“The Word Unleashed”
VAUMC
Richmond, Virginia
May 2014
Try to avoid…
Cliché / Trope
Christianist words
Self-defeating speech
Self-referential speech
Formulaic Devices
Overuse of 25 cent words
Chiding moralism
Cliché / Trope
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“Friends, this is the good news”
“gather together”
“at the end of our time together”
“live into the reality”
“The text tells us”
“unpacking the text”
“turn to your neighbor, and say,’Neighbor!...”
“in our DNA”
“the marginalized”
“I want to encourage you this morning to…”
Overused Idioms
“Put a face on
it”
“the pink slip”
 “the midnight phone call”
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Christianish words
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“Relational”
“Intentionality”
“Fellowship”
“Beloved”
“Community”
“if you feel called to do that”
“in this Lenten season”
Self-defeating speech
“I’d like to offer an illustration”
 “Let me share an example”
 “It goes without saying that…”
 “Needless to say…”
 “I don’t need to tell you that..”
 “I think this text is telling us..”
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Apologetic speech
Either say it,
or leave it out.
“If you will..”
 “I’m gonna pop through these
points…”
 “Just real quickly here”
 “I know I’ve said this before,
but…”
 “Our text today is a long one so if
you would bear with me….
 “I just put that in there to..”
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“I just close out with this…
 “I know we are out of time, but..
 “Jesus suffered…just like you all have to suffer
through this sermon.”
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“GO INTO ONE OF OUR
CHURCHES AND BEGIN TO
COUNT THE WORDS THAT MIGHT
BE SPARED AND IN MOST PLACES
THE ENTIRE SERMON WILL GO”
Emerson 1834
Self-referencing speech
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“I think…”
“I find it interesting…”
“In my opinion..”
“Last week I read that..”
“I want to encourage you…”
“I am of the belief that”
“I chose this illustration to…”
Overuse of personal illustrations
Overextension of personal illustrations
Formulaic devices to avoid
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English Essay formulations
“Verbal Throat Clearing”
Redundancies
Use of the words “that” and “which”
Passive voice
English Essay Formulations
“Telling versus
writing”
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Firstly
Indeed
Nonetheless
Most importantly
“And in conclusion..”
“My first point is…”
“And finally..”
“And lastly..”
“the first of which..”
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“in short”
“is defined as”
“one commentary
noted that..”
5 cent vs. 25 cent words
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“Endeavor”
“Finalize”
“Purchase”
“Approximately”
“Utilize”
“Functionality”
Redundancies
“Reduce the
sauce”
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“the reason is because..”
“true fact”
“gather together”
“join together”
“past history”
“personal friend”
“future plans”
“grateful thanks”
“refer back”
“most unique”
“vitally important”
Simplification Exercise
“clarity”
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“at this point in time..”
“have need for..”
“on the condition that..”
“until such time as..”
“I’d like to invite you to..”
“It’s important that we remember that..”
Chiding Moralism
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“we need to…”
“this week you should…”
“we ought to..”
“you must”
“I want you to…”
THE SECRET OF A GOOD SERMON IS
TO HAVE A GOOD BEGINNING AND
A GOOD ENDING, THEN HAVING THE
TWO AS CLOSE TOGETHER AS
POSSIBLE.
George Burns
Style design and texture of language
Low: Teaches/Explains
Medium: Pleases, Winsome
High: Persuades
“so when they were thinking about the
transportation of a King, to rescue them from
this yoke of Roman oppression, they were
thinking thoroughbred, broken, highly
trained, high-stepping , neutered Roman war
horse.
But Jesus chose the donkey. This wild,
humble, fertile donkey mom. A nursing
mother, with her colt right alongside her all
the way.“
A.J. Thomas
Palm Sunday
The Preacher as Poet….
Perception
Selection
Delivery
Perceive the right word
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look intently, hear intently, taste intently
 “Taste the see that the Lord is good!”
“And when Philip had run up, he heard him reading Isaiah
the prophet, and said, “Do you understand what you are
reading?” And he said, “Well, how could I, unless someone
guides me?” And he invited Philip to come up and sit with
him.” Acts 8: 30-31
The right word considers that…
Language is never neutral
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Contextualized
Personal
Internal
Subjective
Historical
Patterned
Language is never static
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Blog
Recombobulate
Lucrepath
Churnalism
Downager
Prenostalgia
Select the right word
Perception and selection are the keys to high speech,
persuasive speech, that is transformative for both
the speaker and the hearer.
