"Pastor," a gritty, ironic voice spoke behind me. A few minutes before, I'd finished preaching my first sermon in my first church. People had shaken my hand and welcomed me; gradually the foyer had cleared.
I turned to face a bearded man with a challenging glint in his eye.
"Thank you for the message," he said.
"You're welcome."
Smiling, I got ready to ask his name, but he cut me short, saying, "In your sermon you said you used to be a college English teacher."
"That's right."
"I think you need to know," he said, "that you committed three grammatical errors this morning." And in his grating voice he remorselessly exposed and analyzed them one by one.
Back in those days I was hollow cheeked and earnest, so during that crisp grammar lesson I only barely man aged to hold on to a glassy smile as my face flushed dusky red. Nowadays I would have prodded him in the ribs and chuckled a comeback I've picked up since then: "Ah, come on. I was just being deliberately colloquial." (Usually people are so impressed that anyone can even pronounce "deliberately colloquial" on their first try that they'll back away and give me space.)
Kidding aside, good spoken gram mar is important. It's all right to be deliberately colloquial once in a while, but people do tend to wince when they hear untutored speech. Sermonic grammar gaffes are like static on a cell phone call, or cable interference on a TV pro gram: they short-circuit a sermon's smooth flow. The discriminating listener wonders whether grammatical carelessness signals doctrinal or exegetical carelessness as well. Bad grammar muddies sermonic waters, and when a message is delivered on behalf of Heaven, clarity counts.
That's why I'm writing this article. Though, obviously, I can't cover every point here, I'll just deal with a few of the major verbal errors that could interfere with your preaching.
My wife and I (subjects and objects)
A couple of weeks ago at a ministers' meeting, a fellow pastor sidled up tome.
"When I preached last weekend," he said, "one of the doctors in my congregation heard me say, 'my wife and me.' I really meant 'my wife and I.' Which is it?"
Actually, it's both. It just depends on where in the sentence you and your wife happen to be perching. Remember those old grammatical terms, subjects and objects? The subject of a sentence performs the action. The object has the action done to it. Look at this sentence:
I lectured him on law and grace.
What's the subject! In other words, who's doing the action (the lecturing)? /, of course. Not me. I and me are the same person they're different forms of the same personal pronoun--but / is what you use for subjects of sentences (and clauses, which are complete sentences tied into other sentences), and me is used for objects.
Look at the law-and-grace sentence again. What's its object? In other words, who's getting the benefit of all that lecturing? Him, not he. Him is the form used for the object, not only of the verb (as in this case) but also of a preposition. As you've probably already noticed, law and grace UK objects of the preposition on.
Take a moment to mull over these two lists: These pronouns are used as subects (of sentences or clauses): I, he, she, we, they, and who.
These pronouns are used as objects (of verbs or prepositions): me, him, her, us, them and whom.
Not too complicated, right? But what trips people up is when somebody else is added to the mix. Like a wife:
My wife, Mary, and [I? me?] walked to church with you and [she? her?].
A quick rule of thumb: mentally eliminate the non-pronoun subjects, and see what sounds good:
/ walked to church with her.
Everything falls into place, right? / is the subject (/is doing the walking), and her is the object of the preposition with.
My or myself Okay.
Now you've got a firmer grip on the I/me matter. And just in time, too. Because today is your wedding anniversary, and a few church members have thrown a surprise party for you. Amid the chatter and laughter, you rise to your feet, forming in your mind what you hope will be a gracious sentence of gratitude:
"I really appreciate all you have done for my wife and (I? me?)."
Me is of course correct. But me sounds too chummy somehow. Myself just might add the proper sort of deprecatory modesty you're hoping for. Can you get by grammatically with my wife and myself?
Nope. (Sorry. I was being deliberately colloquial there.) Why can't you use the classier-sounding myself? Because myself, along with himself and herself and probably a bunch of other selfs, are what are known as reflexive pronouns, and the only thing for which you can use a reflexive pronoun is to refer back to the subject of the sentence. Here's an example.
I am going to teach myself Hebrew. (Myself is just another name for the person known as /.)
