When I was a boy, one of the chores I shared with my sisters was vacuuming the living room. It was a job none of us wanted, and frequently we showed our displeasure by simply shoving the machine back into the hall closet when we were done.
My mother did not approve of this; there was, she insisted, a particular way to coil and hang the hose and to set the canister and the attachments in place. I felt the force of her displeasure several times before I discovered that it really was easier to do the job right the first time.
On occasion, however, just as I started to correctly disconnect and coil the hose, my mother would call from the other room, “Be sure to put that vacuum cleaner away properly.” That brief reminder was usually enough to motivate me to heave the whole thing into the closet and shut the door quickly.
What makes us so stubborn? I wish I could say that it was just a phase I eventually outgrew, but I’m afraid that isn’t true. It still happens: when I’ve made up my mind to do the right thing, having someone tell me to do what I’ve already decided to do is often enough to get me to change my mind.
Knowing that people in the pews are no less stubborn, most preachers have learned how to avoid raising those hackles needlessly. Two preaching strategies that have been especially effective for me are (1) to use we language rather than you language and (2) to move from imperatives to indicatives. Those little changes in my preaching have had big consequences with my congregation.
A change of tense
Most people hear you language as judgmental, as just another instance of how preachers think they are better than everyone else. Even worse, even if you have admitted to yourself that you need to repent, having someone say you should do it is often enough to get you to dig in your heels and say no.
Imagine your response if you hear the minister say one of the following:
“You must give your heart to the Lord without holding anything back.”
“Each of you needs to consider the importance of increasing our church’s giving to world missions.”
“You should stop squabbling about how to do evangelism and just go ahead and talk about your faith with your friends.”
These all express ideas that people in almost any congregation want to deal with, yet the confrontational I’m-going-to-tell-you-what-to-do style usually puts people off.
What happens, though, when we change these admonitions from you language to we language?
“We all must give our hearts to the Lord without holding anything back.”
“I’d like us to consider increasing our church’s giving to world missions./’
“We don’t need to squabble about how we do evangelism as much as we should just go ahead and talk about our faith with our friends.”
This is an improvement. Grammatically speaking, the mood of each sentence has been changed from the imperative to the hortatory subjunctive. It’s no longer a command to “you” but a reminder to “us.” The holier-than-thou tone has been taken away, which makes it harder to disagree with the preacher. Most listeners will respond, Yeah, that’s right; we ought to do that, rather than Where do you get off being so self-righteous, thinking you can tell me what I have to do?
The change in mood tends to encourage people to agree with what’s being said. But what if you want people not only to agree but also to do? The difficulty with an exhortation, even when it is carefully and non-judgmentally addressed to us all, is that something in us still resists any suggestion of being told what to do. A presentation that reminds us of what’s right can end up motivating us to admit we ought to do something while not getting around to doing it.
An interesting thing happens, though, if we shift the grammar just a bit more, from the hortatory subjunctive (“we should”) to the present indicative (“we are”):
“We are people who want to give our hearts to the
Lord without holding anything back.”
“We all want to increase our church’s giving to world missions.”
“We are learning to stop squabbling about how to do evangelism; instead, we know it’s better to go ahead and talk about our faith with our friends.”
Once more these sentences feel noticeably different. The most significant change, however, has to do not with the words themselves but with how people tend to respond to them.
Years ago I read a study about a class of first graders and their teacher. Any time she gave attention to one small group of students, the rest would mess up the room. They didn’t mean to cause problems, but when they were done playing with something, they just didn’t put it away. Despite everything she had tried-requests, threats, punishments, the offer of extra privileges if they complied-the kids messed up the room.
Then she tried a new strategy. She began thanking them for working harder to keep the room neat. “I know it takes a lot of effort to remember to put things away,” she said, “and I really appreciate how you’ve been doing it.” They hadn’t actually when she started saying this. But they began to do so. By telling them about an improvement that hadn’t yet happened, it became real.
I think they liked the thanks and wanted to keep on getting it, but I also think it was easier for them to respond to an affirmation of what they were than it had been to respond to an admonition to become something they were not.
My experience with church members has been similar. Declaring who we are as a congregation is often far more effective in motivating people than all the urgent prodding I can muster.
Preaching from the future
Can a preacher legitimately use language this way, though? Or is it manipulative, even dishonest, to tell people something about themselves that isn’t true, or at least isn’t true yet? I think it is theologically sound for two reasons.
First, grammatical mood suggests something about our basic attitude toward the people of the church. If, as pastors, we believe we’re doing God’s will but the congregation mostly isn’t, we end up using a lot of imperatives, and the congregation can tell how we feel about them.
If, instead, we believe that all the people of the church (including ourselves) are pilgrims who struggle together to live as followers of Christ, we will use hortatory subjunctives, and all of us keep on pressing on together.
But if we believe that our lives are best understood from God’s eternal perspective (rather than from our limited and struggling viewpoint), if we believe God’s transforming power is taking effect right now, then we can talk in the present indicative about the results of his grace in our lives, even if those results have not yet been fully realized.
I had to ask myself which of these attitudes I wanted most to communicate. I wanted the people to know that God sees us, ultimately and eternally, as a people transformed by his grace, that God empowers us by his Spirit to live not in despair but in victory. That conviction is best expressed in the present indicative (“This is how God has loved us,” “As God’s children, this is who we are”).
Second, the use of the indicative mood is a powerful motivator. In the seasons of our marriage, my wife and I have had some ragged times, when everything we said or did seemed to strike the other person the wrong way. Every casual remark felt like a deliberate attack. Once we’re into that rut, it’s difficult to get out. Telling the other person, “You ought to love me enough not to say hurtful things like that,” doesn’t help all that much.
What did help, in one of our most recent conflicts, was Philippians 1:3 7, a paraphrase of which my wife read to me: “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you, always in every prayer of mine for you making my prayer with joy, grateful for your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now. It is right for me to feel this way about you, because I hold you in my heart. And I am confident that he who began a good work in you shall bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.”
“That,” she told me, “is who you are: someone who fills my heart with joy, someone for whom I am grateful to God, someone in whom Christ is doing a wonderful work.”
She said that to express a change in her own attitude, not to preach me a sermon. And yet, in spite of my desire to get my own way in every dispute, I find myself arrested in mid-argument: if someone whose opinion I value this much says this is who I am, then maybe that really is who I am. And in spite of myself, I want to act like the person she describes, someone to be grateful for, someone who inspires joy, someone in whom Christ makes a difference.
Though we resist the voice that tells us what to do, we long for a voice that tells us who we are in Christ. When we hear that voice, it often motivates us to live up to what it affirms about us.
To paraphrase 1 John 3:2-3: “We are the children of God right now. If it is not yet clear what we will eventually be like, it is this already-present reality that motivates us to emulate the purity of the lifestyle of Jesus Christ.” -James Ayers
First Presbyterian Church
Waltham, Massachusetts
Copyright © 1992 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
