Many stories have been told of the effective communication which may come from a few well-chosen words, spoken at the right time and in the right way. In Proverbs we find, “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pictures of silver.”Prov. 25:11 Anyone who works consistently with words—and what real student of Christian Science doesn’t?—comes to appreciate the power of a few words “fitly spoken.”

Some years ago when I was on the staff of the Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, there were stories which still lingered in the corridors of that newspaper about its original owner and first editor, Henry Watterson. He knew how a few words could speak volumes. And one point on which no one was left in doubt was that Mr. Watterson owned the Courier-Journal, and he ran it!

He had a habit that was particularly distressing to the bookkeeper. When Mr. Watterson needed money, he would simply go to the cash register and take whatever he wanted. It was impossible to keep the accounts straight or balance the cash at the end of the day. The bookkeeper finally mustered the courage to speak to the editor about it. He meekly suggested that if a slip were placed in the cash register showing what had been taken, it would help immensely. In response to this suggestion Mr. Watterson merely grunted but it sounded to the bookkeeper like an acquiescent grunt.

A few days later he again observed Mr. Watterson at the cash register. Waiting until he had left the office, the bookkeeper hurried to the register to see what had transpired. As he half expected, he found the register empty. But there was a slip of paper, torn from a note pad, on which he recognized Mr. Watterson’s familiar scrawl. To his dismay, he read the words, “I took it all”!

This anecdote illustrates a certain kind of power and authority which can underlie the words we speak or write. This is what effective communication is all about. But it’s not simply a matter of one person speaking out to another or to an audience. Like a forward pass, effective communication requires the action of a receiver. Something has to happen at the other end.

A man who for many years preached on street corners wrote of what he had learned about communication. “It’s a matter,” he said, “of two people looking at the same reality and comparing what they see.” This is the involvement an audience must have with a speaker if any real communication takes place: two people looking at the same reality and comparing what they see.

What happens is actually very simple. If I understand the view you hold on a certain reality and convey to you my view of it, then we can compare what we both see. We may be amused, enlightened, inspired, or healed by what we see. The purpose of our coming together will have been achieved through effective communication.

What is the purpose of the coming together in a Christian Science lecture? It is to heal, to inspire, to enlighten, perhaps even in a moment to amuse. The instant of effective communication is always a moment of one-to-one involvement. It makes demands on both the speaker and listener. Perhaps the most fundamental of these demands is the desire to communicate—a desire both must feel.

I’m sure most of you at one time or another have faced the challenge of writing a talk or an article without so much as a glimmer of inspiration. You sit before your typewriter or paper and nothing comes.

This has happened to me many times, and I’ve learned something about it. I’ve discovered that the problem isn’t a want of something to say, it’s a want of the desire to say it. When I’ve exposed the underlying error of these barren times, it’s a lack of love. The inspiration of love impels a genuine desire to communicate and then the ideas flow.

You may have wondered how lecturers who give the same lecture hundreds of times maintain their inspiration. There’s only one way. It’s through love—loving the lecture and the audience, but most of all loving the precious moments in that experience when heart speaks to heart, when two people look at the reality of Truth and compare what they see.

I have two reasons for speaking to you of this. One is to invite your deeper involvement in the lectures you hear. The other is to point up the way that as church members you reach out to the community through the lectures you give. Both purposes depend on the elements of effective communication we’ve been talking about. And both involve “the power of the Word.”

In Isaiah we read, “As the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.”Isa. 55:10

Note, if you will, that the Word of God shall return unto Him. In order to be returned it must first be received, else it returneth void. Even the Word of God depends on effective communication. It must engage the listener. The desire to communicate, to commune-i-cate with God, is essential.

How do you listen to a Christian Science lecture? Do you listen critically to see how the lecturer handles his subject? Do you listen in a purely objective manner, comparing the lecture with those you’ve heard in the past? Do you listen simply with the hope of getting some idea or illustration you may share with another, perhaps a loved one you’re thinking about at the time?

The Word of God, speaking to human hearts through a Christian Science lecture, invites and may even impel a kind of listening that is totally subjective. It’s the “intercommunication,” which our Leader, Mary Baker Eddy, tells us “is always from God to His idea, man.”Science and Health 284:31-32 Man’s oneness with God insures that whatever comes from God comes from within—not that God is within man but that man is within God.

Isn’t this the need we face: to partake more deeply of this intercommunication and hear God’s message of Truth speaking through the lecture? The return is the healing. To have more healings, we need more true listeners. If it has seemed that there is any less healing for us in lectures today, then we should ask ourselves, “Am I listening in the same way?” Think about it. Think about the way you were listening to that lecture the time you were healed.

The Bible records that multitudes came to hear the Master. But the healing message he spoke was heard by only a few. These were they who listened for the intercommunication from God. We may reach out through every channel to attract multitudes to our lectures, but let us not forget or neglect our need for listeners. And the surest way to add one is to be one.

