Some Thoughts Related To Women Who Lead

 Indira Gandhi (India), Golda Meir (Israel), Isabel Perón (Argentina), Margaret Thatcher (United Kingdom), Benazir Bhutto (Pakistan), Giorgia Meloni (Italy), and Sanae Takaichi (Japan) were/are brilliant women, as was Deborah (Judges 4 & 5) in ancient times. I am not so thrilled by Angela Merkel (Germany), Helen Clark (New Zealand), Theresa May (UK), Liz Truss (UK), or Claudia Sheinbaum (Mexico), though I have no doubt that each is a brilliant example in their own right. I have no doubt about the brilliance of the women who now occupy pastoral positions in many compromising congregations at home and abroad.

However, the issue is not about competence, is it? Neither is the issue about individuals. Rather, the issue is about the overarching roles God has laid down as a template to govern the lives and lifestyles of His creatures, and about the hardwired circuitry found in the two (and there are only two) sexes. Please do not use the word gender when referring to the roles men and women occupy, since the word gender concerns grammar and syntax. This is a matter of sex and of God's overarching design for humanity.

Don’t get me wrong. I have no problem submitting to the authority of a woman in the workplace (though I would have an issue with DEI hires). In school, I had great women teachers in first, second, third, fourth, and fifth grade, a really nasty gal in sixth grade, with both men and women teachers in high school and engineering school (thankfully, English teachers). I take issue with the imposition of female spiritual leadership on men. Boys must honor their mothers. Individual men have the absolute right and privilege of benefiting from a Priscilla and an Aquila in a private setting. Placing a woman in a position of pastoral ministry, however, is an imposition.

Female leadership really speaks more to the men who are led than to the women who lead, does it not? The prophetess Deborah’s call to judge the children of Israel in Judges 4 and 5 seems to me to speak more to the weakness and effeminacy of the men of that people than to Deborah. I think I feel this way because of my experience at my first pastorate, almost fifty years ago. When I arrived that first Sunday morning for Sunday School a woman was standing behind a podium. When I asked what she was doing, she said, “None of the men are willing to teach.” She was correct. A number of the men in the auditorium sat there, moving not a muscle, as a woman prepared to speak. Then I said, “There is a man here now.” She sat down and quietly listened as I taught God’s Word, and when I delivered both the Sunday School lesson and the morning sermon, she never returned.

There is something terribly wrong with a man who is willing to sit through a Church service or mixed Sunday School class presided over by a woman. The first time I attended the First Baptist Church in Dallas, I was ushered into Mrs. Criswell’s huge class. I sat there dumbfounded by the attitudes of grown men, successful-looking, as they fawned over her imperial majesty. There is something terribly wrong with a man who is willing to sit through a Church service or mixed Sunday School class presided over by a woman. It is not manly. He is not manly.

Notice some Bible passages with me:

Proverbs 31:3: “Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings.” This is a mother’s advice to her son about manliness and manhood. Notice the lack of specificity. Lemuel’s mother was not speaking about a wife only, or a girlfriend only, or a daughter or sister, but all women. She issues her son a directive, not a suggestion. And who would know better why no man, especially a king in waiting, should give his strength to women than Bathsheba?

Isaiah 3:12: “As for my people, children are their oppressors, and women rule over them. O my people, they which lead thee cause thee to err, and destroy the way of thy paths.” Is not the rule of women over God’s people at least a consequence of their spiritual weakness as a consequence of apostasy if not an indication of God’s judgment?

Jeremiah 50:37: “A sword is upon their horses, and upon their chariots, and upon all the mingled people that are in the midst of her; and they shall become as women: a sword is upon her treasures; and they shall be robbed.” What an indictment this is! It is no compliment to men to predict that they will become as women, to suggest their future effeminacy. Yet, do we not see that in both our culture and in so many of our Churches?

Jeremiah 51:30: “The mighty men of Babylon have forborn to fight, they have remained in their holds: their might hath failed; they became as women: they have burned her dwellingplaces; her bars are broken.” The previous verse was a pronouncement of God’s judgment against Judah, while this is a prediction about Babylon. Should it not tell us something that both God’s people and the wicked nation He used are both saddled with effeminacy as a consequence of their rebellion against God? I assert this because of the wording of the two verses, “they shall become as women,” and “ they became as women.”

