Newsletter #77
On the Value of Brevity
As of this past Friday, my wife and I are the proud parents of a baby girl, Isla Pearl. She’s a beauty!
This Will Only Take a Moment
I knew that this weeks’ newsletter would necessarily be brief, compared to normal. Given final preparations for the arrival of our baby girl (see Newsletter #76), I intended to keep this on the shorter side of things. We’ll see about next week!
Yet I’ve already been given a lot of thought to the value of brevity recently. A few experiences have stirred me up on this, including our recent State Association, the annual meeting of Missouri churches in my denomination. This type of meeting is actually a series of meetings within a meeting. Some take the form of a business session with reports, motions, and discussions. Some take the form of a seminar or service. Some involve a smaller number of people handling a specific range of issues. Needless, to say, words are many.
One of my favorite Bible verses is Proverbs 10:19 – “When words are many, transgression is not lacking, but whoever restrains his lips is prudent.” One gloss of this verse is, “The more you talk, the more you sin.” That may be a bit of an over-interpretation. However, the more you think about it, the more likely you’ll find that to be true to your experience of yourself and others.
The more you talk the more likely you’ll be tempted to gossip, lie, disrespect someone, use sarcasm inappropriately, or simply shade the truth. I think James would agree. He says that taming the tongue is a tall task, if not impossible. And have you ever noticed how many proverbs are about “speech sins?”
And if the church were only a mouth, would we not be in trouble? (1 Cor. 12:14)
A few years ago, I learned the phrase “professional talker.” Jeff Robinson, a pastor and then-editor for the Gospel Coalition, used it at a conference and later in a book about speech. I think Robinson puts several types of people in that category, but he most certainly calls preachers “professional talkers.” It helps remind us of how central speech is to the work pastors do, and the challenges which accompany that. Three problems follow.
First, as stated above, where words are many, sin is seldom lacking.
Second, thinking primarily in terms of being a talker obscures the central role that listening should play in pastoral endeavors. We know that listening is essential to good counseling, but what if it’s also good for all manner of ministry practices? Better yet, what if the counseling context is broader than just the meeting in the study with the struggling couple?
Third, we often tend to be more effective when we use an economy of words. I cannot claim that merely using an economy of words will make you holier. However, it could make us more effective for two reasons.
Being more concise is a form of self-discipline. For example, right now I’m thinking of about eight or nine things I really want to say about the value of brevity. I could write more than a few hundred words about the foolish things Christians say about the need for sermons to be shorter (and sometimes there is some truth in that). I could also write about the value of being comprehensive, which doesn’t necessarily require longer discourses (though sometimes it will). But right now, knowing the limits of your attention span and of my time, and the reality that I can always come back and write more on this another day, I’m making a disciplined choice to say one main thing about brevity. I’m going to stop then, and entrust it to you, the reader.
Being more concise forces us to use concrete language, which fosters clarity. Writing or speaking concisely can force us to be precise, and precision typically breeds clarity.
Imagine you’re stuck on a desert island. Remarkably, you have a cell phone with a signal. But your battery is dangerously low. In fact, you have one of those fancy new phones that indicates exactly how long you can talk (or how long of a text you can send) before the phone dies. What message do you want to send to the Coast Guard before the phone dies? What information could you give them that would most likely result in rescue?
You could describe the rare species of tree or oyster you’ve encountered, helping narrow the range of possible islands, but that would take too many words. It would require explanations that may not most naturally clarify your location. In the end, you’d probably be best served by saying, “Alive, last known coordinates: _________.”
Of course, once you’re returned to civilization, were you to give a talk on the flora and fauna of the island, you’d use intricate details. You’d be precise, but not necessarily concise. Note the difference.
Our word choices should always be shaped by our setting and circumstances. To be more concrete, our goals matter most. What are we trying to accomplish and who we’re among will determine which information is shared and which is spared.
To all those tasked with leading and teaching through speaking and writing, let me offer one exhortation: try to fulfill your task by using 20% fewer words, and see what happens. See how your speech or writing changes. See how well people listen. See how much more time there is for other things, like interaction, reflection, or action.
