Newspaper Writing – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2j: Jesus An Intuitive Psychologist

Excerpt from Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Second Phase—Preacher and Newspaper,” Christian Century, August 19, 1920.

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” He is talking about a minister who wants to enlarge his audience and is writing an abstract of his sermon for the local newspaper.]

“Again, the preacher may have been talking about ‘The Uses of Adversity.’ This is always an attractive line of homiletic thought. In his newspaper account of what he said, let the lead suggest some such thought as the following:

Because he had the good fortune to plane all the fingers off of his left hand in his father’s mill, one of the most brilliant lawyers of this country was able to put his energies to work where they would do the most good. The accident ruined him for the life of a mechanic; but he hadn’t been intended for a mechanic. Instead of sitting down to nurse his lumps, he got up and trained what he had left – his brains.

“Anybody in search of incidents similar to this will be bewildered over the wealth of materials at his disposal. They are all well worth telling. They have put more punch and renewed courage into the minds and hearts of the mentally, morally, and physically crippled than can be estimated in words or figures. The public may be depended upon to read all about the old lady who made candy; accidentally scorched the sugar; was on the point of pouring it out; hit upon a happy thought; poured the mess full of peanuts; made her fortune; lived happily ever after. Not very dignified? Well, how about this one? ‘In a city there was a judge who feared nobody, and a widow came to him, saying, “Avenge me of my adversary!” And he did not, for a while; afterward he decided, “I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.”‘

“Indeed, this one is so good that a preacher could lead his sermon extract with it today – after this long lapse of time – and be sure of attention. Let all these good brothers who are trying to follow the Galilean Teacher pay careful heed to his processes of gaining and sustaining public interest. As an intuitive psychologist who ‘knew what was in man,’ he not only spoke authoritatively to the people of his own generation, but has furnished an example of the most effective methods by which life may be touched on its most sensitive nerves.

“Now that D. Preston Blue has had his first palatable taste of printer’s ink and has noticed the increased interest which the public is taking in his pulpit, he resolves to go a step further in the use of printed matter to recruit the crowd he means to have in his church, not once but every Sunday, rain or shine. Of that matter – its general scheme, the detail of its construction, the cost, the process of distribution, etc., a succeeding paper will endeavor to treat. D. Preston Blue has chopped up the piano box for kindling wood. He has resolved to find a crowd in Centerville.”

[In my next post, I’ll tell you about the third installment in the series, “Wanted – A Congregation!”]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2i: Putting the Graveyard in the Foreground

by Ronald R Johnson

“Or again, suppose the preacher has been talking about ‘the things for which we are remembered’ – not a half bad topic, by the way; though of course one would never think of announcing it in that fashion. Searching his notes for the ‘lead,’ the minister does not top his sermon abstract with a dissertation upon the graveyard; the tombstone toward which our footsteps are inevitably hastening; and the long grass growing in God’s Acre where that which is mortal of us will eventually rest while other people go on just as if nothing had happened, forgetting the departed pilgrim except for the two or three little things that he had chanced to do – deeds destined to live forever. No! And again, No! You cannot bait anybody to read a sermon that sets out in a hearse and ambles along to the cemetery. The public is obliged to make that trip often enough to satisfy all curiosity it has on the subject. If the preacher will talk about death, let him view it as a glorious beginning of something rather than discourse upon its less promising aspects. People do not relish a sermon that smacks of the undertaker’s suave instructions to the pallbearers, ‘Handles all down, please. Face the car, as I do. That’s very good – thank you. Take the third and fourth carriages, if you will. Very greatly obliged, I’m sure.’

“No; this preacher hunts for the one striking fact that had brightened the eyes of his audience, and he leads his sermon on ‘the things for which we are remembered’ somewhat after the following manner:

It was the worst road in Scotland. The supervisor told John Louden MacAdam that if he did not mend that road which made his estate almost impassable, he would be fined.

John Louden’s dignity was damaged. He had neglected that road because he was busy with more important matters. He was writing a monumental history of the MacAdam family.

But, required to repair his road, he decided to make one that would cast open shame upon all the roads of his neighbors who had made complaint.

He had all the clay hauled off the highway and the excavation filled with crushed stone and gravel. It was a good road.

Then he went back to his history of the MacAdams and spent the rest of his life celebrating their great deeds; but nobody remembered any other MacAdam but John Louden, and he is remembered not because he wrote a five-foot shelf of histories, but because he invented the macadamized road.

“The reader will go on and try to find out what all this leads to, it may be supposed. The preacher should have no trouble in coaxing him along into the next paragraph which deals with the little deeds rendered incidentally and the kindly words spoken casually – but saturated with that which makes for immortality.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2h: Newspaper Style

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who wants to enlarge his audience but was taught nothing at seminary about reaching the surrounding community through the local newspaper.]

