Ten minute talk? By Annie Try

How ever do they cope? I’m thinking about those who preach Sunday after Sunday - always with fresh thoughts and inspiration. Perhaps it’s easier if they can choose a subject or are trained, but I was given a subject to match my expertise to do a ten-minute approx talk last Sunday. My subject? ‘Mental Health’ - which quickly became renamed by me as ‘Christians and Mental Health’.

The previous Sunday I had interviewed a person with depression talking about how he had used both usual and spiritual means to improve his mental health. This had involved preparing the interview together and having a fairly tight script for each of us, so that the slides he wanted could magically appear on the wall courtesy of our PA person. We had prayed the Holy Spirit would guide us as we spoke and the resulting interview was much richer than our script. We almost kept to the allotted 10 minutes - well, only 30% over time.

But this time I was on my own - and by then everyone wanted to hear ‘the expert’. It’s one thing to interview someone, but however do you write a 10 minute talk on this huge subject? I narrowed it to keeping ‘mentally and spiritually healthy’. Or was that widening it? I felt absolutely certain that if I were to talk in a Sunday service then God must be in it.

I sat in my study with 15 books to refer to, plus the Bible. The initial session  reading didn’t get me anywhere except bogged down. Borrowed headings from a book on well-being got me started the next day - but I realised I knew more than that author, who was not a trained psychologist. The next day I wrote out my thoughts and started to write using NHS headings from their guidance on keeping mentally healthy. I realised I would need a PowerPoint presentation and that I’d better get my thoughts in order. The next day I scrapped it all realising that just one point would take up twelve minutes, and started again. So the following day I rewrote, then scrapped it all and started again with my own headings. I was running out of time - I added up how many slides the talk would need and when it came to 29 I knew that if I were writing this at college I’d need an extension. Family joked that I’d have to get everyone in for an extra Tuesday service.

So Friday was whittling down day. I still needed to get all the points over but I reluctantly cut down on some of the Bible verses and little humorous quips and took it back to the bare bones. I prepared everything - what I would say - what needed emphasis - I was more or less there. I read it slowly to time it, allowing for delays as a slide came up. 17 minutes. It would have to do.

It was the most difficult presentation I’d ever done - a difficult subject for a church and I had been used to presenting most of this to other professionals. I found the lack of feedback as I spoke so dreadful that I began to think it was the worse talk I had ever given. Even reading from that wonderful passage in Proverbs about drinking raised scarcely a smile. But I soldiered on until nine children appeared from another church just as I was talking about helping a friend with MH problems and when to refer on. And up went my slide about watching out for suicidal plans which immediately became ‘doing something silly’. Fortunately the overheads will go on our church’s website so people will see what I’d have liked it to say.

My husband said I spoke for 30 minutes - I still maintain it was 17 plus delays waiting for PowerPoints, doing a little extra Bible reading at the beginning because the reader had misread my chosen verse numbers from Psalm 139 - I wanted to include verse 14 but he read verse 19 about murdering enemies!Then there was welcoming two lots of unexpected children, plus making sure people could hear after the microphone started howling so was turned down. 

Mind you, I hadn’t allowed for drinking a copious amount of water when I kept drying up.

The surprising thing was, they were listening - there were so many questions and comments afterwards; my prayer that it might help at least one person was abundantly answered with an affirmative.

And if you are one of those preachers who do something like this every week then you have my sincere admiration. I am in awe of you.

Annie Try is the name Angela Hobday uses when writing novels. Her novels reflect her training in psychology, especially the Dr Mike Lewis series published by Instant Apostle. Her most recent novel for young adults is The Dangerous Dance of Emma JJ which features a teen who lives with her foster carer but has overcome unsafe situations in her life and now meets more challenges. Annie is always eager to talk about writing, and loves encouraging other writers.