Proclaimer Blog
Speaking simply
I struggle to speak simply. Although I regularly exhort the Cornhill students to convey their meaning with simplicity, I myself default to complexity in my own homiletic preparatory labours. (Yes, ok, I enjoyed concocting that dreadful sentence!)
I had a little example this morning, when making final changes to my sermon for Christ Church Mayfair, our home church.
I jotted down my opening sentence a bit like this; well, actually it wasn’t quite as bad as this; I have complexified it, even hammed it up a bit to make a point:
“The fundamental subject matter of this Psalm is summarised in the concluding two verses.”
That is true; and it is what I wanted to say. But I stepped back, looked at it, listened in my mind’s ear to what it would sound like, and thought, “That sounds as if it is being read out from a clumsy civil service draft document, or a technical commentary.”
So I tried again:
“What this Psalm is about is summed up in the final two verses.”
That was better. “What this Psalm is about” is colloquial, but gets what I mean across more directly than “fundamental subject matter of…”. And “final” and “summed up” are closer to how most people speak than “concluding” and “summarised”. But it still sounds a bit like a commentary, albeit a more popular one.
How about this?
“The last two verses sum up the Psalm.”
That’s a lot sharper, isn’t it? The shift from passive to active does a lot. I reckon it says in nine crisp syllables what had been twenty-four heavy Latinate syllables. Now I can say this and not feel as if a printed commentary is using me as a ventriloquist’s doll.
Worth labouring to be clear and straightforward, I reckon.