Connectors Keep it Simple - John C Maxwell

I've been reading John Maxwell's book "Everyone Communicates, Few Connect." It's really all about 'meta-communication' - the way who you are and how you relate is fundamental to how you connect and communicate when you're up front. Chapter 7, though, is relevant to issues we've been discussing in the QTC Advanced Preaching Class, and here on the blog. On page 147, Maxwell asks the question, "What's wrong with Simple?"
Here's a slice of the action...

Ronnie Ding tells me that after a church service, the pastor shook hands with members of his congregation, and one of them commented on his sermon, saying, "Pastor, you are smarter than Albert Einstein."
The Pastor was surprised and flattered by that statement, but he didn't know how to respond... the more he thought about it, the more mystified he was... The following Sunday, he asked the member what he meant by it.
"You see," the man responded, "Albert Einstein wrote something so difficult that only ten persons could understand him at that time. But when you preached, no one could understand you."
I think a lot of people believe that if an individual, epsecially an author or speaker, bomards them with a lot of complex information or writes using big words in a style that is dense and difficult to understand, then he or she is somehow intelligent and credible. In the academic world, that seems to be especially true. When students can't understand their professor, the often assume it's because the professor is so smart and knows so much more than they do. I don't think that's always true... While educators sometimes takes something simple and make it complicated, communicators take something complicated and make it simple."

I'll post more from Maxwell in the next few days. It's good stuff. The publisher has given me a few free copies to give away, so there'll be a prize for the most interesting comment on this and the upoming Maxwell posts.