1 Corinthians 14:34: “Let your women keep silence in the churches: for it is not permitted unto them to speak; but they are commanded to be under obedience, as also saith the law.” This entire chapter addresses the proper place and exercise of spiritual gifts, primarily two gifts that involve speaking. Yet women are directed to keep silence. This more than suggests that women so gifted were to use such gifts anywhere but in a congregational worship setting, since it is certainly not a command preventing women from speaking to each other.

1 Corinthians 14:35: “And if they will learn any thing, let them ask their husbands at home: for it is a shame for women to speak in the church.” This verse goes so far as to prohibit women from asking questions of the Bible teacher or preacher. Why so? It dishonors her husband, by holding him up before others as not being the primary source of his wife’s instruction. Might it not be reasonably thought by some than a man whose wife teaches while he sits silently, or preaches while he sits silently, is something of a spiritual cuckold? Feedback appreciated on this.

1 Timothy 2: Too large a passage to reproduce here, but a passage that sheds light on public worship conduct, by men in verses 1-8, and by women in verses 9-15. Although verse 15 is very challenging to decipher, it does in no way detract from the thrust of the chapter showing the difference in prominence proposed for Christian men and Christian women in public worship. Men are to be more prominent, while women are to be relatively less prominent. Change my mind!

1 Timothy 3.1-7: Again, too long a passage for here. As you read the seven verses, take note of the pronouns. There are seven. They are each masculine. Then there are the words man, husband, and bishop, each masculine. There is no way, except by violence, to syntax and morphology, one can make room for women being pastors, unless, of course, you deny the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture.

Titus 1.5-9: See above.

There can be no doubt that our civilization is under the dark cloud of God’s judgment. We have women leading men everywhere, with the great majority of men passively succumbing without opposition to the terrible trend. In most Churches where the issue of women asserting their prominence in public worship is not contested, the struggle is over, the pastor and the men have surrendered, and feminism is in the ascendancy.

My issue is not with the women who mistakenly assert themselves in various ways. God’s plan for them is to follow godly male leadership. The issue is the spiritual weakness and laxity of supposed spiritual leaders who not only fail to establish God’s pattern in public worship for them to learn from, but also to imagine they are wonderful guys for being so open and accepting and tolerant and progressive.

I Confess To Being A Pronunciation Nazi!

         I did not early on in my Christian life know that I was a pronunciation Nazi. Prior to my conversion, I didn’t give a rip about anything or anyone but myself. Selfish was the very word that best described almost everything about me before my encounter with the Savior, without ever masking my selfishness with the pretense of concern for others. Thus, my four years at Oregon State University resulted in barely half a dozen people learning my name. Even as a little kid, I licked the cookies to deprive others of eating them. Admittedly, mine was a perverse approach to life.

Then, on the night of March 31^st, 1974, after reading the book of Genesis the night before and reading chapter twelve of Exodus that night, the Spirit of God revealed to me that the Passover lamb was a type of the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. My spiritual peril was revealed to me, my rebellion against God was revealed to me, and I fled to Christ for salvation full and free. He saved me from the penalty of my sins, dramatically cleaned up my vocabulary (nearly halving it), and transformed me into quite a generous fellow from one who had been astonishingly selfish.

That said, and realizing that there is no sinless perfection this side of glory, among the many sinful tendencies and practices I began to battle from the onset of my Christian life is my ongoing pronunciation Nazism. It really bothers me when those who really ought to know better mispronounce words, especially Bible words, due to ignorance or laziness. I am not suggesting I have not mispronounced Bible words, but I try extra hard not to, because it is wrong.

We all know people who mispronounce mischievous to sound like there is a letter i between the letters v and o, making a three-syllable word into a four-syllable display of ignorance. However, pastors are the last people who should tolerate habitual mispronunciations in their ranks.

Who pronounces pharaoh, a two-syllable word, as if it is a three-syllable word with the final a, and the o pronounced (wrongly) as if they are long? Yet, I could name a number of pastors who were forever guilty of butchering the word. And then there is Sinai, pronounced as if it is supposed to sound like a long e should be between the n and the a, distorting a two-syllable word into three syllables. Really? Should not ordination certificates be pulled for those kinds of ridiculous errors?

If someone is a Gospel minister, he should make sure that the words he utters in a sermon or lesson or reads from God’s Word are pronounced correctly. This is so easy to accomplish because there are dictionaries that guide the pronunciation of most words and Bibles with pronunciation guides. No pastor should ever mispronounce Mahershalalhashbaz, Jeberechiah, Mahanaim, or even Peniel. To do so reveals that he has not previously uttered the words in his study. Practice the word, man, enough times that it naturally rolls off your tongue!

