Words for the Ear

Every sermon in this course has been prepared on paper or a screen, with a Bible open and a notebook beside it. Every sermon in this course will be received by the ear, once, at the speed of speech. That gap is wider than most preachers realise. A reader can slow down, reread, look back at a heading, see where a paragraph ends. A listener can do none of these things. A sentence that reads beautifully can be impossible to follow when spoken, and a sentence that looks clumsy on paper can be exactly right for the ear.

Walter Ong, a Jesuit scholar, studied this difference in Orality and Literacy (1982). He described how thought and expression work in cultures where knowledge is passed on by speech rather than by writing, and he listed features that mark oral expression. It tends to be additive, joining thoughts with and, and, and, rather than nesting them in complex clauses. It is aggregative, keeping familiar phrases and pairings together. It is redundant or copious, saying things more than once, because the speaker must keep the listener with him and there is no page to go back to. It stays close to the human lifeworld, talking about people and things rather than abstractions. It is participatory, drawing the hearer in rather than holding him at a distance. And it is situational, thinking in concrete situations rather than general categories.

None of this is a sign of lower intelligence; Ong was careful about that, and so should you be. Oral cultures have produced great poetry, law, history and theology, and the Old Testament itself carries the marks of a culture where scripture was heard before it was read: parallelism in the psalms, refrains, repetitions, numbered sayings. The point is that the ear and the eye work differently. Many students of this course preach to congregations that are largely oral, where many cannot read or read only a little, and where knowledge is still handed down in proverb, song and story. But even in the most literate city congregation, a sermon is an oral event. People who read all week still hear on Sunday.

So the first rule of this lesson is simple. Write for the ear, not for the eye. If your sermon notes read like an essay, your sermon will sound like one, and the people who most need to hear it will be the first to lose the thread. Test every sentence by saying it aloud. If you would not say it that way to a friend sitting across the table, do not say it that way from the pulpit.

The Christian tradition has argued for plain speech in the pulpit for a very long time, and some of its best advice was written for Africa. Augustine of Hippo, in the fourth book of On Christian Teaching, said that a teacher should prefer being understood to being correct. His example was a Latin word: the proper form of the word for bone was os, which in African pronunciation could be confused with the word for mouth, so he said he would rather use the incorrect form ossum, which everybody understood, than the correct one that left his hearers confused. What use, he asked in effect, is correct speech that the hearers cannot follow? A preacher who cares more about sounding educated than about being understood has forgotten why he is speaking.

John Wesley put the same conviction in one memorable line in the preface to his Sermons on Several Occasions (1746): 'I design plain truth for plain people.' Wesley was an Oxford scholar who could read the New Testament in Greek and quote the church fathers. In the same preface he says he deliberately kept out of his sermons philosophical speculation, intricate reasoning and, as far as possible, even the show of learning, apart from sometimes citing the original scriptures, because the coal miners and farm workers he preached to would not have followed him. The Puritan plain style, which you met in lesson 1, carried the same instinct. Plain does not mean shallow. It means the depth is in the content, not in the vocabulary.

Paul is the great example. He was a highly educated man, trained at the feet of Gamaliel (Acts 22:3), and he told the Corinthians, 'When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God' (1 Corinthians 2:1). He even admitted, 'Although I am not a polished speaker, I am certainly not lacking in knowledge' (2 Corinthians 11:6). And the first apostles were noticed for exactly this: the council saw the boldness of Peter and John and realised that they were unschooled, ordinary men, and took note that they had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13). A preacher who is not polished is in good company.

In practice, plain words means several things. Choose short, common words over long, rare ones: help rather than assistance, show rather than demonstrate. Use concrete nouns and active verbs: God sent his Son is stronger than the sending of the Son was accomplished by God. Keep most sentences short; a sentence that needs a comma to breathe in the middle is probably two sentences. Theological words are a special case. Justification, propitiation, sanctification and covenant are Bible words, and a congregation should learn them. But every time you use one, explain it in plain words, and use the plain words more often than the technical ones. Justified means declared not guilty by the judge. Say that, and say it every time, until the congregation can say it back to you.

