I observed how a rookie learns stand-up comedy [1]. It starts with preparing the material in writing, memorizing it, revising, and then practicing performance, which is advisable to deliver emotion. To practice emotion delivery, a rookie should pay attention to intonation, pause, body language, and eye contact. To do that, he/she should try to leave behind the memorized text, focus on a simple main point, then focus on the emotional delivery.
That reminds me of when I was preparing my students for music performances. The first step is usually practicing the techniques (notation, chords, arrangement, rhythm, and clean fingering). After that, I will focus on delivering emotion, which often means controlling the dynamic details, legato, and staccato. After that, usually, my student finds it easier to deliver emotion in a song.
The same also applies in preparing my Ph.D. talk. People were reminding me that I should be happy to share my five years of work with the public. The public can feel the excitement of sharing the scientific contributions.
In my experience, the same also applies in doing church service. Currently, I can only speak about worship service. However, it might be also applied to the sermon. When the worship leader, musicians, and singers can switch their minds to deliver emotion and spiritual message (after memorizing the basic techniques), the congregation can feel it. In my current opinion, this skill is especially important to follow the movement of the Holy Spirit during Sunday service. Therefore, I would like to pray that we can avoid stopping at the music technical preparation when preparing for Sunday services, but go beyond that.
[1] https://youtu.be/ws8AGYi4iPE
