Mark Meynell on Becoming a Better Bible Teacher

All of us who dare to stand up and teach the Bible are teachers in progress. We all have ways we can get better.

Recently I got to sit down with Mark Meynell who, in his role as director of Europe and the Caribbean for Langham Preaching, spends most of his time traveling to different parts of the world to help teachers and preachers get better at handing the Bible. According to Meynell, Bible teachers all over the world lament the same thing—a lack of time to do the kind of study they want to do on the text. His word to teachers is: "You make time for what you think is important.” Meynell says that the marks of really good Bible teaching include faithfulness to the set, relevance to the audience, and clarity in delivery. Our discussion included tips on how to discover the tics we all have as teachers that make it hard for our audience to listen to us, how to and how not to bring in passages outside of our main text into our talks, and the way in which John Stott modeled for him what it looks like to be a life-long learner.

Meynell is the author of numerous books including What Angels Long to Read (Langham Preaching Resources, 2017), When Darkness Seems My Closest Friend (IVP, 2018) and his most recent, Colossians and Philemon for You (Good Book, 2018). He blogs at markmeynell.net.