Here is a single sentence rewritten for the ear, so you can see what the rules do. Written for the eye: The apostle, having established in the preceding chapters the believer's union with Christ, now proceeds to delineate its practical implications for the conduct of domestic relationships. Spoken for the ear: Paul has spent three chapters telling us who we are in Christ. Now he turns to our homes. If you belong to Christ, he says, it will show in how you treat your wife, your husband, your children. Nothing in the content has been lost. The long sentence has become four short ones; the abstract nouns, implications and conduct, have become people; and the hearer is addressed as you. That one change, from describing to addressing, does more than any other to turn an essay into a sermon.

Writing teachers tell students to avoid repetition. Preaching teachers should tell them the opposite. Ong called oral speech redundant, and he meant it as a description of a necessity, not a fault: a listener who loses a sentence cannot go back to it, so the speaker must bring it round again. Scripture itself does this. Psalm 136 repeats the same line twenty-six times: 'His loving devotion endures forever.' Amos opens his judgments against the nations with the same formula each time, for three transgressions, even four (Amos 1:3 and following). Moses told Israel to speak of God's words at home and on the road, when you lie down and when you get up (Deuteronomy 6:7). And Paul wrote to the Philippians, 'It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you' (Philippians 3:1). If repetition is a safeguard in a letter that can be reread, it is much more so in a sermon that cannot.

The most important thing to repeat is your main idea. Work on it until it is one short sentence, in words your hearers would use, and then say it in exactly the same words several times: in the introduction, at each major turn, and in the conclusion. Do not vary it for the sake of variety. Changing the wording each time, which good essay writing would require, makes listeners wonder whether you have changed your point. The goal is that every hearer can repeat the sentence on the way home, and that the child who was half asleep heard it at least once.

Signposts tell the listener where he is. In a book, headings and paragraph breaks do this work. In a sermon, the preacher must do it with words. Announce what is coming: There are two things this passage tells us about prayer. Mark the movement: So that is the first thing. Here is the second. Restate before moving on: We have seen that God is patient. But the text does not stop there. Ask a question the next section will answer: But why would the father run? Signposts feel heavy-handed when you write them, and they are exactly what the hearer needs. Your congregation will not notice them as clumsiness; they will notice that they always knew where they were.

Participation belongs here too. Ong described oral speech as participatory, and many preaching traditions around the world build participation into the sermon itself. In African American churches and in many churches across Africa and the Caribbean, the congregation answers the preacher throughout, with amen, with repetition of his phrases, with song, in a pattern of call and response. A preacher can invite this: by asking questions the congregation answers aloud, by teaching them a refrain to say back, by asking them to turn to their neighbour and repeat the main idea. Where the tradition is quieter, a question the congregation answers silently in their minds does some of the same work. A sermon heard together is not only a speech. It is a shared event, and the hearer who takes part remembers.

Many students of this course preach in a language that is not their first. A pastor who grew up speaking Shona, Yoruba, Tagalog or Quechua may preach in English, French, Portuguese or Spanish because that is the church's language, or because the congregation speaks many mother tongues and one shared language is the only way to reach them all. Others have studied theology in a second language and must preach in their mother tongue, which means translating every idea before they can say it. Both are hard, and neither is a reason for shame.

Scripture has a word for anyone who feels his tongue is not good enough. Moses pleaded, 'I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since You have spoken to Your servant, for I am slow of speech and tongue' (Exodus 4:10). And the LORD answered, 'Who gave man his mouth?' (4:11), and 'Now go! I will help you as you speak, and I will teach you what to say' (4:12). At Pentecost part of the crowd's astonishment was that the preachers were Galileans (Acts 2:7), men from the provinces with a provincial accent. God has always been willing to speak through accents that the educated looked down on.

Where you can, preach in the language your hearers think and pray in. The quiet that fell when Paul switched to the crowd's own language (Acts 22:2) is a quiet many preachers have heard. Lamin Sanneh, the Gambian-born historian of mission, argued in Translating the Message (1989) that Christianity, unlike some other faiths, has from the beginning treated every language as fit to carry God's word, and that translating scripture into local languages has again and again given dignity to peoples and cultures that colonial powers dismissed. You do not need to agree with every part of his argument to take its point for preaching: the mother tongue is not a lesser vehicle for the gospel. If your congregation thinks in a language you can speak, even imperfectly, consider preaching in it.

