Variations on a Theme

Knowing your audience or the various audiences that make up the audience you are teaching will cause you to be far more productive and successful as a teacher. There are, though, variations on the theme of knowing your audience... 

"Man, I love teaching youth," I blurted out while talking about ministry.
"Why?" Andy asked.
"Because they are simple.  They don't mind being taught if there is a good motive and they still believe that you know more than them even if they act otherwise"
"Also," I continued, "they want to be there.  You can make them stand on their head, play silly games and do crazy object lessons because they want to be there."
Andy quickly replied, "I never wanted to be at our youth group.  I was drug there."
"Good point.  I was thinking of camps, retreats and other stuff where they chose to be there."

The audience was the same.  The willingness was different.  It was not so much the envioronment or the  geographic location of Andy as a teen or me as a  teacher of teens.  It was simply a matter of willingness of the student.  It was a variation - or complication - of an audience.  There are several complicating factors that will affect the teaching environment, goals and methods across audience platforms.  For example, you could have an "adult audience" that should want to learn but that is there against their will (for example, sensitivity retraining in a large corporation).  Likewise, you could have a teen audience attending against its collective will.  You could teach an audience that has three audience types.

Knowing these complicating factors will help you reach and teach the audience to which you are assigned.  Here are a few of those complicating factors:

• Small vs. Large - The smaller the group - the more intimate your knowledge can be and the more pointed and directed your teaching to individuals.  The larger the group, the more structure you need and you need to be prepared to "not connect with individuals" but with a mass.  You will not be able to see the faces and read the crowd unless they become expressive.  In a small group, you can quickly alienate individuals by embarassment or putting them on the spot.  Generally, the larger the group, the more latitude you have to worry less about alienation and offense.  Really, large groups have highly varied audiences.
  
• Home vs. Away - In the away game, you and the audience do not have to "go home together" and you often can issue greater challenges more directly than to a home audience.  The exception is  core learners in a mature audience - these learners will learn more and grant more leeway than any away crowd because they are mature, committed and ready to grow.  Away audiences are easier but require a clear, short term, prepared strategy to be reached effectively.  The downfall to an away audience is that you have little opportunity to invest in life change or to ensure solid teaching after your departure.  You simply have little time and no time to teach lessons over many years.
  
• Voluntary vs. Involuntary Study - Ask yourself, "Did these people come here because they wanted to or because they have to?"  Our annual men's retreat is intense, challenging, and not designed for the lost.  Our goal is to pack as much teaching in as we possibly can over two and one-half days.  We actually go to a more expensive place and advertise the intensity to ensure that only the men that "want" to be there are there.  There are other events designed for broader audiences.  To be effective, you will have to encourage, engage, humor and manipulate the unwilling audience far more than those that chose to walk miles to hear you teach.
  
• Homogeneous vs. Heterogeneous - As audience types increase in one audience, difficulty of communication and connection increase.  There is some theoretical maximum of how many ways you can tell a story to touch the types of people that make up your overall audience.  Be careful not to try to focus specifically on so many audience types that you reach none effectively.  At the same time, don't buy into the contemporary lie that audiences need to be segmented and that teachers need to focus on one "market group" to reach the world.  That is only true if you are simply trying to grow a church.  Be prepared to give an answer to all men for the hope that is within in you - how could we serve one and ignore his neighbor because he was different?  It is always more difficult and takes much thought and sensitivity to become a master at reaching multiple audience types.
  
• Wisdom vs. Knowledge - Some say, "Those who can do and those who can't teach." Clearly, there are many great, active doers who are also teachers but there remains a big difference between knowing and applying. Wisdom is knowledge applied to create real solutions and change.   When a knowledeable person speaks, his ideas, interpretations and what he knows shines through to teach truths and facts.  If applied these truths are incredible and improve the audience.   When a wise person speaks, his character and success shines through to teach not only facts but application.  The wise teacher teaches the audience how to handle truth and how to think as they apply knowledge.  Audiences are like these two teachers, some audiences know much that they have rarely applied or mastered.  The wise audience listens more and asks deeper questions than the knowledgeable audience which knows facts and will quickly debate a point.  The wise teacher will be prepared to learn as a wise audience engages and to spur the knowledgeable audience to wisdom by asking questions that require wisdom.

Teaching requires knowing your audience.  The even more effective teacher learns to read complications that run across multiple audience types.  This teacher is sensitive, people watching and is driven to "reach every single person with this truth or fact that must be taught today."  Remember the end goal - pass truth on.  The only value of a teacher is found in his ability to pass truth and his single goal should be teaching but influencing people to mature, change, grow and be better because of the truth or fact taught.