I have already confessed to being a pronunciation Nazi. And I am an old retired guy now living halfway around the world. So I am not writing this to make myself feel better. And it is not likely I will ever hear you preach God’s Word while butchering some of the words you use. I am already decades into being opinionated about pastors not studying enough, reading enough, or being humble enough to ask well-trained people in their Churches who are not pronunciation Nazis for help.

I am trying to persuade you, after a half-century of irritation, that there are people who will from time to time show up in the auditorium who will be thoroughly stunned that a pastor, who is supposed to be a diligent student of the Bible, mishandles a Bible word for no good reason.

I thought better of my pastor until he repeatedly mispronounced Pharaoh and Sinai. Such easy problems to address. Unforgivable, if you ask me. Do you doubt what I say? Where have you been the last five years, with the media mercilessly mocking the mispronunciations of both Presidents Biden and Trump?

Here is the simple solution to your problem. Buy the audio Bible read by the late Alexander Scourby, one of the very best voice actors who has ever lived, and use him as a pronunciation guide. Whatever mistakes he has made will be noticed only by scholars with proficiency in Hebrew, Greek, or Aramaic, whom you need not worry about.

Believe me, mispronouncing Bible words and other terms will hurt you, especially with those who went to school before public school teachers began to intentionally trash the culture and their students. I assure you that I am not the only pronunciation Nazi you know.

To Manuscript Or Not To Manuscript?

      I wish I knew how to save a 24-second video uploaded to Facebook that I watched yesterday. It is a video of the late John MacArthur with Phil Johnson, in which MacArthur said at the beginning of the clip, "I think great preachers write their sermons." Oh, how I wish I could show it to you.

     Granted, the short video's purpose was not to present a coherent philosophy of homeletics, but to show the great chemistry MacArthur and Johnson shared on camera. That said, there is a great deal of truth in what MacArthur said. It is, in my opinion, after delivering about 10,000 sermons over the past fifty years, a common error that most preachers make when they forgo preparing a manuscript of the complete sermon they are preparing to deliver.

     It is a short-sighted approach to sermonizing to decry the development and use of a manuscript whenever possible. And I say this despite the fact that I have delivered thousands of sermons with as few as three phrases jotted down as my main points and a proposition decided on before beginning. I am a propositional preacher (the subject of a future blog).

     Allow me to illustrate with some examples. While pastoring a Church with a Christian school, it is entirely appropriate to approach the school's chapel service with the barest of sermon outlines because #1, my audience of children needed the simplest of Gospel messages, using the most basic Bible vocabulary and concepts. And #2, my relationship with the youngsters was so well-developed that I could rely on them to trust me enough to provide me with honest and helpful feedback as I delivered the message to them. It is entirely possible that the facial expressions of one or more students would provide a valuable indication of a direction to proceed with the sermon you had not anticipated. And this without a manuscript, but with the intentional eagerness to read facial expressions and body language for pertinent feedback.

     George Whitefield is an example of a Gospel preacher who did not use a manuscript, having only 30-40 sermons, well-developed and frequently delivered, to a great variety of audiences as an itinerant evangelist. With so few sermons and with such a varied audience, Whitefield had no need for manuscripts. In like manner, it is sometimes the case that missionaries and those who speak at Bible conferences can deliver a few well-rehearsed messages without manuscripts because of their concentration on similar messages delivered to a wide variety of audiences.

     But what about a pastor who delivers three messages per week to the same audience? Does he have the luxury of preaching, preaching yet again, and re-preaching the same sermons like itinerant evangelists typically do? He does not. He needs a fresh spiritual meal to serve his audience every time they gather. The midweek service that is not carefully studied and prepared becomes quite obvious over time.

     My first pastor was a very credible evangelistic preacher who had planted six Churches before I came on the scene. 82nd Airborne, he was a man's man, and I was devoted to him. That said, I noticed three things about his preaching. 

     First, his delivery was terrific, with energy and conviction. He was an excellent Gospel preacher.

     Second, about 18 months into my time there (before God called me to the ministry and I followed his advice to go to Bible college), I knew what he was going to say before he said it. I surmised that he had a year and a half of sermon outlines prepared before recycling them. The problem, of course, was that I paid attention and picked up on that right away. That approach served him well when establishing the first five Churches, but at this place, he stayed so long he served leftovers. 

