I had the privilege of presenting a workshop discussion at EHS a week or so ago. Speaking to a sub-group of homiletics teachers, I was interested to discuss whether or not our understanding of our task out to be expanded to consider those...

One of my students made an interesting statement to me recently about the value of editing one’s sermon. “I want to make sure that there is no wasted energy in the sermons I present.”

I appreciated that particular turn of phrase. ...

One of the potential negatives for preachers who work without notes is the potential for annoying verbal tics. These meaningless expressions fill the empty spaces in our speaking when we are subconsciously uncomfortable with silence or when we are nervous about wh...

My friend and mentor, Grant Lovejoy, sent me a link this morning to the new website for Chronological Bible Storying. The website offers the methodology, research, and reports from the field into this powerful way of preaching to oral and indigenous cultures.

I’ve been reading the Confessions of St. Augustine as part of my devotional life recently. Before Augustine was a bishop and theologian he was a rhetorician, captivated by the promise and lure of eloquence. That enthusiasm began to wane, however, as...

Further to my earlier posts this week, Tony emailed me with the following…

John Wayne quote: “Talk low, talk slow and don’t say
much”.

UPSPEAK:

Upspeak is the habit of raising your infle...

These days I hear an awful lot of up-speak. You know what I’m talking about – that quizzical turning-up of the voice at the end of our statements. It’s a vocal way of punctuating our statements with a question mark as if to say that we’re n...

Brad Fry has posted an interesting question in the general discussion category above. I would encourage some of you to post your thinking.

He writes, “In the past few years sermon outline handouts have become quite popular. I have used them at times m...

Yesterday I spent some time working on a project to help people think about how to communicate more effectively in the postmodern context. The following items are some of my random thoughts regarding attitudes we ought to adopt if we want to be more effective in t...

Mnemonics are methods for remembering information that is otherwise quite difficult to recall. A very simple example is the ‘30 days hath September’ rhyme. The basic principle of mnemonics is to use as many of the best functions of your brain as possib...

If preachers want to speak so that listeners can hear they will have to learn to speak the listener’s language. We will need to learn to speak “oral.” In North Amerlca, statistics tell us that 45 to 48 per cent of the general population is either...

“In 1993 the United States’ National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) released the results of the National Adult Literacy Survey (NALS). The survey tested participants in their ability with prose (edi...