There's something which keeps the parsons from the people. Let me put it plainly and bluntly: I do not think that the Churches will ever get anywhere with ordinary people unless the parsons, the preachers and the writers of religious paper-backs learn to use simpler language and stop talking above peoples' heads.

There you are then. I've said it. Do you agree?

Perhaps some of you, reading this, will think to yourselves, “Does Philip Bell practise what he preaches? Does he use easy words and plain statements in his preaching and writing?"

I answer at once: "You have a point there! Yes, I am trying to write this blog in plain language with no words like predestination, or obtuse, or redemption, or phrases like 'sine qua non', or quotations from obscure poets or clever theologians, etc..!"

So what I am going to do is to say something about the kind of "bad language” which sometimes includes words of seven or even twelve letters, and "good language" which often includes four- letter words!!

Soon after I was ordained I was made Chaplain to the Devonshire Road Hospital in Barrow-in-Furness. This was an isolation hospital which had many patients suffering from T.B. (tuberculosis).

In those days (the late 1940s) T.B. patients were often in two-bed "wards" with one end open to the air; (i.e. each of these little rooms had three walls only, the fourth side being open to the air but with folding doors for bad weather). Patients were there for months at a time, either until they were well, or until they died.

With such long-term stays, one sometimes had confirmation candidates who would have a series of instruction classes.

For the first candidate I had there, I chose a paperback which I considered was a good simple, straightforward explanation of the Christian life. I gave it to this particular person (a married lady in her late 30s), and said, "Will you please read Chapter 1 before I come to see you again. If there are any words you do not understand, just underline them in pencil and I will talk to you about them when I come next week."

When I returned to see her, she said, "I've done as you said and marked words or things I don't understand."

When I opened the book I found to my amazement, that there were between one and four words underlined on most of the pages!

It was at once clear that these were not just "religious" words like "redemption" or "grace" or "atonement" or "penitence", but most of the underlined words were what to me were ordinary English words such as I might see in the Telegraph, the Times or the Guardian.

This was for me the dawning of a very important truth which, I am sad to say, the Church of England, (and perhaps other churches too), has still not understood nor realised.

What I had to appreciate was that most people in the world use a reduced vocabulary.

That the average writer has not appreciated this is easy to illustrate:
I will not quote directly from paperbacks from Christian bookshops intended for Jack or Jill Ordinary Christian to read, but I will have actual examples in mind.

Imagine there was a book about understanding the New Testament, and the author wanted to say that he knew that some people would disagree with his explanation of some parts of the Bible. You can bet your bottom dollar that he would probably use a phrase such as "controversial interpretations". My point is that a great number of people would not normally use a phrase like that, and many would find it difficult to understand.

Or imagine another writer who wants to say that a group of people spent a very long time indeed discussing something in his sitting room. He or she might use a phrase like "They were closeted in my lounge for an inordinately long period of time."

Again, words like "closeted" or "inordinately" are just non-starters for lots of people.

Can you imagine a farmer telling his wife "For the past half hour I have been closeted with the cows”?

On almost any page of any book you find words which most people do not understand.

Of course, we must have books for the well-educated, the very intelligent and the intellectuals, for they are leaders of thought and of ideas which sometimes percolate down to the whole population and can change everybody's way of thinking.

But, if the Church is to communicate - to make contact - with ordinary people then the words used need to be ones understood by the majority.

Here are approximations based on the certified sales of some well-known newspapers:

Topping the three million mark - The Sun and the Mirror.
Over one million -The Mail, The Express and The Telegraph.
Under 500 thousand come The Times, The Guardian and the Independent.

We see at once that it is the papers using a reduced vocabulary which are most widely read, simply because the majority of people enjoy that kind of thing. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t able to understand more academic words, but most of us don’t use those words in everyday life.

Once, when I was a part-time teacher in Stockbridge, Hampshire, Mixed Secondary School I invited the appropriate person from the County Drug Prevention Department, to come and talk to the older boys and girls and to show a documentary film called
"Better dead".

When he was leaving, the visitor asked me, "Did I do alright?"

