The following post is based on a previous one titled “Good Trouble Maker” about the Reverend Hamilton Aulenbach who had a tradition of speaking at EA and Valley Forge Military Academy as
part of both schools’ history. After I wrote that post, I got feedback that people remembered his words not days, weeks, months, or years, but decades after he spoke them. One response reminded me of other phrases that he used such as “a bell isn’t a bell until you ring it” and a “song isn’t a song until you sing it.” Why did people remember his sermons decades later?
Most people are taught in seminary or in secular institutions about preparing addresses and how to write them. They focus on style, composition, and delivery. Those are important issues, but, in my opinion, the real important ingredient is remembering words that others speak. You can have a brilliant piece of writing that you give as an address, but what good is it, if people remember it for just a day let alone for decades.
I am most interested in people remembering what I think is important. This was something that Jesus knew and practiced. He used simple images such as a vineyard or a mustard seed. People could feel and remember his words. Ham Aulenbach practiced the art of having people remember his positive action-oriented thoughts. “It’s great to be alive! Joy, Joy, Joy!”
This has always been my approach, but it got me into trouble in the beginning. When I was studying in New Haven, I had a Homiletics (Preaching) Professor, Dr. Percy Urban. Shall we say he was more traditional in style. We had the class in his home and sat around a large dinner table. He would publicly critique each sermon as he leaned over the table with a cigarette in one hand wheezing away. Inevitably when he got to me, he would shout, “Squire, your metaphors and gimmicks are going to get you into trouble someday. Stop doing that.” Then he would bang the table with his fist to make his point and the cups and saucers would bounce about as though they were on a trampoline. (I can’t help the metaphor!) It is ironic that his son, Dr. Linwood Urban, Chair of Religion at Swarthmore who had a son at Episcopal, would see the Chaplain Job description and encouraged me to apply with “It’s you!”
A revelation came my way to support the importance of remembering words as being as important as what you are saying. I don’t remember the context in which I heard it, but I felt a renewed sense of freedom of expression by the song, “You Got to Have a Gimmick” in the musical, “Gypsy.” “You got to have a gimmick, if you want to get ahead.” Gypsy Rose Lee wrote in her memoir that she regarded a gimmick as a secret to her success. Her gimmick was that she talked directly to the audience. Some considered her to be a brilliant intellectual. Believe it or not, Eleanor Roosevelt was a big fan.
I think that all public speakers should be required to speak to young people when learning the craft. It will underscore the importance of what I have written above.
Possibly outrageous and contagious are the results of “You Got to Have a Gimmick.” I went to great lengths to accomplish this. I revved up a chain saw in Chapel to talk about the values of my most unforgettable character, Chuck Goudy, who helped me build a house. I would repeat the key phrases over and over in an address. I could go on and on. During a recent alumni weekend a few weeks ago, there were texts exchanges among classmates that I saw such as “Remember when Rev. said, ‘You guys are becoming a fulltime job (they were feisty fellows).” Students remembered that I used “Watch your time!” on numerous occasions. It became the title of my first book.
I was blessed to have a Middle School Chaplain, the Reverend Bert Zug, who employed this technique as well. He hung a cinder block to a beam and added weight to it until the students were gasping thinking that it would break at any time which it ultimately did. He combined that visual with his address. I asked him to put wrestling mats underneath. For Ash Wednesday, he would dress up as a soot covered miner to talk about the meaning of the day.
But the proof is in the pudding. I would always attend a Middle School Chapel at the end of the year where Bert would literally have a “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?” game show complete with students on competing sides, buzzers, and pizzas as prizes. Classes could cheer for their representatives in the contest. All the questions had to do with the content of a year’s chapel services. That is about 70+ chapel services. The students remembered everything. Enough said!
Gimmicks aren’t necessarily items to see. They are more often words repeated, or phrases remembered. Ask any school child in America who said “I am a dream!” in a speech and most remember Dr. Martin Luther King. Ask any adult of a certain age who sung a song about “just imagine…” and John Lennon would come to mind. It is another example of the medium, the gimmick, becomes the message. That is also why titles of books are so important. In a few words they have to grab our interest and point to the heart of the book. It was the reason for how the TV series “24” became one of the most lasting series on TV. No one forgot the name.
Gimmicks are also about cadence and separation of ideas. The best example is a telephone number. No one gives you their phone number as 6106769898. You would never remember it. We say my number is 610 676 9898. It is the same with important ideas.
Content is unimportant unless it is remembered by the people who hear it or see it. We would have chapel skits with an important religious or moral lesson. The students loved to imitate me in Saturday Night Live fashion. In fact, they could do me better than I could do me. They got all the mannerisms. They were hilarious. But they remembered the moral point they were making.
Gimmicks can be outrageous and contagious like the title of this blog, “What a Stripper Can Teach a Preacher.” How many of you read on just because of the title?
A mustard seed, a vineyard, “You Got to Have a Gimmick”, a prodigal son, and “I have a dream,” outrageous and contagious. The most important words a speaker/writer can hear when he or she is attempting to touch a soul or psyche of another just could be “Remember when he/she said/did…”
What Dr. Percy Urban didn’t like, his son in the Religion Department at Swarthmore, did! I am a lucky guy for that or I would have never become the Chaplain of EA.
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