And what a coincidence. This newsletter is roughly 20% shorter than the last few.
Follow Up:
Back in the halcyon days of 2022 I wrote a newsletter dealing with concerns about “judicial legitimacy,” especially as it pertained to the United States Supreme Court. Of course, such complaints have arisen again whenever items on the progressive left’s wish-list are resolved legally by a rightly constituted court. Nevertheless, as I wrote over a year ago, you’d think that every other decision was a 5-4 or 6-3 decision based on the amount of outcry from mainstream news. Yet see the helpful excerpt below, courtesy of The Dispatch:
I also appreciated this tweet from Sarah Isgur:
Fun SCOTUS stats from this term:
50%: unanimous in outcome (counting 3 PCs)
89%: at least one liberal justice in the majority
8%: 6-3 with the 6 Republican appointees all on one side
3%: 5-4 with the 3 Democratic appointees all on one side
I repeat: you wouldn’t know so few cases were decided by a close margin given the criticism. (Remember when 5-4, not 6-3, was a close margin? The goalposts have been moved yet again.)
Even among the supposed controversial rulings, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch managed to frame the 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis case as a “gay rights defeat.” You know, the decision which protected a web designer from having to create messages contrary to her beliefs (compelled speech)? Ah, the quaint old days of free speech. Sadly, it’s obvious that the editors didn’t even read the decision.
Our president responded to this decision (and other defeats on affirmative action and student loan forgiveness) by saying, “This is not a normal court.”
Andrew Sullivan had the best response:
The president, who has adopted the racial politics of the far left, and abandoned his previous defense of religious freedom, attacked the rulings by saying that “this is not a normal court.” Seriously? A court that strikes down race discrimination, defends freedom of expression, and restrains executive overreach? That alone tells us a lot about where the Democratic Party now is: lost in a miasma of group rights, systemic racism, and contempt for the exercise of an individual’s conscience.
Currently Reading:
Quote of the Week:
We’ve stuffed ourselves to the gills with the good things that we’ve created. But we are still human beings—the one species on the planet that yearns for meaning. And we don’t know where to turn next. In a different age, many would turn to their faith. But in the West, religion has been on a steep decline that crosses the rising rate of mass protests in an X pattern. So aimless activists protest and riot and embrace causes that they hope will bring needed shape to their moral lives.
Abe Greenwald, “The Fury in France—and Across the West.”
On My Mind:
I recently watched a podcast interview on the subject of Final Five Voting (FFV), something I’ve heard of before but never made up my mind about. The interviewee wasn’t the most articulate, but the point was clear enough. Sometimes described as Rank Choice Voting (RCV), this innovation in modern elections supposedly helps produce an outcome more congenial to a larger number of people’s preferred candidates, rather than the one who manages to get through a polarized primary process (on the right or the left), thus having fewer people to consider in their actual governance. The proponents of FFV or other variations of RCV argue that more constructive policymaking, especially of the bipartisan sort, would take place if today’s primary processes didn’t negatively incentivize. By giving voters multiple options across a spectrum of candidates, being able to rank them by preference, you would end up with elected officials accountable to a larger swath of voters.
It's a controversial notion to many on the left and right. For this reason, it makes me wonder if there might not be some merit in the idea, though I have questions. I’m always annoyed by anything that purports to be “saving democracy.”
For some groups advocating for this change, see the following:
Final-Five Voting – The Institute for Political Innovation (political-innovation.org)
What Is Final Five Voting? A Q&A with Katherine Gehl | American Enterprise Institute - AEI
How ‘Final Five Voting’ Can Help Save Democracy - The Bulwark
For some criticisms of these proposals, see the following:
Ranked-Choice Voting is a Disaster (thefga.org)
The flaw in ranked-choice voting: rewarding extremists | The Hill
Rank “Ranked Choice Voting” Dead Last for Georgia | The Heritage Foundation