Kilpatrick
“The Bible is full of stories that are lost causes and
mismatched battles, until God says..” That’s
enough”… .David and Goliath, the huge soldier
versus a kid and a sling and a couple of stones. God
says…”That’s enough” Jesus was trying to feed 5000
people, and they could find was 5 puny rounds of pita
of bread and two tiny fish. God says “That’s enough”
Then the disciples themselves, a motley crew, what
kind of resources did they have?
But God says “That’s enough”.”
Gary Upledger
“What is in your hand”
‘
The right word is surprising…
“And if you’d like, we offer a high-tech, cutting edge
media tool here in service today. It’s called hymnal”
Jessica LaGrone
“We don’t have to look very hard to
see examples of failure…
in the newspaper…
or the television
or in mirror.”
Juan Huertas
“Who will be saved?” is not as
interesting a question as “Who
saves?” That which makes Christian
salvation counter-intuitive, countercultural, and strange is the God who
saves.”
Will Willimon
“Jesus would have been less like a
carpenter, more like a handyman…He and
his Dad might have hiked three or four
miles to the city to find work with wood and
with stone. He would’ve been at the bottom
of the organizational chart.”
Matt Wallis
Rate of Language Acquisition
Expressive Language over time
12 mths
24 mths
3 to 5
6 - 17
College
30 - 49
50 - 69
70 -80
90 and
up
“When we begin to live it out…
this idea of Kingdom come...
Something amazing happens.
We begin to get uncomfortable.
We begin to shift in our pews,
we begin to shift in our workplaces, we
begin to shift in our neighborhoods...
We are no longer comfortable.”
Juan Huertas
“Jesus call us to a life of love, of
loving God so much we can do no
other when dressing for greatness
we grab not a power tie but a
servant’s towel.”
Clarke Campbell-Brown
“There will be some people in our lives that
lack the spiritual maturity to see the vision,
they can’t see what God is doing, and they
tend to have been diagnosed with spiritual
cataracts..“
Juana Jordan
The right word is sensual
“and we fling open the doors of this church
and let the light of Christ shine into the
world”
Karen Hudson
“Mary had been there Friday
afternoon. She had stood at the
foot of the cross… She had
stayed all the way to the gory,
ghastly, gaspy end.”
Jim Harnish
“And so it begins. The theme music turns
to a minor key, the room gets a little
darker, and we watch the tragedy unfold.”
Robert Roseberry
“Now, this wasn’t some Boone’s Farm or
2-Buck Chuck. No. This was some top
shelf hooch.
A. J. Thomas
The right word is evocative
“Truth is not relative. It has some
“trueness” to it. When we were in school
and took a test, the answers were never
“true for me” or “true for you” but “true”
or “false.”
Elizabeth Duffin
“This creed is short-hand for the whole
Bible...it is say everything in this book
shrink-wrapped in just a few words”
Jessica LeGrone
Evocative language
““This wall, maybe it conjures up the Berlin wall, a prison wall, a
border wall, built to protect but oppresses instead and here in the
US those boundaries might be drawn by train tracks”
(On the Palestinian wall) Daniel Corpening
On the Wedding at Cana:
“ and it was a great party! Filled with laughter,
and conversation. New friendships were
made, and people? Are still talking about it
to this day.”
Lynne Settlemyre
“The Kingdom of God is like a mustard
see… a huge wild stinky shrub… that
will heal… that will be hard to get rid
of…that will grow beyond our control.
And this ugly little stinker of a weed
will host unwelcome birds in it’s
branches.”
Stephanie Lind Schlimm
“What kind of king is this? We want
you to help us with the people out
there, not someone to tell us how we
ought to live in here. We need a
deliverer against the Romans! Not
someone to tell us what we are doing
wrong!
So they crucified him.”
Emily McGee
On the turning the tables in the temple
Respeak, rework, reread, repeat…
What language shall I borrow to thank thee,
dearest friend, for this thy dying sorrow, thy
pity without end?
O make me thine forever; and should I
fainting be, Lord, let me never, never outlive
my love for thee.”
O Sacred Head Now Wounded
Text: Anonymous; trans. by Paul Gerhardt and James W. Alexander
Music: Hans L. Hassler, 1564-1612; harm. by J.S. Bach, 1685-1750