Preach--with words, if necessary

Bill Brown ... Xiamen University
"The Preacher searched to find just the right words, and all he wrote was upright and true." Ecclesiastes 12:10

"Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words." St. Francis

"Silence is a true friend that never betrays." Confucius

I have six hours of lectures today but I spent much longer than six hours preparing what to say, and just as importantly, what not to say. I know I have to 1) open with something to get their undivided attention. 2) Make my points clear, simple and memorable. And 3) Leave my audience with a practical lesson. And it's the same each time I communicate, whether with farmers in Anxi or MBA students--as I learned at Harvard Business School in 2007.

Xiamen University MBA Center sent some of us to Harvard Business's Executive Training, and we sat in on classes with Harvard MBA students. These are smart folks! But though the Harvard MBA professors cover a lot of ground in a lecture, they work hard in preparing their lessons to be sure that they get across well three, at the most four, key ideas ("take aways," they call them--meaning these are the ideas they want the students to grasp, remember and take away with them). Even Harvard MBA students, for all their brains, are only capable of grasping so much, so fast, and the professors burn the midnight oil to make sure they choose just the right topics and words, to get the key lessons across.

The first of Communication Theory's 7 steps is "Think" (decide what to communicate), and then decide "how" to do it--but how often do we just open our mouths, talk away, and hope that somewhere in the flood of words our listener can catch a bit of meaning?

* * * *
"The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, the Gettysburg Address is 286 words, and there are 1,322 words in the Declaration of Independence. Yet, government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words." David McIntosh.
* * * * * *
The Best Communicator. I admire how Christ communicated so clearly with simple parables that even simple fishermen could grasp. But even better was the Message of his Father. He grabbed the Jews' attention by sending Christ not as a King but as a poor man's son, born not in a Christmas-like manger but a place where cows were fed--noisy, smelly. The child grew up poor, learned the hard job of being a carpenter, and only at 30, after he'd learned enough of life to know how to communicate clearly, did he start preaching. And then he died, killed not by the Romans or the heathen but by his own people.

His brief life of 33 years gave rise to great and complex religions, and learned schools of theology--so learned that we easily forget the simplicity of the Message that was communicated so clearly to us by the Master Communicator--that our Father loved us enough to be one of us, and to show us the Way back to Him.

A Danish Proverb says, "Life is God's gift to me. What I do with it is my gift to God." But what I do with my life is not just a gift to God but the only real message I'll ever preach, because the best sermons are not from lips but lives.

I need to go prepare the words for my lecture today. I wonder what my life will communicate? My students might be better off if I put into practice the advice of Abraham Lincoln, "Be silent and be thought a fool. Open your mouth and remove all doubt."

F.B. Meyer, "Our Daily Homily" (London, 1894) wrote of today's verse:
"The wise preacher or teacher is not content with merely teaching the people knowledge, he will ponder and seek out and set in order the lessons of divine wisdom; and when these are settled, he will go on to find out acceptable words.... Not that we are to make beauty of language an object in itself; but having conceived high and holy thought we should give them a worthy expression, so that the Royal word may ride forth in a becoming equipage....

"...Remember, however, that the words of the wise are as goads and nails. They must have points, sometimes to prick to duty, at other times to stick fast in the memory. In every sermon or lesson there should be points. To arrest and compel attention is more important than to please the ear. Do not refine and beautify it to such an extent that there may be nothing left to stir the conscience and lacerate the heart.

"Words that best fit the enunciation of God's truth are given from the One Shepherd. We are enriched by Him, not only in all knowledge but in all utterance. He who made the mouth can put his words into the mouth. Ask Him to speak to you, that you may speak in accents borrowed from his tone; for it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you."

www.amoymagic.com