Gestures and Substance in Preaching

A friend was helping a pastor who was deficient in nar- rative and descriptive powers and gestures. Every once in a while he would ask his friend, ‘““When are you going to help me with my gestures?

I am very weak there.” Each time the friend said, “Just forget them for a while.” A few weeks passed and one day the friend was talking over the pastor’s last sermon.

He said to the minister, “Do you remember this part of your sermon?” And he mentioned what he had in mind. The pastor replied, “Yes, I recall that part of it.’ The other then asked him, “Why did you make the gesture that you did in that narration?

It was the best and most descriptive gesture you have ever given since you have been here. The minister answered, “Why did I make it? Why, I had to. It just came out of me spontaneously.

It belonged to the narration.” His friend then said to him, “Now that is the reason why I have not said anything about gesturing when you have asked me.

I shall never tell you anything about that. When these illustrations be- come a very part of you, when you are dominated by them, the gestures you should make will come as natural as breathing.

You 90 THE ILLUSTRATION have never made good gestures before for the reason that your illustrations have not dominated you.” This is the sort of gestures referred to here. They describe and are an integral part of the narrative, come as naturally as breathing and seem as natural as that to the hearers. If the illustration treats of matters with which you are not familiar go slow with the ges- tures.

The very fact that you cannot find out the details you need, will cancel the gestures. There will be no inner impulse to make them. It is well not to have many of such illustrations. Gestures tell the congregation very much about the man who makes them.

Sometimes they tell them that the speaker does not understand what he is talking about. That destroys a large part of the value that illustration ought to bring them. On the other hand illustrations may reveal the careful thought and preparation that have gone into telling something that may require but two or three minutes in the telling.

This both increases the value of the point made and the speaker’s influence over the hearers. Above everything else see that the gestures are not groping, weak, uncertain. IV. Be accurate in all of the details of each illustration.

If one is treating of matters relating to one’s own field, the hearers are accurately informed as to the details. In relating inci- dents that happened outside of one’s environment, it is not well to assume that no one present knows the details.