocative opening statement, get audiences on the edge of their seats and give them a sense of what’s coming. They allow you to win a crowd’s attention right away and give you a legitimate chance to have a lasting impact.

Note that these “hooks” are excellent elements around which to build your presentation.

1. Tell a story.

Well, I messed that one up from the start. It should be “with great enthusiasm, tell AN INTERESTING STORY!”

2. Use Video or Graphics.

Some things are best told, and others are best shown. With the possibility of pictures and videos, use them if the subject matter lends itself to that.

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Presentations: Storyboarding: The Process

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I guess I am old as the hills now. Back in the day (around 1977, in Bob Jones University missions classes) we talked about storyboarding for getting our slide presentation together. A few months ago I actually threw away my slide story boarder. Most people don’t even understand what I am talking about. In those days we used to gather 2 inch by 2 inch slides of what we wanted to present, and from that we made a story on a story board. This is a piece of white plastic in a wedge shape stand that has a light bulb under it, and you turned it on, and placed your slides in the rows, and began to arrange them in a story for your presentation. Wow are you old David! I would like a post (“Yea!”) from anybody who remembers or did that in their past!

Today presentations don’t start with existing slides or pictures, but they start with ideas. The flow of ideas is what is essential in a presentation. As you develop your presentation, you add images and concepts and music to the presentation.

So here I go trying to give some tips on storyboarding and using them to design a presentation.

Let me be clear here, a storyboard is an intermediate design step for a presentation. It is a rough, basic idea medium in which you work up ideas and impressions, trying to get specific images and sounds if possible, and from that, you make a presentation in some kind of software that is designed for presentations. The moodboard is not an end in itself, but just a brainstorming tool to help you push, pull, delete, add, create, or try out your ideas to generally see how they look. Keep it that!

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Missionary Attrition (Dropouts)

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Missionary Attrition

Missionary Attrition (Dropouts) is my thoughts on missionary dropouts. I saw an interesting article here, Dropouts-Burnouts-Forceouts-Never-Should-Have-Goneouts, which I will use as an introduction to my thoughts on the subject.

Missionary Attrition (Dropouts)

Introduction

Let me begin by saying that it is extremely expensive to get a missionary on the foreign mission field working. Besides the years of personal and educational preparation that the missionary himself has to shoulder, once he “officially begins deputation” the costs are shared or shouldered mainly by local churches and the people of God. This “business of missions” should first of all be understood to “NOT BE A SECULAR BUSINESS”. Although many aspects of missions is like a business (money funds the activity on the foreign field, there are workers, there is the acquisition of funds, fundraising, promotion, etc), the basic thrust of missions is spiritual, and cannot be reduced to simple business economics.

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Definition of Fundamentalism

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definition of Fundamentalism

Definition of Fundamentalism is an article I wrote on what is fundamentalism (from my point of view as a missionary dealing with many different churches).

I came across an interesting book by South African Johan Malan called “The Old Testament Law and the New Testament Grace“. One of his chapters immediately perked my interest, Christian Fundamentalism. Mahan “attempts” to define what is distinctive about Christian Fundamentalism. I say attempts because I doubt anybody can pin it down completely, but Malan gives it a pretty good shot.

I reproduce his main points on Definition of Fundamentalism for your consideration but read the article (link above) because it appears to be very interesting.

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