     Third, without using a manuscript, he did what many preachers who do not use manuscripts do. His habit is best described as leaving his house and taking a different route each time, while always returning along the same path. Thus, in his typical 40-minute sermon, though the initial portion of the message would vary, the final twenty minutes were always exactly the same, almost verbatim.

     Did he realize he had fallen into that predictable pattern? I do not know. Had he prepared a sermon manuscript, such a pattern could not have developed.

     Another tendency that accompanies the absence of a manuscript is the length of a sermon. The primary reason I began preparing manuscripts was to shorten my preaching time, to get it under control, and to say, in forty minutes with a manuscript, what would usually take me an hour to put into words without a manuscript. And in our day of diminishing attention spans and audiences who don't have the listening skills their grandparents had, that is a very significant factor. I am persuaded that one reason some preachers resort to entertainment-style deliveries is to offset their audiences' shortened attention spans. I am not persuaded that it is the appropriate remedy for shortened attention spans, but that is the subject of another blog.

     Granted, God raises up the occasional C. H. Spurgeon, who typically prepared his Sunday morning sermon outlines on Saturday night after excusing himself from his dinner guests. However, I am no Spurgeon, and neither are you in all likelihood. So, while some preachers are quite skillful at delivering sermons without manuscripts, I am persuaded most of us are not, though we should strive throughout our preaching years to improve.

     You might be thinking of preachers you are certain do not use manuscripts. Let me mention three, two of whom were great and the third extremely well-known.

     W. A. Criswell was the extremely well-trained and longtime pastor of the First Baptist Church in Dallas, Texas. Trained at Southern Seminary in Louisville, he was not only proficient in Greek but was also a master pulpiteer who never preached with notes. He was also famous for encouraging preachers to preach without notes of any kind (and, by implication, without manuscripts). However, it is not precisely accurate to say he did not use a manuscript. Having an almost photographic memory, Criswell studied diligently and wrote out his sermons, without ever taking the manuscript to the pulpit. And if you ever watched him preach, you could almost see him read in his mind what he had written. He had no written manuscript behind the pulpit because he had a picture of his message in his mind as he delivered.

     A. V. Henderson is another of those great Texas preachers who preached without notes. Henderson was known for delivering quite abbreviated but potent sermons. What few realize is that every one of those short and potent messages had been written out, edited for brevity, and then committed to memory. Thus, his approach was very much like Criswell's, with a stronger commitment to brevity.

     My final example will stir things up a bit. Jerry Falwell was the most well-known Baptist preacher in the second half of the twentieth century. But he would be on no one's list of great preachers, and he would have admitted that himself. His spiritual equipment package did not include what God gave to Whitefield, Spurgeon, Criswell, or Henderson. Yet he used no manuscript. This is because Harold Wilmington, his colleague for scores of years, prepared every sermon outline Jerry delivered for thirty years! This, according to Harold Wilmington! He handed Jerry his sermon outlines before each Church service, without enough time to familiarize himself with the outline and the verses to be cited, and would give him sermon outlines for conferences he spoke in before leaving Lynchburg.

     The point I seek to make is that while notables such as Jonathan Edwards and John Gill used manuscripts, missionaries such as Carey and Judson did not. Whitefield and Moody's approach to evangelistic preaching of a relatively small number of sermons to a great many audiences meant their sermons were typically memorized. And when a sermon is preached again and again, it is refined and sharpened and edited on the fly.

     Pastors do not have that luxury. The first time through a sermon, mistakes will be made, better wording has not been considered, and new insights will not have arrived at your thinking. The benefit of a manuscript is that in developing a written sermon, you think through the entire message, consider and revise your remarks (sometimes many times to make sure you say it just right), settle on key words (another blog) and transition sentences, and end up making fewer mistakes.

     Don't tell me you have not engaged in conversations in which you later wish you had said something you didn't, didn't say something you did say, or that you had turned a phrase differently at a crucial point. The same is true of sermons, which are one-sided conversations, only with fewer regrets when using a manuscript.