I hesitated, "Well, no," I said, "You used words they did not understand. You began by asking them, "I wonder if you appreciate the extent of the incidence of drug-addiction in our county? They would not have a clue as to the meaning of "appreciate" or of "incidence of drug addiction"", I explained.

I am afraid I did rather rub it in, for I continued, "If you had said, "Any of you like to have a guess how many guys and gals are hooked on drugs in Hampshire right now?" then they would have understood".

Poor man! He was quite amazed.

"I never gave a thought about which words to use or not use", he told me.

If the Church is to be understood by the man and woman in the street, then Christian speakers and writers must reduce their vocabulary.

I am writing this blog for people who are already familiar with Christian or Church words, but even so I use many words which would not be suitable were I speaking to people with virtually no religious connections.

Apart from this, I do try to use words which the average English person will understand.

There is no point in writing a sentence like, "Predictably, some journalistic accounts of these eventualities display a parity of veracity", when you can say, "As everyone knows, you can't believe all you read in the papers"!

In this matter of using words which people can understand, St. Mark makes a telling comment about Jesus, (see Chapter 12 v. 37.): The A.V. translation is "The common people heard him gladly". N.E.B. has, "The mass of the people listened eagerly".

Sadly, it is true of so many parsons and lay leaders that the "common people" - ordinary folk who make up 70% of the population - do not hear them gladly, simply because they do not understand them.

How, then, do we help ordinary people when they do come to church?

Well, what are the occasions when people who normally never attend church do come?

The answer, of course, is two-fold. They come on occasions which one might call "Folk Religion" days - Mothering Sunday, a Pet Service, a Carol Service (especially a, school one held in a church), or Remembrance Sunday are examples. But they also come to Baptisms, Marriages and Burial services.

In the first group (the "Folk Religion" days), it is usually possible to have a simple service not from the set Prayer Book.

What, though, can be done about the set forms for christenings, weddings and funerals?

Some clergy issue no books for these, (or only a page giving the peoples' responses where they occur), and the service becomes (except for a hymn or two) a mostly "one man (or woman) band".

The whole point of belonging to a Church which has services printed in a book is that people can follow everything (even if they have poor hearing) and can know beforehand what most of the prayers to be used will be about.

Why do many clergy give the people no service books for weddings and funerals?

It is possible that sometimes it is a question of costs.

Also, where three or four church buildings are grouped together these booklets sometimes have to be shared between the churches. This just means one more thing to remember in a very busy life and involves extra time to collect, deliver and return.

Other clergy like to be free to "do their own thing", especially for funerals and so think that no books for the congregation are best.
But if we want people to go away saying, "We all shared in the service" or "I never lost my way through that service once" or "Even Aunt Emma, who's so deaf, could follow it all" or simply, "I did enjoy that", then we must make it easy for all to follow and participate.

You appreciate that I am suggesting "books (or leaflets) for everybody" as an important pastoral tool when conducting what some people rudely call "Hatches, Matches and Dispatches".

It is no good if the Minister just walks to his or her seat and begins to take the service without a word of greeting or explanation.

So, before anything else, the visitors to the Church, (many of
whom have not attended an ordinary Sunday service in years - or perhaps literally never), must be sincerely welcomed and, then ...

Well "and then", what next?

I suggest that the next thing to do is to say something like, "We would like you to feel that you can all enter into this service and share in it together. I will lead it so that, if you want to, you can follow every word and always know what to do".

Then, if a hymn comes first, the book containing it must be described.

"Will you please take up the red hymn books and find number so-and-so".
After that, a similar statement, such as, "Will you please open the small blue service books at page …

I say this, because so many people taking services of this sort do not mentally put themselves in the places of the people who are unfamiliar with Church books.

I was recently near the back in a church where the Vicar said, "Page 126 in the green book" He had forgotten that the service book and the hymn book were both green. I watched while five or six of the people took up the wrong book, looked first puzzled and then frustrated, and finally sat back and "switched off".

The other common mistake is to think that all you have to do is tell them where the service begins and then expect them to follow the rest of it without prompting.

After, (for example), a second hymn, they will not remember or know where the service continues, and must be reminded of the page number.

I advocate always giving the congregation at least two prayers to say aloud together and sometimes part of a psalm as well. (As far as psalms go, one does have to ask "Will this mean anything to them?")