When you must preach in a second language, adjust for it rather than fight it. Use words you know well and can pronounce with confidence; this is not the moment for new vocabulary. Keep sentences even shorter than you would in your first language. Write out your main idea, your transitions and your call in full, and practise them aloud until they are easy; you can speak more freely in between. Say the hard names and words aloud several times before Sunday. Do not apologise for your language at the start, and certainly not repeatedly; it tells the hearers to listen for mistakes. If possible, ask a first-language speaker to listen to a practice and tell you where you were unclear. And if you studied your theology in another language, prepare the key terms in the language you will preach in: find how your Bible translation renders words like grace, righteousness and covenant, and use those words, so that what you say from the pulpit matches what your hearers read at home.

Preaching through an interpreter is older than the church. Joseph's brothers did not realise he understood them, since there was an interpreter between them (Genesis 42:23). When Ezra read the law, the Levites explained it to the people so that they could understand (Nehemiah 8:7-8), and Jewish tradition, recorded in the Talmud, took that explaining to include translating the Hebrew into Aramaic. Whether or not that reading is right, it is certain that much Christian preaching through history has been done through interpreters, and it still is: by missionaries, by visiting preachers, at conferences, in refugee camps, and in congregations with several language groups.

Most of the work of preaching well through an interpreter is done before the service. Meet the interpreter beforehand, pray together, and go through the sermon with them. Give them a sheet with the passage, the main idea, the outline, the key words and every Bible reference. Agree which translation of the Bible they will read from in their language, and whether you or they will read the passage aloud. Explain any illustration that might be unfamiliar. Ask them what will not work in their language or culture, and listen to the answer. A good interpreter is not a machine but a partner, and the more they understand what you mean, the better they will say it.

In the pulpit, speak in short, complete units: one sentence, or one clear clause, at a time. Do not break a sentence in the middle, because in many languages the verb or the key word comes in a different place, and the interpreter cannot translate half a thought. Pause long enough for them to finish. Avoid idioms, puns, wordplay, rhymes, alliteration and jokes that depend on the sound of words; they rarely survive. Avoid references to things your hearers will not know, such as local politics or sports from your own country. Look at the congregation, not at the interpreter, when you speak, and look at them while the interpreter speaks too. Expect the sermon to take nearly twice as long, and cut your material by about half, not your pace.

Treat the interpreter with respect. Never correct them in public, even if you know enough of the language to hear a mistake; speak to them afterwards if it matters. Thank them by name at the start or the end. Remember that in the eyes of the congregation the interpreter carries part of your credibility and you carry part of theirs. Where possible, choose an interpreter who is a mature believer and who knows the Bible, since they are not only translating words but conveying the meaning of scripture. And if you are the interpreter, the same rules apply in reverse: ask for the outline in advance, ask questions, and when the preacher says something that will not make sense in your language, say the meaning, not the words.

You now have a passage, a main idea, a need, a skeleton, an introduction, a conclusion and illustrations. Today you make it sound like speech. You will need your notebook and your phone.

Step one: hear it. Using only your outline, preach the whole sermon aloud, standing up, and record it on your phone. Do not stop to correct yourself. Then listen to the recording with your notebook open. Mark every place where you stumbled, lost your way, used a word your hearers might not know, or went on too long.

Step two: the main idea. Rewrite your main idea as one short sentence in the words your hearers use, no longer than about twelve words if you can manage it. Write it at the top of your page in large letters. Then mark at least three places in your outline where you will say it again in exactly the same words: in the introduction, at a turning point, and in the conclusion.

Step three: plain words. Go through your outline and circle every theological or technical word. For each one, decide whether you can replace it with a plain word, or whether the congregation should learn it. If they should learn it, write a one-line plain explanation next to it, and plan to say that explanation every time you use the word.

Step four: signposts. Between each move in your skeleton, you wrote a transition sentence in lesson 1. Now make sure each one tells the hearer where they are: what they have just heard, and what is coming. Add a short preview in the introduction, such as This passage tells us three things about waiting on God.

Step five: your language. If you will preach in a second language, write out in full the introduction's first sentences, the main idea, every transition and the call, and practise saying them until they are easy. If you will preach through an interpreter, prepare a one-page interpreter sheet: the passage, the main idea, the outline in full sentences, the key words with their meaning, every Bible reference, and a note on any illustration that needs explaining. Then, whatever language you preach in, preach it once more aloud and record it. You should hear the difference.