Some months ago I was present for a worship service during which the pastor opened with a lengthy list of announcements. The time given this task seemed disproportionately generous and distracting from the tone of the service. Later, as the pastor spoke to the children, he seemed to get lost in his own story and began to ramble down paths unrelated to the purpose. He asked me how I wanted to be introduced, and I said, “Briefly.” However, the introduction took nearly ten minutes, and I began to wonder how I could possibly regain the attention of the congregation when it came my time to speak.
When the service finished, the District Superintendent asked if I had any suggestions I could offer the pastor. I answered, “Haiku.” The superintendent asked if I could elaborate, so I said, “Study Haiku.”
Haiku is a form of Japanese poetry that finds its power from its conciseness. The poet must figure out how to express a range of emotion, imagery, meaning, and content in three simple lines with a limited number of syllables. The poetry is highly structured, carefully prepared, and profoundly intentional. Each syllable, word, and line carries full weight and contributes to the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual destination of the poem.
Precisely as a result of the care and concentrated brevity, Haiku poetry is powerful, alive, provocative, and engaging. The sharpness of its focus makes it memorable and delightfully meaningful. Haiku is enjoyable, and writing it stretches our understanding of the power of language.
Sometimes our message as preachers, teachers, and leaders would be twice as powerful if it were half as long. More words do not indicate more meaning or greater effectiveness. This is true for poetry in any of its forms. We could use more words if we wrote a novel rather than a poem. But the power of poetry comes in the discipline, and the focused fashion of word craft.
One writing teacher said, “A confused reader is an antagonistic reader.” This is true for listeners as well as readers. When speakers become self-absorbed or lost or begin to ramble, they lose listeners.
In a letter to a friend, Mark Twain apologized for wordiness and wrote, “If I’d had more time, I’d have written a shorter letter.” More preparation time does not lead to more words; more preparation results in more concise, provocative, powerful, and effective speech.
John Wesley, in his “Directions Concerning Pronunciation and Gesture,” reminds leaders to avoid technical, esoteric, and arcane words and concepts. Wesley says, “The first business of a speaker is so to speak that he may be heard and understood with ease.” Wesley himself practiced with a house servant to check whether his message was accessible to all people. He asks preachers to speak plainly and without “a babbling of hands.”
The master of teaching profound truths in simple and concise ways is Jesus. The parables find their power because they are not treatises. Jesus could have spoken at much greater length on any of the topics of spiritual life, and the gospel writers could have further decorated Jesus’ stories with experiences of their own. But they refrained. They focused. They spoke directly and powerfully. “Love the Lord with all your heart and mind and soul and strength, and your neighbor as yourself. Do this, and you will live.”
Sometimes brevity is next to Godliness.
Yours in Christ,
rs
1. Mike Davis wrote on 11/12/2009 10:40:02 AM
AMEN!
2. Sue Pennycuick wrote on 11/12/2009 10:43:48 AM
May we all practice Haiku. What a wonderful teaching moment for all of us.
3. Dorothy L. Johns wrote on 11/12/2009 10:45:41 AM
Well said.
4. Dalene Hall wrote on 11/12/2009 11:45:58 AM
Thank you and I will share this with my minister. Hope he takes it in the manner that you wrote it and I give it to him.
5. Lydia wrote on 11/12/2009 2:10:38 PM
Simplicity is the key...
Great!
6. Jason Fry wrote on 11/12/2009 2:34:38 PM
I would read this as I'm in the final preparations for this week's sermon!
7. Virginia wrote on 11/12/2009 4:06:16 PM
Greatest food for thought I've seen in awhile.
8. Sonja Tobey wrote on 11/12/2009 4:30:55 PM
Words of wisdom, Yes!
So simple it is genius.
Once again I learn.
9. Dorothy L. Johns wrote on 11/12/2009 5:03:49 PM
Love the short comments :)
10. Paul Kocak wrote on 11/12/2009 5:08:21 PM
So true. Haiku. Our church (St. David's, DeWitt, NY) has run several haiku contests as outreach, tying the poems to seasonal spirituality (undefined).
11. Paul Kocak wrote on 11/12/2009 7:47:21 PM
I believe the genesis of the Mark Twain remark is a quotation attributed to Blaise Pascal: "I would have made this letter shorter but I lacked the time to do so." It's been a favorite quotation of mine for years.
12. R Schnase wrote on 11/12/2009 9:54:36 PM
Sonja wins for creativity! I wondered if anyone would try composing a Haiku. Cool! Thanks.
13. Lydia Istomina wrote on 11/12/2009 10:38:49 PM
I thought, speakers, like this pastor, existed only in Russia. Gorbachev was one of the talkers, and Russian people could never get his point after several hours of his public speech,
One of his longest speeches was concluded with, "We had been trying and trying our best (not that we did our best: we had been trying and trying), but we get the usual result." Regardless how ridiculous this phrase sounded in Russia it perfectly illustrated the reality of useless effort.
I guess, it is universal when public speech is not a person's gif, the presentation becomes public torture.
My question is why people listen so politely?
Peter the Great once said, "Let the stupidity of one man be obvious to others." Is it why we allow that? Or we are trying really hard to run people off?
14. Marylee Sheffer wrote on 11/13/2009 12:32:59 PM
Beautifully said
Good reminder
Challenges me as preacher
15. Paul Kocak wrote on 11/13/2009 7:29:13 PM
follow me, he said
drop everything, even self
doing so, find all
Imagine a preacher (face it, preachers love to talk; why not? they are good at it) reciting a triptych of haiku poems, pausing, and then silently sitting down.
16. DimLamp wrote on 11/28/2009 8:03:06 PM
Here's a year's worth of haikus that I wrote some years ago. I'm a Lutheran pastor. I wonder about brevity in other areas of life and institutions too, e.g. seminary & university lectures, parliament sessions, church conventions, banquet speeches, etc.
Lo Gos Room
17. Lo Gos Room wrote on 11/28/2009 8:04:51 PM
The link didn't show up in last post, so here it is.
18. Carol wrote on 12/16/2009 1:54:45 PM
Who said, "Brevity is the soul of wit?"
19. DimLamp wrote on 12/16/2009 11:58:54 PM
Click or copy & paste this link for your answer:
http://www.enotes.com/shakespeare-quotes/brevity-soul-wit
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