Army Chaplain Points Out Bad Speech Habits of Preachers
No Author Listed
Aug. 28, 1948; p. 12
“Preachers acquire bad habits!” This rather astounding statement was made recently by Chaplain (Lt. Col.) Robert Schock, U.S.A. public-speaking instructor at the Army and Air Force Chaplain School, at Carlisle Barracks, Pa. The chaplain has been instructing a course in “Pulpit and Microphone Techniques” at the school for the past two years. In this work he made the startling discovery that most ministers in practicing their calling pick up such bad habits in pulpit technique that after ten to fifteen years, most of them stand in need of professional help.
This discovery is not only confined to military chaplains. Over four-fifths of the students with whom Chaplain Schock has worked since the inauguration of his course have been civilian ministers commissioned in the Reserve and the National Guard. Thus, he has handled a good cross section of the preachers of the United States. Faulty pulpit technique is not confined to any one group, he says.
It all began in the latter part of 1945 when the chaplain school was planning a course of study to improve the pulpit techniques of Army and Air Force Chaplains. In one [respect], this was a presumptuous idea, for on average the chaplains then attending the school had been preaching for twelve or more years. They were experienced teachers, so why should such a course of study as this be proposed? During the war years the Army had an excellent opportunity to study the effectiveness of preachers as a whole. Thousands of civilian ministers entered the Army to serve as chaplains, bringing with them all the accumulated experience of years of working in their civilian calling. A surprisingly large percentage of them, however, were singularly ineffective preachers. It was not that these men lacked sincerity or the religious training or the sympathetic understanding that characterize a good minister. It was simply that all ministers are not good preachers.
The chief of chaplains determined to change that situation, if possible. Since the chaplain school is the one agency through which all Army and Air Force chaplains eventually pass, it was decided to toss the problem into its lap. The first approach of the school toward this problem was a simple one: It would purchase a recording machine, make a recording of the delivery of each chaplain that went through the class, then play the recording back to him and, he, having heard his mistakes, would correct them. It was soon discovered, however, that there was a fallacy behind this procedure. The fallacy lay in the assumption that every minister was, or could be, a good critic of himself. Initial experiences proved that, although preachers in their colleges and seminaries may have been well trained in public speaking, over the years they have forgotten so much about the subject that they are no longer reliable critics of themselves. After preaching for ten or fifteen years a minister becomes so accustomed to the sound of his own voice that he ceases even to listen to it, far less to be critical of it.
Another very important discovery was that the average minister thinks of himself as a very fine preacher. . . . The average preacher has become so accustomed for years to hearing members of his congregation tell him on Sunday morning that he has preached a good sermon that he begins to believe it himself. The fact remains that his delivery, however good the content of the sermon may have been, might have been very poor. Since congregations are generally very reticent about criticizing their ministers, however, the average preacher can easily and unconsciously be led into believing that he was doing an effective job [delivering] his sermons.
Another aspect of the problem was . . . that a young minister at the start of his career is conscientiously aware of the methods taught him in public speaking and homiletics courses. So, he tries many approaches and techniques. He soon discovers that one, two, or three of these methods are particularly successful and applicable to his talents, and accordingly he specializes in them. Over a period of years this specialization becomes a habit, and soon every sermon, Sunday after Sunday, has the same construction and technique. Thus, the average congregation is subjected to a sameness about every sermon, even though the subject matter differs widely. In his specialization, the preacher is actually cheating himself and, of course, the congregation, of the stimulation that comes from different ways of performing a mission that remains basically the same, and congregations become weary of hearing the same man Sunday after Sunday. . . .
Some of the basic faults discovered in the ministers who have attended the school are poor voice control, improper breathing, an uninteresting voice, unnecessary pausing, pause patterns, poetic rhythm patterns, melody patterns, the oratorical voice, the orotund ministerial voice, the uninterested voice, the sing-song voice, the reading voice, and reading of the Scriptures with no attempt at interpretation or understandability.
To reveal their bad habits, three recordings are made of each chaplain’s voice, once while he reads from the Scriptures, once while he reads poetry, and once while he delivers a sermon. Each recording is played back to the entire class and criticized by its members.
“Still the most startling fact to me,” says Chaplain Schlock, “is that these are faults found in ministers who have been preaching for years. Nearly every chaplain, upon hearing his voice played back to him, remarks, ‘Why, I knew better than that in college and seminary.’ All I can say is, ‘Preachers acquire bad habits.’”
_ _ _
QUESTION
What are some bad speech habits you have observed in preachers? Please attempt to be constructive with your comments and not mean-spirited. Comment below or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, send an email to [email protected] and we will share your comment (but not your name) here.
RESPONSES
“I remember my father saying this only once, but it has stuck with me. He said he didn’t care for hearing the associate minister, during sermons, saying, ‘Listen to this.’ My dad—who had a great deal of experience speaking before groups, though not as a minister—said, ‘He’s standing at the pulpit in front of the entire church. He doesn’t need to say, “Listen to this,” because everyone’s already listening.'”
“A speaker may say ‘each time’ or ‘every time,’ but ‘each and every time’ is redundant.”
“When speaking and you say ‘in conclusion’ or similar language, you should be finished in no more than 90 seconds.”
0 Comments