Fancy Words
If John Owen were to drop by your church gather this Sunday, inform you that he had been frozen in a block of ice and was only “mostly dead” but better now after his recent thaw. If he were then given permission to preach a sermon — would he do an adequate job? I suspect that he would not.
I don’t mean to suggest that I have some question as to whether he’d preach sound doctrine. I just wonder if anyone would understand the words that came from his mouth.
If a Pastor’s role is to present the gospel and expound the Word of God to the congregation — the whole congregation, mind you — is there any room for verbose or antiquated speech? I ask this because I’ll occasionally come across a churchman who absolutely adores the preaching of his or her pastor, but confesses that sometimes the words used or the manner of delivery soars ever so eloquently over their heads. Us Reformed folk have a real love for Puritans and other Reformed types. But sometimes that love is expressed by trying to sound like the Puritan Doc Brown put together a rudimentary flux capacitor capable of launching you into the future once your horse & buggy reaches a speed of 8.8 mph.
I love reading those old Puritans myself. I love reading Shakespeare. I appreciate what those verbose pastors are going for. I understand (mostly) what is being communicated by all three groups. But it took a college course or two coupled with hours upon hours re-reading the same sentence over-and-over-and-over again to get to that point. This is something most people do not do, because they are not dorks, such as myself.
Most every Pastor I know cherishes the time they have in the pulpit to preach the Word. They trim down content to fit whatever time window they might have. But what good is all of that if the actual words spoken are shattered upon the rock of understanding (or not understanding, as it were)?
Jesus taught with authority and could have stumped everyone he taught in the same manner as God stopped up Job’s mouth (where were you when?). But instead, he uses language easily understood by those around him (consider the lilies of the field, birds of the air, etc.). He taught hard things. Difficult things to follow, but what he taught was understood and accepted or rejected accordingly.
If Christ made a point to speak in a manner so that those he was teaching were able to understand his every word — we need to take care to be sure we’re doing the same. Not through watering down or irreverence, but with a plain and direct language — free of unnecessary or archaic terminology, or awkward and outdated sentence structures. We had a whole Reformation about a number of different things. People being afforded the opportunity to understand in their own language the Word of God was one of them. As brilliant as the English Puritans were, they were effectively speaking a different language than the English of today.
Cry for the state of education in our nation. Push for a resurgence in the classical model of educating. Just don’t insist that this is your congregation’s problem and continue on in speaking over their collective heads. “I didn’t understand what the Pastor was saying” won’t be a sufficient excuse at judgment day. But all the same, I don’t wish to be asked why I didn’t care enough to make sure my words were understood by those who came to hear them.
