Advice and Suggestions from Rev. Molly Smothers, Public Speaking Expertis

“During a sermon, I am known to blurt out a Napoleon Dynamite quote, reference Bob Dylan, or as some refer to as Robert Zimmerman, and recite well-known poetry,” says Rev. Molly Smothers, pastor of the Morehead First Christian Church.

This past Wednesday, I had the honor of listening to Rev. Smothers. Although she wasn’t preaching a Wednesday night church service, she did give a pretty good sermon about her experiences and expertise as a public speaker to our public speaking class.

She compared the way she presented her sermons and herself to the congregation to the way us students present our speeches and ourselves to our audience. Rev. Smothers first suggested we tell our audience what we are going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what we told them. She also expressed eye contact, body movement, hand gestures, attire, and appearance do make a difference to a speaker’s effectiveness.

The Morehead First Christian Church has a wide range of audience members, with 100-110 church attendees each week. Since 20-25 members hold PhDs and sixteen members are under the age of eleven, Rev. Smothers has to present her message in a way everyone can understand.

The organizational method she bases her sermons around answers three questions: What? So what? Now What? She recommended we should tell our audience about it, why it matters, and then what they can do about it. Another helpful method she always uses to help her audience retain information is reducing her sermons to one sentence and repeating variations of the sentence throughout her speech. I really liked that idea and hope to successfully use her technique.

Since the average attention span of adults is around 16-minutes, Rev. Smothers almost always keeps her sermons right at 14-minutes. She said every good speaker should also make sure his or her listeners take away something. I believe Rev. Smothers accomplished that goal numerous times. Her speech was filled with $5 tidbits of information, which she of course gave to us for free.

I found Rev. Smothers to be a very motivational and persuasive speaker. Her enthusiasm and bubbly personality really shinned through her words and actions. After listening to her speak in our class, I would love to visit the Morehead First Christian Church to hear her once again. I look forward to the opportunity to hear Rev. Smothers speak again. Who knows who she will quote or reference next!?