A Messianic Sense of Purpose in an Onboard Cruise Ship Speaking Gig will go a long way,
Basically – most of the people sitting in the room have not come to ‘church.’
They are just there – bored, tired, dragged along, a passing interest, killing time, sleepy … or in a very few cases actually interested.
To be sure – if the speaker isn’t interested in his/her topic, the listeners won’t come onboard either.
When I was a kid fresh out of college I was making the rounds to houses of would-be visitors to our church. The guy I was paired up with sold burial plots for a living. Seriously.
The night we were out happened to be the night of the all-star game. This was back in the 70’s. I lived in Cincinnati and there were not a few members of the Big Red Machine playing in the all-star game that night.
Still – recruiting for God was supposed to be a higher priority. Supposed to be are the operative words. I wanted to watch the game.
I asked the older fellow I was out with, “How are we going to get people to care about what we are going to talk to them about if they’d rather be doing something else? Or even if I’d rather be somewhere else?”
Very patiently he told me, “You just have to convince them that anything you can tell them is more important than anything else they might be doing at the moment.”
Your listeners are there – 3, 6 or 60 in number. Give them a reason to be glad they were there and nowhere else for the last 45 minutes and you will have a successful lecture.
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