If it's a psalm, I suggest that we do not ask them to say alternate verses. The words are not familiar and they get too straggly on the longer sentences. Also some of them may be poor readers.

It is entirely in line with Hebrew poetry to ask them to say the second half of each verse. To make this clear, one might say "Will you read together the second half of every verse. I will read as far as the colon in each verse if you will read the rest of it."

This gives them a short sentence which is often an echo of the first half of the verse, and they all keep together. Or you can just say 'please read the words in thick black type'.

With the advent of computers, laptops, desktop publishing, large screens in church and projectors, creating a service that everyone can read and take part in has never been easier.

When it comes to saying a prayer together, (e.g. for a newly baptised child or a just married couple or for mourners after a bereavement), it is wise to announce the topic of the prayer.

"Let us ask God to ... Let us say together the second prayer on page …
Sometimes we can help by explaining a phrase before it is read. For example, if a prayer refers to our belief in "the communion of saints" we have to remember that the majority of people have not a clue as to what that means. In this instance one has only to say, "In the next prayer "the communion of saints" means the fellowship between Christians who are still here with us and those who have already died" and then it becomes a little more meaningful.

Any service at which "fringe" people are present, if taken in this way, will help them cope with its unfamiliarity and its difficult vocabulary.
Of course, regular churchgoers appreciate page numbers as well. Only the other day a life-long churchgoer, then aged 81, said to me, "I am glad you gave out page numbers. I know the service well, but I like to be reassured."

Public worship should not be a "one man or one woman show" - a kind of minister's monologue.

St. Paul said, "Let everything be done decently and in order", but he did not add, "by the minister alone"!

It may be that teenagers with a reduced vocabulary which I mentioned at the beginning, may not have increased the number of words they use by the time they were 30 or so, unless it was the technical words of their trade or job.

Similarly, we cannot have anything but simple everyday words in our Bibles or prayers. The Christians have their "technical terms" too.
The snag is that we can grow up with the Christian technical terms without knowing what they mean.

The most obvious example which comes to my mind is the word "Amen". Who knows what it means?

Yet, if we explain that it means, "I agree", or "That's true" or "That goes for me too", even such a basic explanation will add quality to the service.

We must get back to basics.

We clergy and lay leaders all assume knowledge which people just simply do not have.

For example, every congregation or house group should have a course on the Apostles’ Creed, explaining simply and with homely illustrations, what the words mean, what the Christian Church believes about them and where you find each "belief" in the Bible.

When I was Vicar of Holdenhurst, near Bournemouth, I took such a course at the Retired Nurses Home, one Lent.

Afterwards, one of the retired ladies said "Thank you very much, I have waited a whole life-time to have the Creed explained to me."

How often I have received a tape from some central place which says it believes in adult Christian education and which is intended for study or discussion by house groups. I listen to the tape and say to myself: "I cannot use that. People will not understand what it is all about."
Then I translate the words of the tape into a reasonable "reduced vocabulary" set of words, and wonder why I ever borrowed or bought the original!

By now you will appreciate that I feel very strongly about this matter of vocabulary. Far too many of us preach or speak above the heads of the people. It's time we came down to earth and spoke in words they can understand!

So far as the Church of England goes, its churches tend to be well attended whenever they are placed in a middle or upper class area, (sorry to have to use such terms!) , but when the church is in a working-class estate or village it is nearly empty.

There are many reasons for this, but understanding the language used is one of them.

So - to reiterate the main burden of my thesis. Horrors! Now I'm doing it! Sorry! What I mean is: To sum up the chief points I want to make:

My plea is this: Let us all learn to speak or write in simple words.
Let us explain what is seen, done and said in Church life frequently and clearly.

Let us work out how to involve people in public worship.

Let us use all age-groups, remembering that this includes children.

Let us get down to basic beliefs and basic explanations and basic guidelines for Christian ways of behaviour.

For everything we do at Church services let us ask:

1. Will this give honour and glory to God?
2. Will the people understand?
3. Will it help them (a) here and now and (b) during the week-days?

If all this is done, and interlaced with prayer, then, please God "The mass of the people will listen eagerly" and "the ordinary people will hear us gladly".