Proclaimer Blog
You’re speaking not writing
There’s an article in this month’s Briefing that I liked so much that we asked permission to print off a copy for every Cornhill student. It’s called ‘Deadly, dull, and boring’ (now there’s a catchy title). It’s an edited extract from a forthcoming book from Matthias Media on how not to preach deadly, dull and boring sermons. The book’s by Phil Campbell and is called Saving Eutychus (geddit?).
In the article Phil offers ten tips. None of them are about showmanship that attracts attention away from Scripture and towards the preacher. They’re all obvious things about effective oral communication. And, like many obvious things, they’re often only obvious when someone points them out to you. A crucial one that I think would improve many worthy sermons at a stroke is this: use shorter sentences.
Here’s an example from me of a seemingly decent opening line in a sermon: “If you watch the news on TV or read the newspapers, aren’t you often struck by the way in which humanity does not seem able to get any better and keeps repeating the same mistakes?” Now apply Phil’s principle to that and you get something like this instead: “Watch the TV news. Does it look like the world’s getting better and better? Read your newspaper. Is humanity learning from its mistakes?”
The same content, but much punchier and therefore more effective. Not dumbed down, just expressed more engagingly. And as an extra bonus the preacher also get the thrill of breaking all those rules about writing style that your English teacher taught you – if you went to that kind of school.
One other thing. Before I joined the Cornhill staff I used to read The Proclaimer blog (honest), and was always impressed that Adrian’s blogs had time-stamps like 7.07am and 7.16am. I have now discovered to my relief that the blogs are written in advance [Ed: not too much in advance, please note!] and the time-stamp gives the time that the server automatically releases them, or something like that. We try to work hard around here, but not stupidly hard. For the record, I’m finishing this at 8.50am in the real world.