I understand that the average person has a vocabulary of something like 5,000 words and it is I am told by one of my colleagues a fact that the average reading age of people in Walsall is 8 years old. Given this thinking I am glad that I have always tried to keep my preaching reasonably simple and any illustrations I use relevant to the people I am speaking to. I believe this is very much the way that our Lord did things. When I read the parables I can imagine Jesus telling these stories that were relevant to the understanding of the people he spoke to. They were stories that would 'live' for the people because they knew exactly where He was coming from.
I really can't imagine Jesus using words that some of our theologians use and I see on some of the other blogs I read regularly - it does stretch me when I read some of these and I do have to look in the dictionary at times but what concerns me even more is when these sorts of words are used in sermons when we are speaking to ordinary folk rather than the theologically minded (whoops just used a big word myself). I was in a management training course a couple of weeks ago when one of my colleagues said something about a paradigm shift and probably two thirds of the people in the room said 'what is he on about now'. I really do think he missed he chance of getting his point over because of the word he used - how often do we miss the chance of getting across the gospel message by our use of words that may not be appropriate for the situation we are in?
1 comment:
Agree completely - when we have the bloggers conference are we going to be able to understand what the others are going on about?
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