Know your audience

One of the rules of speech-making in my college class was "know your audience." I always considered the eye contact, what to do with your hands, the confident smiles, and the other stylistics of making a speech to be more important than who was listening to you. But that's the point-- you want to speak to the people sitting in front of you.

I have always wanted to teach and now I do. I teach 4th graders. I love 10-year-olds. Teaching has very little to do with stylistics, it has everything to do with audience.

For over seven years, I had been involved in local jail ministry. I led Bible studies, taught women how to read the Bible, and shared my testimony. I listened to their tales, their sorrows, and dreams and hopes. I shared my faith, added my faith to theirs for miracles to take place. Eventually my husband and I led chapel services on Sundays. I told them how I met Jesus and what He did for me. In short, I became as a friend to each inmate. I grew to love many of these sincere women who fell to the temptations of this world and ended up in jail.

In casual surveys asking what is your greatest fear, people answer to speak in front of a large group of people, even over and above fear of dying! That's crazy!
But I was not afraid. I think because I was "just" being a friend. We talked, we shared, I didn't teach or preach. I listened, I didn't "counsel."

I loved my audience, my friends. These were women who made mistakes, well, ok, they outright committed crimes! They were sincere, honest, vulnerable, yet teachable. And they were broken, but they were shrewd. Most of the female inmates, as the county government agencies called women in jail, (I used to think that was horrid!) had "Phony Baloney" detectors which were usually 100% accurate. As a ministry volunteer, I didn't dare go in there and "bring them Jesus." I didn't preach to them about the Word, I merely shared it. If any volunteer thought they were the cat's pajamas and all that, those women would skin them alive! Or something like that.

If my testimony can help someone, serve as an example of what God can do in an ordinary woman's life, then I want to say it. I must. Maybe my words may unlock a need, a shyness that can then be treated.

So who is my audience now? Women in the church. In some ways, women in the church can be tougher than the women in jail. Women in church may face mental bars that lock them up, while women in jail face steel bars that lock them in. We used to say in jail ministry that we all face b-a-r-s -- bitterness, anger, regret, and sin -- that's what keeps us imprisoned as much as steel does! Women in church can disguise themselves with clothing and "Christianese," but women in jail only have their name and their word to distinguish one from another -- everything else has been stripped from them. Bible concepts translate differently. "Loving your neighbor" can mean two diametrically opposed things to each set of women. Jokes and humor have a raw edge that cancels out pretense or decorum. Shock value is at a premium and is used often.

Jail ministry was a part of my life, a part of my growth. It was a memorable time in my life and I am thankful for it. It is time to stretch again. I want to grow, to challenge myself. I want to find my voice.

And the time to do it is now.