The Power of Mere Words
Preaching may appear to be "just talk," but don't underestimate its impact.
William Willimon
September 12, 2003
When I was in graduate school at Emory, a fellow student developed a questionnaire to measure his congregation's racial attitudes. He passed out a survey and recorded the results. Then he preached a series of five sermons that in some way touched on the race issue.
After his sermon series, he surveyed their responses—they were three points more racist than before!
At times you wonder if preached words have any potency. At times, getting up to preach is like trying to put out a thousand-acre forest fire with a garden hose. What could I possibly say to a mother who just lost her newborn to SIDS, to the couple that can't get pregnant, to the woman whose husband beats her regularly, to the chronically unemployed father of five?
Furthermore, how can one person standing alone and speaking from an ancient book possibly impact this word-saturated, image-driven society? It seems impossible.
Yet according to Scripture, this is our chief weapon: words. So over the years, I've given this paradox a great deal of thought. Here is what I've discovered.
Spirited Words
First, our words depend for their power on the Holy Spirit, and that's cause for both comfort and alarm! We can never count on the Holy Spirit to move people as we expect.
I constantly live with the thought that some Sunday, the Holy Spirit will say, "Oh, by the way, Will, I'm working in Poland this week." That's one reason I keep stomach medicine in the Duke Chapel bathroom.
The Holy Spirit is unpredictable. Last summer I led a Bible study at a resort where my words had such a deadening effect that the summer help was dangerously close to coming in to drag the people out by their feet. I'd been there the year before leading a similar study. That time the air was electrified ...
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