All of Us Trying to Get it Right

I've spent the week in the company of 2100 preachers, attending a conference on preaching. All of us still trying to learn how. A quick scan of the pews suggests that most of us are long past our first stuttering attempts, but the very fact of our presence betrays our nagging sense that we still haven't gotten it right. We are still trying to learn. Perhaps we return home with a deeper impression of the conviction that drove us to send in our registration: that the good and patient and hungry folk who listen to us week in and week out deserve better than we routinely give them. Here we are, then, spending a week in the company of masters, seeking clues to that "better" we are resolved to give them.

Twice I've heard this counsel: "show, don't tell." Both times I heard it spoken to writers, about writing, but I've spent the subsequent hours variously applying it, to...

• Preaching.
• Teaching.
• Parenting.
• Witnessing.
• Neighboring.
• Loving.

Boiled down, summarized, bumper-sticker distillations never cocked any nose to sniff the wind. Yawns are all they get. No one wants predigested food.

Whatever else preaching may be, it is at the very least extending the invitation to the listener to join you in a new and different world, but no one is likely to step blindly into a dark room. If they are to accept the invitation it will only be after seeing some of the colors, rubbing fingers over textures, and tasting, even if faintly, whatever sweetness may be offered.

Show, don't tell. It's been a good week, and my bags are squeezed tight with the wisdom from this week I'll take home. But this I'll keep in my shirt pocket -- among the important miscellany I drop on the dresser in the evening and pick back up in the morning: Show, don't tell. I won't always succeed in doing it, but I don't want to forget to try.