     Afterthought. A manuscript is simply unnecessary in three cases by my way of thinking, though using a manuscript for a while is suggested to help you settle into your best approach to preparing and delivering sermons. First, if you are very familiar with the material being presented, and you are an expert in the best delivery of the truth presented to your audience. Second, if your preaching schedule doesn't allow time to prepare a manuscript, as is the case with bi-vocational pastors and some missionaries and evangelists. Finally, the way God has put you together to discover and process truths learned from God's Word makes manuscript preparation more of a hindrance than a help.

     My close personal friend, the late Jim Johnston, had a vision issue that could not be corrected, making it very challenging for him to read and to write. A brilliant man who passionately loved the Savior, Jim's approach was threefold. He would read a passage with great difficulty during his private devotions. He would settle on a verse, phrase, or topic and ruminate on it for hours and hours, leading up to the delivery of the message. Then he would lean heavily on God's grace during his preaching. The results were astonishing.

     Not every preacher can or should make use of a thoroughly prepared manuscript. I merely suggest that you do not rule out the use of manuscripts before giving that approach a good try.

     God bless your declaration of the Gospel and your exaltation of our wonderful Savior!

Prayer Request

 My wife Pam and I have realized a dream by moving to Zakynthos, a Greek island in the Ionian Sea.

Starting Sunday at 9:00 AM, I will begin the English-language service at https://www.facebook.com/watch/100076211865088/.

Please consider praying for us and recommending anyone you know in Greece or visiting Greece to meet us there.

An Unusual Day For An American Overseas

      I make no pretense of knowing with any certainty what the life of a missionary or outside the USA pastor is like. That said, I have experienced one very interesting day today, now writing as the sun sets. Interesting, by way of contrast to the expectations of someone who has grown used to the instant gratification provided by Amazon Prime, Grubhub, SpaceX, and the other logistical superstars that are the entrepreneurial grandchildren of the industrial powerhouses of World War Two that outproduced and outperformed all of the other countries involved in the conflict, both Allies and Axis. Make no mistake about it, it was our factories and farms that prevailed from 1941-1945, with 1.7 Americans falling in the European theater for every individual German military fatality. Let me back out of the rabbit trail and return to my day today.

     Last night, after the midweek Bible study taught by Pastor Taki Korianitis, I was informed that the plumbing supplies needed at my place needed to be paid for, and Spiros would take me to the hardware store to make the purchase. At nine o'clock, my ride showed up, my friend, Spiros, the happy whistler.

Yes, I rode on the back of his scooter to the hardware store, without a helmet. You should have seen that guy negotiate the bumper-to-bumper snarl of cars, motorcycles, and scooters in the small town of Zakynthos, tucked into the east side of the Ionian Sea Greek island by the same name.

But we arrived safely at the hardware store, like hardware stores used to be like, like hardware stores are supposed to be like.

     Spiros took me halfway home and invited me to walk the rest of the way, which was fine. And one of the hardware store guys delivered the three bags of washers, faucets, flex hose, and other items about 10 minutes after I got home. Different experience #1.

     A couple of hours later, I received a call from a nice fellow laboring in English because I am a Greek-language incompetent. The new refrigerator and clothes washer purchased five days ago would be delivered in two hours. Great! Because the street we live on is both very narrow and on a hillside, this promised to be an interesting event, especially with the narrow and winding stairway to the floor we live on.

Notice the white car on the left parked against the curb and the curb on the right side. That is how narrow the street is. Now they have to wrestle the refrigerator and washing machine out of the truck and up the stairs. Easier in Greece than in the USA because the appliances are relatively small and comparatively light. But the stairs are something else!

Nice fellows. Very efficient. And they were on their way to other deliveries. Different experience #2.

     Now comes the refrigerator setup, which must be left unplugged for several hours for the refrigerant to settle so the compressor isn't damaged during initial startup. That done, the fact that only two electric outlets are available presents a problem. To position the refrigerator where we want it will require an extension cord about six feet long. But that problem cannot be addressed until tomorrow. But we want the refrigerator on tonight. We have been without a refrigerator for almost two weeks! The solution? The refrigerator is in the middle of the small kitchen floor! What else is there to do? The extension cord will wait until tomorrow.

     The refrigerator is a Morris. The only Morris brand I recollect in Europe is a now-defunct British automaker. This appliance was built in China. Different experience #3.

