relationships and community on Public Speaking

In 1963, the politician, ambassador, and one-time presidential candidate Adlai E. Stevenson addressed the students of Princeton University with a touch of humor. “I understand I am here to speak, and ...

I saw a study that said, the number one fear of the average person is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two! How in the world is that? That means to most people, if you have to go ...

There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again.

The following article was originally written for the author’s denominational newsletter as part of the celebration of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month. It is meant to provide some insights into t...

Picture this: you are just about a year into your first call as a minister. Everything seems to be going swimmingly. You caught up with a seminary friend over the weekend and you slightly brag about h...

Let me tell you the story of a great missionary named Frank C. Laubach (1884–1970). He grew up in the farming community of Benton, PA, and served as a Congregationalist missionary in the Philippines. ...

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, of Sherlock Holmes fame became a zealous spiritualist later in life. He would often give public lectures on the subject. At one such meeting, he gestured enthusiastically while...

In this excerpt from Dr. John Townsend, the renowned psychologist and author, shares a story from his time in seminary, where one of his professors and mentor changes his mind regarding the importance...

I saw a study that said speaking in front of a crowd is considered the number one fear of the average person. Number two was death. This means to the average person, if you have to be at a funeral, yo...

If you’ve ever run a business or led a team of people, you know what it’s like to send someone in your place. You know they’re going to interact with a person who might not know you, and that person w...

In the last class I taught at Regent, an obviously irritated young woman came up to me and said, “Dr. Peterson, three times during your lecture you did not say anything for twenty seconds. I know beca...

First learn the meaning of what you say, and then speak.

I often watch speakers stand before an audience and work to build a case for their ideas. They would be more successful if instead they tried building a relationship with the people in the room. The w...

When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.

If you’ve ever watched a war movie, or a film that takes place in the military, you’re likely to have encountered a specific scene, in which a subordinate will have something to tell a senior officer ...

Most conversations are simply monologues delivered in the presence of a witness.

Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.

At a recent gathering of seminary professors, one teacher reported that at his school the most damaging charge one student can lodge against another is that the person is being “judgmental.” He found ...

The point of discourse is to learn with and from one another. I used to tell my students that at least 20 percent of what I was telling them was wrong, but I didn't know which 20 percent it was: I...

Pastor: If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and i...

The living human community that language creates involves living human bodies. We need to talk together, speaker and hearer here, now. We know that. We feel it. We feel the absence of it. Speech conne...

Time talks. It speaks more plainly than words. The message it conveys comes through loud and clear. Because it is manipulated less consciously, it is subject to less distortion than the spoken languag...

What you do speaks so loud, that I cannot hear what you say.

Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much

The power of speech is unfathomable. Gossip can never be undone. It is cruel, divisive, and demeaning. It alters the way people see another person forever. It robs the victim of dignity and opportunit...

I actually want to believe that when it comes to communication, my biggest problem is outside of me, not inside of me. I want to think that it’s my kids, my wife, my neighbors, my boss. I want to thin...

In grad school, although I was studying to become a clinical psychologist, I started working at a Baptist church. I discovered then that I loved to preach . . . until one weekend when the sermon wasn’...

There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right." A Testament of Hope: The Essential ...

Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self." , February 25, 1933

My friend Joi told me that when she was growing up, her parents invented a ploy to keep her from talking all of the time. They told her that people are allowed only so many words in one lifetime, and ...