Tags
circular logic, George Miller, hyperlinking, logic, preaching, preparation, public speaking, rabbit trails, sermon, sermon organization, seven +/- two, seven plus or minus two, short term memory
I think I’m noticing something about this generation of sermon-writers: they organize their thought as if they were using hyperlinks. When I challenged a student recently for having fifteen to twenty distinct ideas competing in a sermon, he was shocked. Each time I pointed out how he had either “moved on” to a new thought, or “engaged in circular logic” by coming back to a previously developed thought, or had “created a rabbit trail” by developing an idea with such detail as to lose track of the original thought, he said: “that’s easy to follow, isn’t it?” and “don’t you see that I come back to the main ‘page’? (notice the computer metaphor), or “that’s just a quick definition, right?” When the class was asked whether they could follow all of the nuances of logic in his sermon, remarkably, they got about 60 percent of it (not great, but significantly better than I had expected).
In 1956, George Miller conducted what is now a famous (if modestly contested) piece of research and concluded that short-term memory could only handle 7 plus or minus 2 “chunks” of thought at a time (further research suggests that the number should be lower – probably between 3 and 5 “chunks.” The issue at stake here, however, is the status of these “chunks” – whether these chunks of thought have to be completely discrete, and how much inner development is permissible.
And, of course, there is the cognitive science question that professor Miller would have found interesting: Is it possible that computers are changing short-term memory so that “chunks within chunks” are becoming more manageable? And, to push even further into this cognitive science domain: Is it possible that logic is changing? Is linearity absolutely necessary in public speaking? Or, will it be in, say, 50 years?
Of course, I have no answers to such questions. What I do know is that one still has to have identifiable “chunks” that can, in fact, be remembered, and that digression, circularity, rabbit trails, and other forms of circumlocution have a distinct tendency to obfuscate and obscure one’s message – even for hyper-linkers. After all, how many times has each of us begun following hyperlinks and NEVER made it back to the “home page” at all – forgetting the original link in the first place?! Fess up, please.
So how do we decide how far one can “link” within a “chunk” of thought? Is there a time limit? Rhetorical space limit? My hunch is that, as with hyperlinking, the shorter, more direct, and relevant the “trail of links” the better.
Otherwise Thinking 
When our congregation designed its website a few years back, there was a principle of web design that stuck with me: every page needs to have a clear path back to the main page, to each menu branch, and to the other pages in the menu branch that surround it. It can make things cluttered if you end up with too many leaves on the branch, but it’s a sound principle. I think we’re still seeing the influence of the narrative preaching movement, particularly Lowry, in the desire for linearity. Certainly the old “three point” model didn’t require it; neither have more (post)modern homiletics like Buttrick’s or even Wilson’s. In fact, to me the very fact that Wilson chose the metaphor of “pages” (albeit with some confusion about “film clips” thrown in) that could be shuffled and rearranged points to the emerging dominance of this hyperlink model you’re describing. Ditto with the “four codes” that can be rearranged without a regard for strict linearity.
I have noticed in blogs and books (memoirs, mostly) there is a LOT of rabbit trail chasing going on – But I didn’t think about it in terms of hyperlinks. I wonder how this “new reality” corresponds to how much we are learning about the brain’s hard-wiring and processing of story? I’ve been mulling over story and preaching and neuroscience research – We should chat!
Great comments and much food for thought. Probably need a research grant and a “Center for the Study of Preaching and Cognition” to get to the bottom of this one.