     Next came the top-loading clothes washer, made by Whirlpool, under license in Slovakia. To get it operational, Pam and I had to borrow a screwdriver to remove a stamped-metal shipping guard, a much more challenging task than I would have predicted. But we did it. Adjusted it for wobble. Plugged it in. And then I did the almost unforgivable! I cross-threaded the water hose! Arg! Now it sits in the bathroom in its assigned space, useless until I can borrow pliers to remove the copper nipple and thread it properly. Different experience #4.

     My final experience is the culmination of what has developed over several days. It begins with my CPAP machine, which requires only distilled water. Fine. Distilled water is available only in Greek pharmacies, and then only in plastic bottles designed for intravenous use.

Unless you punch a hole in the plastic, the distilled water is only accessible using a syringe! After several days of trying to open the bottle without success, I resorted to the steak-knife approach and punched a hole in the side, then poured the distilled water into an empty plastic bottle that had contained drinking water (the water here is very hard). From that repurposed drinking water bottle, I will dispense my distilled water as needed to my CPAP. Different experience #5.

     Too much information, I know. But I had to express my small realizations to put into words my increased appreciation for those who live outside the USA and deal with the multiplicities of inconvenience that American citizens, on the verge of Elon-supplied robot butlers and maids, never face.

     Everything about life and service to God is more challenging outside the USA. All of life is inconvenient, but especially so elsewhere. But God so planned it. Living for Him, serving Him, glorifying Him, seeking to exalt the Savior, and following the leadership of His Spirit requires that choices be made, challenges be responded to, options be evaluated, and acted upon. But we exist to glorify God, Revelation 4.11!

     Thus ends my recounting of what was for me an unusual day.

Before You Say Anything!

According to GROK, “James C. Humes (full name: James Calhoun Humes) was an American author, presidential speechwriter, professor, and public speaker. Born on October 31, 1934, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, he graduated from the Hill School (1952), earned a B.A. from Williams College, and an LL.B. from George Washington University. Early in his career, he served briefly as a Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives (from Lycoming County, 1963 session) and later as executive director of the Philadelphia Bar Association. He became best known as a White House speechwriter, contributing to speeches for five Republican presidents across several administrations:

• Dwight D. Eisenhower (initially),

• Richard Nixon (notably involved in drafting the Apollo 11 lunar plaque message: ‘Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind,’ alongside others like William Safire and Pat Buchanan),

• Gerald Ford,

• Ronald Reagan,

• George H. W. Bush.

Humes was renowned for his storytelling style in speeches—often incorporating heartfelt, anecdotal ‘soul shakers’—earning him the affectionate nickname ‘Schmaltz King’ among colleagues, though presidents like Nixon valued his approach. He authored over 30–40 books, many focused on history, leadership, public speaking, and quotations from great figures. Popular titles include:

• Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History's Greatest Speakers (a widely referenced guide on oratory and charisma),

• Churchill: The Prophetic Statesman,

• The Wit and Wisdom of Winston Churchill,

• Confessions of a White House Ghostwriter: Five Presidents and Other Political Adventures,

• Books on Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, Benjamin Franklin, and more.

He was one of the last living Americans to have met Winston Churchill personally and occasionally performed impersonations of him. Later in life, he taught as a professor of language and leadership at the University of Southern Colorado (now Colorado State University Pueblo), served as a U.S. State Department lecturer abroad, and advised corporations like IBM and DuPont on communications. James C. Humes passed away on August 21, 2020, in Philadelphia at age 85, due to a heart infection.”

I provided the GROK biography of James Humes because he was a rare combination of brilliant writer, captivating speaker, and gifted teacher, having written thoroughly readable and informative books that you preachers and teachers should read, sadly having died so you can no longer hear him deliver in person to an audience, and who but a master teacher can succeed with the challenge of teaching five presidents how to deliver speeches more effectively?

Since most pastors, sadly, do not read much (much less write), give little attention to the improvement of their communication’s skills (as evidenced by their white ties, red or black ‘dress’ shirts, or blue jeans and untucked shirts on the platform), and are hardly teachable except about manipulative techniques to increase Church attendance, I desire only to drop an easy-to-master practice I learned from James C. Humes that improves every audience’s willingness to listen to a preacher or teacher. What communicator doesn’t want to improve the audience’s attentiveness?

Some speakers are astonishingly effective in the face of adverse circumstances. Imagine early feminist Susan B. Anthony standing before a theater full of United States Senators and Congressmen who had no desire to hear anything the petite woman activist had to say. Or imagine Adolf Hitler about to address more than a hundred thousand rabid Nazi fanatics who were mad as hatters with their cheering and arrogance.

