Structure Covers a Multitude of Sins

My first sermon and other confusions

My first sermon ran 42 minutes and was a random collection of every idea I could find on the passage (the Rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16), plus every illustration I could conjure up. I don’t think it really did anyone much good unless the Lord chose to work against my preaching to honour himself.

Some academic essays are like my first sermon: Lots of detail, but the writer has no idea.

I have since learned to structure my sermons around a few main points. Anything more and I lose my listeners.

Good communication works because it communicates. Academic communication is no different. If it is too complex and over-detailed, then it descends into academic rambling, or even academic gibberish. And those don’t deserve the title ‘academic.’

In my years of helping tertiary students, I have learned a few things. One of the biggest is that successful academic writing almost invariably has a simple structure and is thus easy to follow.

Why aim for a simple structure?

There are many reasons good academic communication requires a simple structure, but the main ones are:

The clearer your structure, the easier it is for your listeners and readers to follow your thinking. Never require your readers to connect the pieces or reach the conclusions in your academic writing. Save that for when you write a novel or a murder mystery. Be clear up front. Let Jesus tell the parables. It is for you to understand and explain them.
Developing a clear structure forces you to think more clearly. When you focus on the main points, they force you to distil your thinking and broad research. They force you to explain more clearly. This clear thinking leads to clearer communication.
Focussing on the main answers forces details to fall into their natural, subsidiary places – or even to drop out altogether. Unorganised details confuse, bore, and lose your audience. Too many details obscure your main points like a thick fog. The better your framework, the more organised and useful your details.
Consider the best sermons and lectures: You can walk away and reduce them to a single sentence, or to a few points that work together. Not a morass of amazing detail and bewildering waffle, but a clear and obvious path to your destination.
Structure makes up for poor sentences and grammar. I have seen many cases of poorly written sentences that make up a good essay or report because the writer structured their writing clearly. Their structure made up for their grammar.
But I have also read many essays full of grammatical sentences that are headache-inducing. Their lack of structure is fatal, and I usually write, ‘I can understand your sentences, but I can’t understand your essay.’
Finally, if you can’t give a simple outline, then you probably have really come to terms with your question.

If it’s not clear, then you’re not communicating.
Simplicity of structure is a significant part of clarity.

Developing this skill

It’s all very well for me to tell you to do this, but clear thinking is a higher-order skill. We aren’t born with it; we develop it, and it takes time and effort.

So how do we develop this skill?

I suggest a few options:

Tell your answer to an intelligent friend in one minute. And then again in thirty seconds. This forces you to develop your big ideas.
Write their answer from the start in (three/four/etc) bullet points
Bill Salier was once on our NT faculty, and later headed up YouthWorks. He tells me he would explain essays like this:You are at morning tea, and a friend asks, “What is your answer for your essay?” and you tell them.“That’s your thesis statement,” says Bill.Then they ask, “What are three reasons you’re right?” and you tell them.
“That’s your outline,” says Bill. “Does anyone disagree with you?”
“Yep: These folks.”
“Add them in.”
Then they ask again, “So, what is your answer?”
You tell them, and “That’s your conclusion.”
Bill concludes, ‘And there that’s your essay.’

And of course, wherever possible, give yourself time. Good thinking takes time, and there are no shortcuts to that.

If you read my post Essays: Fusilli not spaghetti, you will see similar ideas. Both methods aim to develop a simple structure with a clear explanation. They help you develop a working thesis and structure as early as possible, and then refine it until you write. This forces you to develop useful main points.

This is skills development. Will you get everything just right the first time you do this? Probably not. But you will continue to sharpen your clarity and speed over time.

A life goal

Clear communication is hard work, and it is worth it.

Any great communicator has to work hard. And any great communicator always has to want to improve. In this life, even the best authors and speakers and preachers never arrive. They improve because they always hunger to improve.

And if you are training for a word-based, people ministry, then decide now to continue improving your communication skills for the rest of your life. And part of that discipline is clear academic writing (and clear preaching, and clear worship, and clear correspondence, and clear directions, and. . . ).

But for now, start with your essays and word ministry. Aim for clear structure. It takes time. It takes hard work. And it will pay you back richly for the effort you put into it.