Parable Teaching Partners

Our target audience are individuals who may not be Biblically literate but who confess Jesus as Lord. Typically, the goal is to keep the lesson length between 15-30 minutes long. The purpose of our lessons should be to glorify God and encourage those who listen, while simultaneously informing and building them up in their faith.

Lesson content can be exegetical or topical. If topical please keep the subject around Biblical themes. Always ask the Holy Spirit to influence your thoughts and help you in your study.

In preparing a lesson for the podcast, please note that recording a lesson takes less time than presenting a lesson to an in-person audience. When talking into a microphone there is no need to pause and make eye contact with the people listening. There’s no need to acknowledge specific audience interaction. This form of presentation allows for the practice of pacing. So, take advantage of this teaching format and use it to practice your delivery.

Talking into a microphone can be intimidating. Here are some practices that can help alleviate the stress.

1. Press record and let it run while you gather your notes. The initial press of the recording button can cause a great deal of internal panic. By starting the recording before you begin, you can mitigate the nervous first word. We can always edit the start and stop time in post.

2. When speaking into the microphone, pretend you’re on a Skype call. Talking to no one in an empty room can be unnerving. Imagine your audience and speak to them.

3. If you mispronounce a word or stutter, correct it if necessary and keep going. If you mess up and you would like to remove it from the recording - pause after the mistake, clap, and after a moment, clap a second time and then restate the phrase you messed up on. In our editing process, we will see the audio spikes from the claps and trim the audio around that area.

Record your lesson somewhere quiet. Good examples are:

1. A closet. The clothes in the little room will work as absorption fabric and will provide adequate acoustics.

2. A carpeted room - the bare necessities of life. If nothing else, just sit in a carpeted room. Remove any ticking clocks, try to avoid any traffic nosies, and silence your cell phone.

3. An idyllic outdoor location. If you want a more unique ambiance, find a quaint outdoor location (like a country backyard). Avoid wind chimes, barking dogs, gusts of wind, car noises, and the hustle n’ bustle of people.

4. A blanket fort. A simple solution can be a blanket over your head. In 2021, after Parable’s recording studio was demolished, Jesse Turkington recorded his lessons in a garage with a blanket over his head for a little over a month. It was not ideal, but it certainly worked.