However, both Anthony and Hitler, and most truly skilled speakers and preachers, had discovered a principle Humes wrote about at length, the benefit of attention that is surrendered to the speaker rather than demanded. You have likely been in situations where you are expected to speak, to teach, or to preach, but the audience is for some reason distracted, excited, or inattentive for some reason. What is to be done? Most who find themselves standing before their audience are guilty of impatience and call for their listener’s attention. But the fact is, you are given less of someone’s attention when it is called for, when it is commanded and demanded, than when it is voluntarily surrendered.

Humes writes of Susan B. Anthony, a tiny woman, standing before the seated politicians with their cigars, cigarettes, and pipes filling the room with smoke as they chatted with each other. She could not have commanded or demanded their attended, not those men and not at that time in our nation’s history. She wisely stood in front of them motionless, and silent. Seconds passed with nothing happening. Then, slowly at first, but gathering momentum, those powerful, influential, important men surrendered their attention to her. And only when she had their attention, their undivided attention, she seized the moment and delivered her well-prepared speech.

Next, we have Hitler. Humes wrote about him, but there is also the video record of his infamous speech in Nuremberg. Say what you want about the little Austrian corporal. Evil. Wicked. Mean. Nasty. All true. But he was a genius communicator, a brilliant orator. No informed person will deny that.

So, what did he do with more than a hundred thousand followers whose attention he could have summoned in an instant? Genius in that he was as a speaker, he chose the surrender of his audience’s attention as preferable to demanding their attention. How did he secure the surrender of their attention to him? The same way Susan B. Anthony did. He stood before the frothing, excited, agitated multitudes without saying or doing anything. Normal posture, natural expression, and silence. His silence did not command their attention, but requested it.

It was the first session of a Bible college course I had been asked to teach to first year students. I had been assigned a course text written by a geeky university professor whose appearance was unserious and could not have conveyed that he was serious about his topic of expertise. So, I handed out reading assignments in the course text, but throughout the course I heavily depended on James Humes’ books, the man who made a living speaking, and teaching five presidents how to speak more effectively, with clarity and gravitas.

The best lesson I learned from Humes and put into practice in my preaching and teaching ministry? What I have observed ever since with extraordinary politicians delivering exceptional speeches? What you will invariably notice with an effective Ted Talk speaker? What adds immediate seriousness to a speaker they have never heard before? What they will come to expect as evidence of gravitas from someone declaring the unsearchable riches of Christ? The power pause.

The impact of the power pause is subtle but real. It is the mechanism a skilled and serious speaker uses to provide his audience with the opportunity to surrender their attention to him rather than unwisely presuming he will get their full attention by demanding it or commanding it. And the benefit grows over time, there is a learning process. The audience, the crowd, the class, will gradually respond more and more quickly to your silence before speaking. It really is, as Hume properly identified it, a power pause.

If you do not already make use of the power pause, I encourage you to do so the next time you are in front of people, and every time thereafter, unless you are a comedian or in some other way unserious, since the power pause would then be deceitful. Think of the power pause as a sincere request to your audience before speaking to them about matters of real importance, matters of eternal consequence.

Just. Stand. There. Until. Their. Attention. Is. Surrendered. To. You.

Remembering My Baby Sitter

What seventy-five-year-old retired preacher writes about the woman who babysat him for three years, beginning when he was only weeks old and newly arrived in Cherry Creek, South Dakota, from Wheeler County, Texas? That would be me, filled with profound gratitude on these days after she would have celebrated her ninety-ninth birthday had she not been promoted to glory a couple of years ago.

Four men served in the United States military during World War Two, married after the war, and obtained college degrees using the G. I. Bill. Having graduated along with so many other veterans, they found job opportunities scarce and so, left the great state of Texas to begin their careers in the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Department of the Interior, on a remote Indian reservation in a very isolated region of South Dakota.

My dad and my mom were one of the four couples, with my mom having been the first of the four wives to deliver a child, me. We three were also the last of the four government employee families to arrive. When we arrived, my babysitter approached my mom and said, “Iris, whenever you need a babysitter, I will take care of that boy for you!” My mom took her up on the offer, and for almost three years, she was the go-to babysitter for yours truly.

