Focus and Reduce 9.8.2022

    Since I was playing catch up after my Oregon trip Last week’s blog was off the cuff. To continue tidying things up I’m combining two topics. How fortuitous. The kind of focus I want to discuss should result in a reduction. Reduction of words. 

    Another way to describe what I’m talking about is writing with economy. For some of us, this is a real issue. If you are well read from a broad variety of authors, you are constantly increasing your vocabulary. As you comprehend more words you use them in conversation, writing, and preaching. This can make your preaching and writing fresh and give your conversation greater breadth. For me, it increases the temptation to use too many words, to talk around a subject rather than summarizing my thoughts as compactly as possible. 

    Chronology as well as clarity are at issue. When five well-chosen, appropriate words are sufficient, the use of twenty is overkill. Any added clarity is absorbed by the excess. Rather than being hard and clear your expression becomes spongey, absorbing the space that words need to thrive. 

    We are reminded of this principle of increasing focus by reducing the number of words used in many places in scripture. One example is in 1 Corinthians 15.3-8 where Paul sums up the Gospel as it was taught in earliest Christianity using less than one hundred words. His topic in the balance of the chapter is resurrection. He prefaces that discussion with a summary that encapsulates the faith without drilling down into the details. He knows. The Corinthians know he knows. But his purpose is not to tell everything, just enough to introduce a subject and then unpack his subject in detail. He could have written extensively on any of the topics found in 1 Corinthians 15.3-8, and in other places he does. By focusing on the task at hand (introducing a discussion of resurrection) with an abbreviated summary he explains but does not exhaust the subject. 

The right word, chosen with care is better than lots of nearly right words. Even when those words--especially when those words--are on target. 

    Because we are responsible for teaching the content and intent of scripture, we must master our material. That process fills us with knowledge. Sometimes we are tempted to cram everything we learn into a message or lesson. Carefully choosing the words we use keeps us focused on the message of the text as well as our congregation. The operative quotation is 

“Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it — wholeheartedly — and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.                                                                                                                                             Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch 

    In the study, we should know how long we intend to preach. Habit informs us how many words it will take for us to hit our mark. Discipline teaches us to use the fewest number of correctly chosen words to teach the text. When we do this, we provide the space needed for each word to do its work and for the Spirit of God to move in people’s hearts. How hard we often make it. We say so much, forgetting that the Spirit is at work and can often work best when we are finished speaking and the echo of scripture is the only thing in our people’s ears.