This post was originally written with children's and student ministry leaders in mind, but I've used the same principles in secular classroom settings.
The next time you listen to a story, pay attention for a moment. It might be a television show, a novel by your bedside, a preacher on Sunday morning, or a teacher in a classroom. Whichever it is, ask yourself the following question.
What aspects of this storytelling performance attempted to make the audience more engaged?
You’ll likely be able to come up with a lot more if you’re watching a movie than if you’re listening to a professor at an 8 a.m. class. Both are trying to do the same thing, but one is taking advantage of far more tools to do it. If someone came up to that 8 a.m. professor and told them they were fairly boring compared to the movie, the professor might actually agree. If they do, they might defend themselves by arguing that they don’t have the tools at their disposal that a movie does to engage its audience.
If you’ve ever made a similar excuse, or if you’re looking for ways to go from the “Beuller, Beuller” teacher to the real storyteller, this information is for you. There are many tools at your disposal when you’re telling a story. Some are within you right now, but there are others that are just a few clicks away. Here, I’m going to highlight six tools that you can incorporate into your lesson really quickly. The basic idea here is taking readily-available tools and using them efficiently to draw your audience in as quickly and as effectively as possible.
Cast
That’s you, for starters. You’re the storyteller, so at the end of the day, what you bring to the table is going to be hugely influential. Let’s say you’re telling the story of David and Goliath. If this is a play and you’re the sole cast member, there’s a few ways to pull it off.
Narrator: You’re telling the story as an external force, kind of like you’re reading it out of a book. In this case, you might actually be reading out of the Bible, so there’s nothing wrong with this. But when you’re a Narrator, it can be easy to lose the emotion in your voice because you’re never the one in any danger or faced with any tough choices. If you perform as the Narrator, never forget the emotion of your characters. Be yourself, yes, but embody each of your characters as best as you can.
Character: Instead of telling the story as an outsider, tell the story from the perspective of one of the main characters. BE David when you walk into that room. Dress the part! Embody their mannerisms. When people see you dress up, as funny as you might look, they’ll understand that you’re playing a role. People get distracted in sermons far more often than they do in plays.
Full Cast: You’ve got an audience sitting in front of you – get them to be part of the show! With a couple simple props, you can get one kid to come up and be David and another kid to come up and be Goliath. You’ll provide instruction, and now the audience has a fun visual through which to take in the story. More than that, the cast members in particular have a closer look than ever at the tensions of the story, because they’ll be living it.
Tone
Okay, so you’ve figured out how you’re going to tell the story, and you’ve even found your narrative voice. The next step is using every aspect of your voice that you’ve been given. If you’re reading out of a book, put emphasis on the words that matter the most. Check out this passage from Genesis:
God said, “Let the seas be filled with living things. Let birds fly above the earth across the huge space of the sky.”
As the storyteller, you get to choose what words to emphasize. Consider how reading that passage again might sound if you emphasized these words:
God said, “Let the seas be FILLED with living things. Let birds FLY above the earth across the HUGE space of the sky.”
Better yet, consider how you’ll change the tone of your voice depending on who is speaking. When you’re reading the voice of the narrator, use your natural voice. But if you’re reading the words of God (in this instance), what will you do to reflect that?
Will you lower your voice slightly to reflect his authority?
Will you speak more slowly to signify his timelessness?
Will you speak more excitedly to show his enthusiasm for this project?
No matter who you’re giving a voice to – whether it’s God or any character from the Bible – you get to choose what they sound like. You don’t have to ‘put on a voice’ to become someone else. All you have to do is change your pacing or intonation a little bit, and you’ve added an extra level of immersion for your audience.
One last note on tone – think about where you’ll put pauses in your sentences. Consider how reading that passage might sound if you put pauses in these places:
God said, “Let the seas...be...FILLED with living things. Let birds...FLY above the earth across the huge space of the sky.”
Too much of a pause can just come across as awkward, but even a quarter of a second can add a sense of dramatic weight to whatever you’re saying. Even something like “and God saw that it was good” can become so much more potent if you change it to “and God saw that it – was – good.”
Lighting
Your space is probably not a grand opera theater, so you probably don’t have spotlights at every conceivable angle. But it’s the 21st century, and you have a lot more control over lighting than people did a few hundred years ago. Think for a second about why people dim the lights at movie theatres. The screen would still work fine if those lights were on – but when the lights are off, the focus shifts completely to the screen.
Turn your lights off! Your space obviously has lights on normally, so when your students come in to a dark space, they’ll recognize immediately that something is up. It’s a small change, but it turns your space into something new.