So there at your anniversary party you smile, and simply say, "I really appreciate all you have done for my wife and me'.' Or you could dodge the whole problem and say, "My wife and I appreciate all you have done for us." Often the best way out of an uncertain grammatical swamp is to revise the sentence.
And remember: if you muff it, you can always duck behind "deliberately colloquial."
Subject-verb agreement (is or are?)
Your anniversary party winds to its close. Even though the announcement said "No gifts, please," several people brought presents, and you're eyeing them with an expression which you hope contains just the right blend of "how nice" and "oh, you shouldn't have."
The new schoolteacher, who's just come into the room, walks up to you. "Look at all those gifts," she says.
"Aren't they nice?" you reply. And since she's a schoolteacher, you take care to form your next sentence in your mind instead of just blurting it out:
"Each of those gifts (are? is?) perfect."
The tricky part, of course, is the prepositional phrase, of those gifts. Thanks to the generosity of your guests, the gifts are definitely plural. So why can't you use are?
Sadly, you and I weren't around to vote on this when the crazy English language was being patch-worked together, so we'll just have to live with the following fact:
Each, either, neither, someone, somebody, anyone, anybody, everyone, everybody, no one, and nobody are all singular. No, I'm not kidding. Even everyone and everybody are singular.So--
"Each of these lovely gifts," you say confidently to the schoolteacher, "is perfect." Smiling, she credits you with still another two gifts grammar... and culture! Not to mention blarney.
Dangling modifiers
"What on earth are modifiers," you ask yourself, "and what's so wrong about letting them dangle once in awhile?"
You're about to pose this question to the new schoolteacher, when suddenly you remember that many of the people at your party don't even know her yet. So you pause and mentally re hearse a sentence of introduction: "As your new schoolteacher, I'd like to introduce to you Miss Mary Jones."
Wait a minute. Something's wrong there. But what? You take another mental glance at that sentence. Come to think of it, it sounds vaguely like you are claiming to be the new schoolteacher.
That pesky phrase "as your new schoolteacher" is, of course, the modifier. A modifier is a word, phrase, or clause that limits or qualifies another word or word group. In other words, the "schoolteacher" phrase tells us some useful information about Mary Jones. If we didn't have that phrase, we might think of her as a stockbroker or a short-order cook rather than a dispenser of wisdom and a shaper of young minds.
What makes that sentence so con fusing is that the "schoolteacher" phrase has drifted so far away that the subject of the sentence, I, got between it and Mary.
But, confident now in your well-grounded grammar skills, you clear your throat, adjust your tie, plop the "schoolteacher" phrase right up close to Mary where it belongs, and do your duty as a host.
"May I have your attention for a moment?" you ask, smiling at the crowd. "I'd like to introduce to you the new schoolteacher, Miss Mary Jones."
Other grammatical improvements
Okay, I know that out there in the wide world of communication there are lots more complicated sentences than the examples we've used here. Is there anything you can do to prepare for them?
Sure. For one thing, get into the practice of spotting subjects and verbs in sentences you read. Make it a hobby. And remember that a whole cluster of words can make up a subject like this: Reading Augustine on the bus improved Kayla's day right from the start.
Verbs come in three basic flavors. Some need an object to make sense: Greg kicked the football. Some don't: Yesterday Maria gardened. And some verbs aren't even action words at all: Camillo seems happy.
Also, see if you can pick out prepositions and the phrases that cling closely to them. Here are some prepositions to watch for: about, above, after, against, at, behind, below, by, for, from, in, into, of, off, on, since, through, to, under, upon, with. Remember, if you're not sure what grammar function a word has, simply look it up in a dictionary.
And there are some great books that can help you. Like the superb The Elements of Business Writing, by Gary Blake and Robert W. Ely (Collier/ Macmillan, 1991). The whole book is great, but the grammar section beginning on page 93 is the best brief summary, in the plainest language, I've ever seen.
Sure, the study of grammar might not be the most exciting topic, but if you take just a few minutes a day brushing up, it could make a big difference in your preaching.