Her name was Yvonne Little, married to Joe Bill Little. Her maiden name was Scott, so her friends in Amarillo, Texas, naturally called her Scottie at Amarillo High School. Whether she was friends with T. Boone Pickens at Amarillo High, being a year or two older, I do not know. But she certainly was a beautiful gal, both as a teen and as an aged woman.

Her husband and my dad both remained in government service throughout their professional lives, with my dad working with different tribes in South Dakota, North Dakota, Florida, and Oregon and her husband operating out of Washington, D. C. It was while we were living in Fort Lauderdale with my dad the superintendent of the Seminole reservations that the Littles visited from D. C., now with a daughter and a son. The year was 1963. I remember their visit with the embarrassment that comes from an adult reflecting on his conduct as a thirteen-year-old some sixty years earlier.

My first encounter with Scottie Little was from 1950 to 1953, when she was married but not yet a mother, and I have no recollection of it. My next encounter with her was at a single dinner at our home in 1963, when she was a wife and mother of two. It was my third and final encounter with her that was life-changing, during the summer of 2018 in Norman, Oklahoma, August 7 to be precise, after she had been widowed by her beloved Joe Bill. Her devoted daughter was on a mission trip with her Church group, so I could not meet Scottie’s soul’s delight in a meaningful way.

Precisely why and exactly how Scottie Little and I connected in a meaningful way after 65 years had elapsed, I do not know, but I am profoundly grateful that God prompted me and granted me success, because what I learned from her overwhelmed me.

About eight years ago, my wife and I drove to the Norman, Oklahoma, senior complex where she lived, her daughter and son-in-law just a couple of miles away. Lively, energetic, with a sparkling personality, I quickly learned my Aunt Scottie (as she was always referred to in our home growing up) was a deeply committed Christian, confirming the impressions she made on me when we chatted on the phone and exchanged emails leading up to our visit.

I was full of questions accompanying our reminiscences of a bleak part of South Dakota, where my dad had made friends with the last survivor of the Battle of the Little Bighorn and the last survivor of the terrible slaughter of innocents at Wounded Knee. My overriding question to her was “Why?” Why did she offer to babysit me? And why did she babysit me so faithfully before our families parted ways through promotions and transfers?

She looked at me with that captivating smile of hers and said, “Steve, I knew that I would give you what your mother would never give you. I prayed for you. I read the Bible to you. I sang Christian songs to you.” My name is John Stephen Waldrip, named after my grandfather, John Conner. However, until I started school, I was always Steve.

What she said was true, insightful, and perceptive. I loved my mother, but she never prayed with me, and I presume she never prayed for me. I loved my mom, but I have no memory of her reading God’s Word to me. I loved my mom, but she never in my hearing sang anything, much less a Christian song or hymn. Yvonne ‘Scottie’ Little is the only woman known to me who ever prayed for me, read God’s Word to me, and sang Christian hymns to me.

It was in 1956, on the Fort Totten reservation in North Dakota, that God began to answer Aunt Scottie’s prayers for me, when Miss Peabody and Miss supp presented the Gospel to a Vacation Bible School group explaining John 1.29, “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Eighteen years later, the Spirit of God brought that verse home to me the night I turned to Christ.

So, you see, a godly wife and eventual mother, living in what most of us would describe as the middle of nowhere, may very well have been the most impactful woman in my life. And a few days ago, if she were still here with us, she would have celebrated her ninety-ninth birthday.

But she is not here. She is with the Savior. I know her daughter misses her mother terribly. I certainly miss her.

The takeaway? Anyone can, at anytime, anywhere, engage in a God-honoring and Christ-exalting relationship with someone. With my Aunt Scottie, it was a babysitting ministry with a high-strung, rambunctious little boy who grew up to know Christ, to then spend a half-century in the Gospel ministry, and who is now, after retiring from the pastorate, with my wife on the island of Zakynthos, in Greece, engaged in a faith ministry.

Of course, I am grateful to God, from Whom all blessings flow. Of course, I am thrilled to represent the Savior! What right-minded person would not be thrilled to exalt the King of all glory! Of course, I am thankful for the Holy Spirit's leadership and provision.

But I am also grateful for my Aunt Scottie. Humanly speaking, where would I be without her? What she did in seizing an opportunity to be a blessing, anyone can do. But will you? I sincerely hope so. Be someone's Aunt Scottie.

 

Cherry Creek, SD, around 1952

My mom holding me, Aunt Scottie & Joe Bill

During retirement in Norman, OK

 

Aunt Scottie and me August 7, 2018