We, who preach, can learn from great public speakers. I regularly watch clips of Barack Obama – he, I think, is a great public speaker. He clearly draws on the great African-American preaching tradition.
A friend recently sent me an article on What can Donald Trump teach us about preaching? Analysis of the way Donald Trump speaks indicated:
- His vocabulary is very simple: 172 out of 220 words are one syllable—that is 78%.
- He uses very simple sentence structures.
- He uses a few key words and repeats them all the time.
- He addresses people directly using second person plural verbs.
- He consistently ends sentence with strong punchy words—and goes to some effort to do so
I’m not suggesting that preachers mimic Donald Trump’s salesman-like speaking style (nor am I suggesting preachers mimic his content!) I’m simply suggesting that reflecting on his speaking style is of value (as is reflecting on the speaking style of other communicators). Part of the problem with many sermons is that they are often simply theological texts read aloud. Preachers spend hours producing carefully-crafted texts which they then read aloud in the pulpit.
Even putting those texts through something like a Flesch–Kincaid readability test (or similar online tool) can give you an indication of the difficulty of the text you have produced. Donald Trump is understood by a 9 year old. My own preaching texts (I tend to use what I have as a basis for my preaching, rather than as a text I read aloud) tend to be at the 11-13-year age level.
Drawing on another source – how does this compare to the Trinity Sunday sermon you heard (or gave)? Peter Sellers in Heavens above:
Rather more tongue in cheek – we can also learn liturgical gestures from Donald Trump.
Here is orans:
And here is orans after touching the consecrated bread:
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Kia ora Bosco,
Thank you for this interesting, informative and hopefully helpful piece of advise when it come to preaching. I guess we could it the Trump method in preaching. In future I will watch his clips with new vigor and less judgmentalism. (On FB i haven’t been kind to Donald Trump in the past).
Loved the Peter Sellars video. What a lovely reproduction of the Brummy accent, too. Much more convincing that some sermons I’ve heard – about the absolute human need of God in our lives.
As for Mr Drumpf (forgive the coarseness, Father) sounds like an old fart struggling for survival!