Three keys of a speech

 

When I was taking a preaching course or perhaps it was a pastoral duties course in seminary, my professor said that there were three elements of rhetoric or speech: pathos, ethos and logos.

 

Pathos means, in effect, emotion or passion. If a speaker does not touch the emotions of his or her audience, then he or she will likely not be persuasive. Some preachers and speakers can “play the audience like an organ,” my professor said. They know how to play on emotions. Other speakers, who have something to say, may fail to convince because they do not move peoples’ passions.

Ethos means that a speaker is a moral person or has moral authority to speak. If a person has the right message, but is perceived as having no character, then he or she probably won’t be convincing. On the other hand, if the speaker has a long track record of speaking truthfully, keeping his or her word, and is known to be a morally good and consistent person, then his or her message is more likely to be received and be persuasive.

 

Logos means a message. For a speaker to communicate something, the speaker has to have something to say, a message, a word. Often it seems some speakers are great with pathos, they know how to persuade an audience, even if their message might be lacking. At other times those with ethos, moral authority, may be mistaken and advance a message that is false or faulty. In effect they may abuse their moral high ground to advance a questionable message.

 

Evangelical preachers tend to focus on logos, the word, or message. Is our exegesis, our biblical interpretation right? Some preachers, however, have been consummate “organ players” and even though they had fantastic “falls from grace” (committed obvious and egregious sins), however, they continued to be allowed to preach by their audiences. Some preachers, as I just mentioned, have lost their moral authority due to sinful behavior. However, people follow them because at least for a while the message seems sound.

 

We Evangelicals need to focus on ethos. We have always been strong on logos. I am proud that I have learned biblical Greek and Hebrew and that I went to one of the best Evangelical seminaries in America. However, I am appalled when I see well-known preachers deliberately sin over a long period of time and be “forgiven,” as if their sins made no difference to being qualified to preach the Bible.

I’m also afraid that Evangelicals have become showmen or show women. It’s easy, if you are a persuasive speaker, to move peoples’ passions. It is harder to persuade them to live godly lives. The scriptures warn that in the end times (the last days) people will gather to themselves preachers who will “tickle their itching ears.” 2 Timothy 4:3 

 

“For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear.”

 

This means that rather than ask preachers to speak God’s truth to them in an uncompromising way, people will seek preachers that make them feel good and give them esoteric knowledge, rather than provoke them to lively godly lives.

 

I could tell many stories and it is not my purpose to bash anyone in particular, however, I know of one extremely well-known preacher who committed adultery and left his wife. He tried to force his son to side with him and not his mother. The son declined.

 

I don’t know all of the circumstances of this case, but it was pretty clear. I know that at times marriages are in bad shape and some don’t survive, but when you have been preaching faithful marital monogamy for decades and then take a “trophy wife,” there’s a fundamental problem with your ethos.

I used to think that logos was the essential element to good preaching. Who can argue with a sound exposition of the World of God? (At least among Evangelicals). But it is too easy to say the right words, to sign the doctrinal statement and harder to maintain ones’ spiritual life and integrity.

 

We need logos to have a sound message. We need pathos to be able to persuade people to follow the Truth. But without ethos we have nothing to say that anyone will hear.