Do you have a window that lets in a lot of light? Cover it up with blinds, or tape garbage bags to it to shut out the sun. When the windows don’t let in light, you are in total control of where the light comes from, which leads to my next point.
Create light where you want your audience looking. If you’re up at the front, light a candle. Turn a flashlight towards yourself. Have a little lamp. People look at lights, so if you have the only light in the room, it’s where they’ll be looking. It’s a simple thing, but it adds a lot!
Sound
This is something I use all the time as an easy way to set the mood or increase the immersion of my audience. If the story you’re telling was a movie, what would the background music sound like? Find that music and play it in the background. You can play music off your phone, out of a speaker, or through a computer. However you play it, adding some music helps situate the audience. It shows them the mood of the story and helps them figure out how to feel. Obviously, your music should be instrumental, because otherwise the words are going to distract rather than accentuate your performance. Here are some good starting places to look. Each of the following composers has done music for lots of big movies, and if you look them up on Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube, you’re bound to find tracks that fit the vibe you’re going for.
Michael Giacchino: Jurassic World, Inside Out, Up
Hans Zimmer: The Lion King, Pirates of the Caribbean, Son of God
James Newton Howard: Treasure Planet, Dinosaur, Batman Begins
Harry Gregson Williams: The Chronicles of Narnia, Kingdom of Heaven, Arthur Christmas
John Williams: Home Alone, Indiana Jones, Harry Potter
When picking music, the one thing you don’t want to do is pick a musical theme that kids will recognize. These composers are terrific and there’s lots of tracks from hit movies that set a mood without giving themselves away as being part of a well-known film. If you play the “Pirates of the Caribbean” theme while telling the story of Moses parting the Red Sea, you’ll throw yourself off more than you will set a mood.
One other way to utilize sound is with sound effects. YouTube is great for this. If you’re telling a story that takes place in a market, look up “marketplace ambience”, and you’ll find something that will fill your space with the right kind of noise. If you want to have animals in your story, look up their sounds and have them ready to go. A sound-person is great here, because they can play and pause sound effects for you at will if you’ve loaded them up. What I do sometimes is open several tabs on YouTube with different sound effects, and have them all visible at once so that a helper can click on the appropriate sounds at the appropriate times. It’s easy, and it adds a lot.
Translation
The Bible is the Word of God, which is why it’s important to me to actually read it out loud as often as possible while telling a story. There’s a time and place for rephrasing it into your own words, or showing a Veggietales video instead (I’m not knocking this!!), but there’s something special about reading directly from the Bible. That said, you don’t have to read from the KJV in order for the Spirit to move!! If you’re going to read a story from the Bible, take a quick read-through of the story in various versions. You may find that one lends itself better to being read out loud than another, or that one is more easily understandable than another. Lately I’ve been using the NIRV when reading stories to kids, because the language is very clear without sacrificing the narrative flow of the story. Try a few out and see what works for you!
Video
This can be the most time-consuming of the tools that I’ve put here, but it can also add a special punch to your performance. If your audience has a screen to look at while you’re reading a story, you can show them things that you’d never really be able to do justice to on your own. Here are a few ways to use video to your advantage.
Download Stock Footage from YouTube. There’s plenty of footage online of nearly everything you would feasibly need to tell a story. If you’re telling a story that takes place at sea, fill your screen with a video loop of ocean waves. If you’re telling a story that happens at night, put up a night sky. Finding the perfect video might take a second, but using the key words “stock footage”, “ambience”, or “motion loop” can get you headed in the right direction. Video downloading websites can be a bit dangerous with pop-ups and potential click-bait viruses, but I’ve used these ones many times in the past without any incident:
Use “Screen Capture” programs to record something off of your screen. For Mac users, “Quicktime” is a built-in app on your computer that lets you record your own screen for a time. This can be a great way to snap some shots off of anything that has what you like. For example, I’ve taken muted clips from “The Bible” series and incorporated them into my stories.
Use iMovie or other video editing software to mix and match videos together. You might want just one loop to play through your story (like ocean waves for a story of Jonah), but if you’re looking for a video that’s more dynamic, select different video clips to play at various times through your story. What’s great about these programs is that you can add in background music really easily. Try putting a few muted clips together, placing a track over it, and then reading your story while the video plays. If you time it well, it can be amazing!
You won’t be able to incorporate all of these tools into every single lesson, but taking even just two of them into consideration each time will really help establish an atmosphere where your students will sit up and pay attention. When you turn your space into a theatre, they will settle in and listen to what you have to say.
Let me know if you have questions, comments, or feedback! I’m constantly trying new things in my teaching (both at church on Sundays and at school Monday-Friday), and would love to hear if you have any tips of your own.