Developing and Thinking about a Reverent Voice
Pastor Frese and I, along with our vicar, are working through the following TED talks about improving the voice for public speaking: 6 Brilliant TED Talks to Improve Your Speaking Voice Each of the talks provides an insight or two about understanding our voices as instruments to be used deliberately for clear communication.
The first one, entitled “Want to sound like a leader? Start by saying your name right” by Laura Sicola, introduces the idea of the voice being prismatic. Sicola urges business leaders to develop appropriate gravitas as a kind of vocal executive presence. What follows are my notes from our discussion about what reverence requires of our reading and preaching voices.
No one would advocate taking on a foriegn accent or over pronouncing words and pretending to be someone that you are not, but these lectures have helped me think about how our voices convey aspects of our personality, experience, and faith. Some of that is more appropriate to the reading the Lectionary in the Divine Service and preaching than others. For example, the way we speak to babies or the way we whisper to our wives have their place, but not at the lectern or pulpit.
Unlike the target audience of the Sicola talk, we aren’t trying to develop executive presence. Our goal is to develop a reverent voice appropriate to the material and true to ourselves. How we think about this matters. It will shape our tone, speed, pitch, and posture. Reverence demands, in the first place, seriousness and humility. It acknowledges the presence of God, the holiness of the space and of the assembly gathered. It prepares because it matters.
A reverent voice will embody and express the truth and urgency of what is being read or spoken without panic. It should not be oversold, not be hysterical or exaggerated. While it is urgent, it is also calm and confident that God is in control.
A reverent voice will embrace the authority of the Office of the Ministry and speaks in tones of sincerity. The ideal tone is not a conversation at a coffee shop between equals. I have notice a pretend stuttering in some preachers that I think is meant to create the impression, hopefull false, that the preacher is just at that moment thinking of how to say something or what to say. This, I think, is meant to convey intimacy. It is completley artificial and insincere and not appropriate in any case because preaching should be authoratitive. The preacher should say “thus saith the Lord” and so forth. The speaker’s sincerity comes also from the fact that he is himself a believer who has ingested and internalized God’s Word. He should never pretend to be something he is not. Which may be why dressing up as a Biblical character is also always inapproriate for a sermon.
As far as emotions, anger at sin and the wrongful suffering of God’s people can occasionally be appropriate in preaching and reading but that anger is tamed by compassion and confidence in God’s providence. So also joy and even surprise at the Gospel is also appropriate. Again, though, joy and surprise should not overstep the dignity of God’s presence or His people. The appropriate emotion does not draw attention to the emotion itself but to the cause of the emotion, that is, to the text.
God’s Word and preaching are always serious, never frivolous. While humor can be used lightly, it must be used sparingly and not violate God’s or the people’s dignity. Volume can also be an issue and should be varied somehwat while reading and preaching but not in such a way as to be a distraction or to draw attention to itself. Many preachers mistakenly think that they are “projecting” when they are simply shouting or that by shouting they are adding emphasis and drama. I suggest that they use microphones and learn to speak in a way where variation in volume can come in a more natural way.
What do you think?