I spent today at the Cathedral Centre in Leicester in the company of Sam Wells, Dean of Duke University Chapel in North Carolina. Sam gave a series of three lectures on Ministry, Mission and Money to a couple of dozen clergy and lay people from the Diocese of Leicester at the event organised by the Minstry Department of the Diocese. It was a day well spent.I'm hoping to receive a copy of the lecture notes soon, so I think I'll wait until these come through before posting about the content of the lectures.
But at a time when I'm in the midst of preparing to take a module on Communication and Preaching for the new cohort of students on the diocesan Reader Training Course, I was interested to notice Sam's style of delivery.
The venue left something to be desired; ample in size but with all the charm that the phrase "church hall" might conjure. An overly-tall Victorian carved lectern stood in front of two and a half rows of hard chairs.
Yet in this unpromising venue and without stepping away from the lectern Sam held our attention for three 60 minute lectures, which were each followed by fifteen minutes of questions. He read from notes and his language was so precise that I'm sure that he had a full text in front of him. Each lecture's notes were a fistfull of closely-typed text. He had no visual aids, no Powerpoint and no handouts. He's a very capable speaker but not one who relies on a flashy rhetoric or dazzling charisma.
He was compelling simply because his message was relevant and because he had carefully crafted his material. Someone I spoke with between lectures described him 'dropping bombshells' as he made striking points. What he had to say was important, and the way he said it added weight. Here was a speaker comfortable in his own space. And comfortable with silence.
I shall look carefully through the lectures when the notes arrive but I shall also remind the Readers-in-training in the coming weeks that simple, crafted language conveying an important and serious-minded message can be compelling, edge-of-the-seat stuff.
Update: Audio of Sam Wells' lecture now available.
