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.
