Interview Format

Every Church will know it. Someone is invited to give a testimony in Church. The minister gives them, say, five or ten minutes to speak, then they go wandering way, way over the limit. A worse case I know of (not in our Church) was a minister who leant forward and tugged at a woman's petticoat to let her know she was over the limit -- and her petticoat came down! Sometimes the overtime simply lies in a person's nature – but occasionally, I think, it is willful, even defiant. I myself have a mental blacklist, of people I will never allow up front again. OBSERVATION: What I usually do, though, is to interview people with questions we discussed in advance -- and during the interview, I keep a grip on the microphone! This makes it far easier to bring things to an elegant conclusion. My thinking is that we are building a Church, we are not indulging an individual, and so testimonies need to be reasonably disciplined. The photo shows an interview in Church (I let the microphone out of my hand here)!