Proclaimer Blog
Good communicators: the proof of the pudding
None of us here have written anything about that book yet, primarily because we haven't read it apart from a few sample chapters doing the rounds. But I was very struck by something my good friend Dave Bish wrote about communication in his review. We spent a little while discussing it over lunch yesterday and it's worth repeating.
He's known for being an outstanding communicator. I think he's fun with words but probably not actually that good a communicator. When challenged he argues he's misunderstood, which can only happen for so long before you have to ask why. His style is very accessible (though having only 150 words per page grates after a while). He constantly asks questions and rarely answers them which while provocative is a bit annoying.
Just what makes a good communicator? I guess this is an oft-asked question, and oft-answered. Many of the standard answers will be do with rhetoric – style, illustration, engagement – all that sort of thing. I don't want to belitte any of those in particular; we encourage our students here to think about each of them carefully. But I wonder whether good communication at its heart is about content, not style. Of course, the style may help convey the content well. But without content there is nothing to communicate and therefore no good communicator.
I think this is the burden of all the preaching vocabulary in Acts. It is interesting that all the variety (proclaim, preach, reason, argue etc) comes from the description of what is being done. There is no vocabulary for style. There are no adverbs, in other words. Paul is not described as arguing winsomely or preaching humourously. That is not to say that such attributes were not present. I'm sure Paul was not dull (despite the Troas moment!). But he was a good communicator, humanly speaking, because of what he had to communicate. May that be a lesson to us.