“If he is of an extremely practical sort in estimating his assets, this preacher can console himself with the thought that whenever he wishes to do so he can use the column of The Morning Star as if he were the editor himself. This is not a negligible consideration to any man who wishes to give his pulpit some publicity. All he lacks now is the ability to use this space in such a manner that the reader will shout, ‘Fine! We must go around and hear this man Blue!’ – instead of muttering, ‘What rot these preachers get off in their churches! What bewildering stupidity!’

“Speaking generally, if the preacher who has been given an opportunity to preach to the public through the newspaper does not contrive to grip his readers with the first line, he had better save his typewriter ribbon. However, in his anxiety to lead his copy with something clever to attract attention, he must not forget that he is not selling shaving soap, or advertising a circus, but attempting to spread the good news of salvation. To spread that good news, it is necessary that he shall be honest with his constituency. To be honest does not mean, necessarily, that he must be dull. Possibly a few illustrations will help here.

“The preacher has talked about the importance of living up to one’s best self – a not infrequent theme among us. Of course, no attempt is made here to phrase the subject for announcement. Any man who would advertise that he was going to preach on ‘Living Up to One’s Best Self’ has really accomplished nothing but a deepening conviction on the part of the public that he has nothing to unload of interest to a populace sated with good advice.

“Whatever he may call the sermon, however, for purposes of arousing interest, this is his thesis – ‘living up to one’s best self.’ He thinks it is good enough to be given to the general public through the press. As he glances over his notes prefatory to composing the abstract, he searches for the one striking incident, anecdote, or ‘human interest fact’ most likely to reach out and grab the casual reader. When his sermon appears in print, next morning, it does not lead with a stiff procession of platitudes, marching along in single file with their chins in the air and their skirts carefully clutched to avoid the mud, but with the simple statement of a concrete fact.

“A study of newspaper style will show that a proper name, in the first line, is not uncommon. The mention of dollars and cents is always attractive to the reader. It interests him to learn that somebody has made some money. He is not much less interested in learning how somebody else lost some money. In the present instance, the sermon abstract begins as follows:

Wedgwood could not afford to lose the $40.00 which he had been offered for the vase. He was just starting in the pottery business and needed the money. But the vase was imperfect, and he ordered it broken and thrown upon the scrap-pile; for he vowed that no man could ever buy a ‘Second’ at his shop. He was going to make no ‘seconds.’ It looked like poor business at first; but Josiah Wedgwood became the most famous potter in the world.

“Now, after that, the preacher can say almost anything he likes about the importance of living up to one’s best self and expect to retain the interest of a considerable percent of his readers. Is there anything claptrap about that? Is it any more undignified to begin with ‘A certain man had two sons; and the elder of them said to his father,’ etc.? Indeed, isn’t this about the same process? Is the preacher to be more dignified than his Master? Is the servant greater than his lord?”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2f: A Running Start

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who received a request from the local newspaper for an abstract of his sermon from the previous Sunday.]

“Now, the introduction to that sermon had cost the preacher many hours of labor. He had toiled over it until it was flawless; not a tool-mark in sight; smooth, euphonistic, rhetorically sound in wind and limb. Not on any account could he escape the temptation to repeat this introduction in his abstract. Of course, the introduction was historical. It had dealt with the dramatic incident of Israel’s abandonment of the national ideal in the building of the golden calf. To clear the way for that theatrical event, Mr. Blue had backed up about a score of years, into the Valley of the Nile, so that he might get a long, running start at the calf story.

“Confronted, now, with the necessity of boiling the whole sermon down to a scant nine inches of eight-point, instead of jumping into the very ruck of things and hurling red-hot chunks of his appeal at the public in the first paragraph, the only method his inexperience could suggest was to begin with the calf.

“We are forever lamenting that the public knows so little about the Bible. The public knows more about the Bible than we suspect. It does not understand the causes of biblical events very well, nor does it have much sense of sequence, but the majority of the reading public can recite the more stirring stories of the Bible with considerable fidelity to detail. It knows, for instance, the story of the golden calf. It knows it so well that the mere mention of that incident acts in the nature of a narcotic.

“Well; Mr. Blue had squandered his five hundred words in riotous introduction. He had told the story of Israel’s defection, but there was nothing in it – except possibly in the last few lines, which nobody reached but the proofreader – even vaguely suggestive of a modern application. The editor had found nothing in it, so far as he had gone, to warrant an attractive caption. In fact, he had labeled it, frankly, ‘The Golden Calf – Dr. Blue Recites Well-Known Story – Idol Worship.’ Think you that anybody would read it, after such a recommendation? Verily, a silly question.

“Our friend’s pride nearly bleeds to death when he reflects upon the matter. He had been given a chance to preach to every man in Centerville on Monday morning, and this is the way he had done it – by rehearsing the moral lapses of another country and another age, as if he were afraid to approach America’s and Centerville’s lapses by less than thirty-three hundred years and seven thousand miles! To be sure, this wasn’t true of him! Anybody hearing him on Sunday would have admired his fearlessness – but he kept it very carefully concealed from the public in his report on Monday.”

[To be continued in my next post…]