We seem to suffer somewhat from a condition of the times. This is an era of unprecedented progress in the field of communication and great emphasis is given to both message and medium. Much can be learned from these advancements and much must be done to keep our own work abreast of them. But human methods cannot substitute for spiritual achievements. “The power of the Word” is not demonstrated in publicity or promotion.

This is not intended to encourage anyone who would say, “We don’t need to advertise our lectures”; nor is it an excuse for any lecturer who fails to deliver a compelling, persuasive message. It is, rather, a call upon us all to support these efforts with a deeper spiritual commitment, a personal involvement. It is, in short, a plea for each church member to join more fully in giving a Christian Science lecture.

Perhaps the theme is all too familiar. We’ve heard it so often. We who possess the Word of God must share it with others. We who have found the way must lead others into the path. Is this why we give a Christian Science lecture? Have you ever felt just a little bit uncomfortable with this concept? Is it smug?

This is like a picture hanging on the wall upside down. There’s nothing wrong with the picture except that it needs to be turned around. The key to what we’re doing is not to be found in the piety of the haves sharing with the have-nots. It lies in the meekness and hunger of our own need of Truth.

John declared, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”John 1:1 We don’t possess this Word that we might give it to others. The Word is God, and possesses each one of us. The outreach of our lecture to the community is impelled by “the power of the Word” to possess its own idea. As we let this power take possession of us, we are moved to reach out in thought and act to the same desire in our fellowman. We communicate “the power of the Word” to possess its own idea.

No doubt you’ve heard of instances in which a stranger walks into a Christian Science Reading Room, or possibly a practitioner’s office, only to declare, “I don’t really know why I’m here.” How does this happen? What is it that causes the stranger to feel it’s important that he come there? It’s a right idea, to be sure, but is it impelled solely by his need of it? To what extent does the effect of the collective awareness of the Christ-power on the part of Christian Scientists enter into this single experience?

Mind is One. Thus, consciousness is one. When you bring forward in consciousness a divinely impelled right idea, it becomes immediately available to everyone. It may require only the suggestion of need, a glimmer of receptivity, to attract the individual to the idea. Such is “the power of the Word.”

Can you imagine what would happen if every church member undertook to establish firmly in consciousness the truth that Christian Science heals, and actually accomplished this every day even for a month? I believe the practitioners in that city would have more calls than they could handle. And healings would come easier and quicker.

What would happen if every member established in consciousness the truth that God is the supreme and only power and that there can be no resistance to Truth? What if this spiritual fact became so compellingly clear in the consciousness of those who were knowing it that it effectively wiped out all opposition to the lecture?

We’ve heard much in recent months about the outreach of our Church. But this outreach isn’t institutional, it’s individual. The Church Manual provides that branches of The Mother Church may give one or more Christian Science lectures yearly. Unless this giving is individual, there’s no outreach to it. But let me take care here that I don’t lead us back into a purely objective sense of this giving—as if to say, we’ve got something we’re going to give to others.

The sense of giving which must underlie our lecture work is found in the Christ. We don’t transfer the Christ from one individual to another. You can’t give the Christ to another. In the degree we waken to the Christ within us, this Christ reaches out to give. There isn’t any other way to give a Christian Science lecture, for the essence of this lecture is the Christ.

When does this giving begin? It begins the moment we begin to identify the activity of the Christ with the lecture. It begins the moment we start thinking about the lecture in terms of the power and presence of the Christ. And it continues as long as we think about the lecture in terms of the Christ.

I’ve heard the idea proposed, and no doubt you have too, that every church member bring one non-Scientist to the next lecture we give. We’re quick to say the lecture is for the non-Scientist. But isn’t there some measure of the non-Scientist still remaining in each one of us? The non-Scientist in us consists of whatever is within us that has not yet yielded to the Christ.

Yes, by all means, bring a non-Scientist to the lecture. In fact, bring two: the one in you and the friend you’ve been calling a non-Scientist. If the Word of God doesn’t speak to us who give the lecture, there will indeed be few who hear it.

“The power of the Word” is to heal. If each church member will bring to the lecture his own need of healing, the place will be filled with non-Scientists. Moreover, with all this healing going on, you won’t be able to keep people away. Such is “the power of the Word.”

Now, I don’t want you to leave here tonight feeling that I’ve pinned the monkey on you, that I’ve simply said it’s all up to you. As a matter of fact, what I’m saying is exactly the opposite. I believe we tend sometimes to take ourselves apart because our churches are not overflowing. You’d think we’re only in the business of promoting Christian Science rather than living it.

What I would say is this: let the next Christian Science lecture we give fulfill its purpose in us. Let “the power of the Word” take possession of us from the first moment we begin to think about the lecture, and let its healing currents of Truth flow into our thought and experience. Then we shall bring to the lecture that immediate need of healing which reaches out to the Christ—the Christ in us and in every individual in our community.

The law for this attraction is stated by our Leader in Science and Health, “Not personal intercommunion but divine law is the communicator of truth, health, and harmony to earth and humanity.”Science and Health 72:30-32 This is the law for our lecture. It’s “the power of the Word.”