Because most philosophies that frown on reproduction don't survive.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Audience Participation

I did my last presentation to the RCIA group last night. During the post-reception-into-the-Church period there's a set of "Christian Living" talks themed around the chapters in the US Catholic Catechism For Adults on the ten commandments. I had been assigned the 6th and 9th commandments.

So there I was, the one delegated to get up in front of 20 new members of the Church and talk about sex.

You think of giving a talk as being a fairly uni-directional interaction, but this situation in particular gave me a chance to think on how much audience reaction affects you as the speaker/teacher. The middle-aged husband at the second table nodding and taking notes in a spiral bound notebook urged me on to explain more fully. The woman staring out the window and idly turning her cell phone over in her hands caused me to fear I was failing to persuade or be clear. I was inordinately grateful for the enthusiasm of the young college-age couple -- Scott Hahn fans who after the talk told me they were hoping to have a Christopher West study group with their Christian Fraternity.

At the end of an hour I wrapped things up and asked if there were any questions. Silence stretched out. Given the topic, I'd expected that. So we closed with a prayer and I made a beeline for the coffee pot.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yikes! Coffee at night? Wow, just shows how young you kids are. :)

Hey, I don't know how well this might fit in with a future 6th & 9th talk, but it might be fun to weave in some discussion of communication problems in marriage along the lines of male/female differences.

NFP can really bring to the fore the unique roles we each bring to the marriage, and thus opens us to understanding in other respects too.

Bottox said...

Many greetings from Poland :-)

Amber said...

I just did a talk with pre-K to 5th graders about the Ten Commandments (and ran through the Memorize the Faith memory room for that too, which worked wonderfully - great book, if you haven't seen it yet) and of course the 6th and 9th got questions from K and 1st graders, especially. I can explain the 6th commandment in a reasonable way for that age group, but the 9th is a little harder. Another leader finally bailed me out saying, "not only should you honor your marriage covenant, which means to follow the 6th commandment, you should also *want* to honor your marriage covenant." I'll definitely have to remember that one for next time!

Anonymous said...

Amber, a good "exam of conscience" question I stumbled across for littles on the 9th commandment was "Do I allow my parents to spend time together alone without me?" This really hit home for my 1st/2nd grader :)

--Amanda