WORD APTLY SPOKEN IS LIKE APPLES of gold in settings of silver" (Prov. 25:11).* "The power of speech is a talent that should be diligently cultivated. Of all the gifts we have received from God, none is capable of being a greater blessing than this."¹

At one stage in my pastoral work I felt the need to become, to the glory of God, a better conversationalist. Because it's sometimes true that "the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light" (Luke 16:8, KJV), I thought it might be useful to try the world's experts for training in the art of conversation. I found their wisdom fascinating and valuable, yet wrongly focused.

What the Experts Offer
The experts say that conversation is the password to success in all your contacts with people. You may be a mental giant, but if you're the silent, negative type, you'll probably be judged dull, lacking in ideas, aloof, or self-centered. In your job your personality, poise, and conversational ability are just as important as technical proficiency.

To engage in conversation, you need a topic. One is right at hand—yourself! You could talk about your childhood, school days, vacations, studies, the jobs you've done, your hobbies, dreams, ambitions, ways of relaxing, or family members. No research needed—you know the subject intimately and with passion. But there's a snag—the members of your audience are less interested in you than in themselves. They're bound to decide soon that people wrapped up in themselves make a very lackluster package.

The experts also warn of the dangers of being a specialist conversationalist. Say your specialty is crime. Your conversation partners mention obesity statistics or the hole in the ozone layer or the price of breakfast foods, and you respond with "Yes, it's a crime, isn't it? And speaking of crime . . ." You run the danger of becoming very predictable and deadly boring.

So it's a must, you're told, that you enrich your conversation by reading wisely—newspapers, newsmagazines, books. Watch TV shows and interviews. Don't just read and set aside. Digest and think about what you read—make it your own. Close your eyes and review what you've just read, and playact in your mind how you'd casually drop a newly acquired nugget into your next conversation. Keep the key details fresh in your mind. A caution—when the conversational setting offers itself, be careful you don't give the impression that you're an obnoxious know-it-all.

Your mind shouldn't only be well stocked with story images and constantly kept up-to-date on events on the local and international scene, but you should daily be building your word power. Words are both construction blocks and tools. The English language (and others are comparable) offers you 600,000, so there's ample scope for the average person's conversational 2,000 or so to be augmented.

Such a course in conversational excellence has many elements: making a notebook your constant companion, keeping close to your well-thumbed dictionary, avoiding dogmatic statements and generalizations, not contradicting people, not introducing a fetish for overexactness (nothing kills a conversation more quickly than constant corrections of statistics or dates or measurements), shunning sham, pretense, and sarcasm, and preserving eye contact.

A powerful secret—one of the key elements in good conversation—is listening. And there's a right way and a wrong way to listen. You must learn to listen with attention reflected in your eyes and every nuance of facial expression. The attention span must not be allowed to falter. A stony silence, vacant looks, and a slumped posture invite disaster. When you listen with friendly interest, leaning slightly toward the speaker, you're saying, "I care about what you care about."

Courtesy must prevail. An after-dinner speaker once began by saying, "If any of you gentlemen have heard this story before, just stop me." Mark Twain remarked, "A gentleman has never heard a story before!"

The ramifications of the art of conversation go on and on: small talk and light stories, repartee, permissible humor, telephone personality, how to say goodbye.

Such books or training courses challenged me because they had so many dimensions and stimulated me because formulations of common sense were offered. Much was worth knowing and putting into practice. Yet in the end I felt that heavenly wisdom might be of more practical use, so I turned to the Bible and the Spirit of Prophecy.

Inspired Counsel
Here I found I was not being urged to devour newspapers, newsmagazines, and TV programs to gain grist for my conversational mill. Nor was I playing a delightful game called conversation. The emphasis was different. In the worldly wisdom I found no mention of God and His Word, no urgency about the end of time and the dawn of eternity, no burden for souls and eternal truth. In God's source material I found I was challenged in my heart as well as my mind. The sound of my own language—a spiritual one—was as music to my soul. And gradually a plain path became visible before me.

The principles I gleaned from inspiration are:

The words we speak are a life-and-death matter.
"But I tell you that men will have to give account on the day of judgment for every careless word they have spoken. For by your words you will be acquitted, and by your words you will be condemned" (Matt. 12:36, 37).

Thinking is where speaking starts, and we must stock our minds with the right thoughts.
"For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him" (Matt. 12:34, 35).

"When Christ and heaven are the themes of contemplation, the conversation will give evidence of the fact. The speech will be seasoned with grace, and the speaker will show that he has been obtaining an education in the school of the divine Teacher."²

Our motive in conversation should not be to impress with knowledge or personality, or to entertain, but to bless.
"To save souls should be the lifework of everyone who professes Christ."³ "If Christ is abiding in the heart by faith, you cannot keep silent. If you have found Jesus, you will be a true missionary."⁴

A higher power must be in charge.
"The grace of Christ is to control the temper and the voice. . . . The countenance is changed. Christ abiding in the heart shines out in the faces of those who love Him and keep His commandments. Truth is written there. The sweet peace of heaven is revealed. There is expressed a habitual gentleness, a more than human love. The leaven of truth works a change in the whole man, making the coarse refined, the rough gentle, the selfish generous.
. . . Man with his human nature becomes a partaker of divinity."⁵

We are a witness and we have a witness.
"Service to God includes personal ministry. By personal effort we are to cooperate with Him for the saving of the world. Christ's commission, ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,' is spoken to every one of His followers. . . . All who are ordained unto the life of Christ are ordained to work for the salvation of their fellow men. Their hearts will throb in unison with the heart of Christ. The same longing for souls that He has felt will be manifest in them."⁶ "Far more than we do, we need to speak of the precious chapters in our experience. . . . These exercises drive back the power of Satan."⁷

Christ is our example.
"We should look to Jesus, the perfect pattern; we should pray for the aid of the Holy Spirit. . . . We should do as Christ did. Wherever He was, in the synagogue, by the wayside, in the boat thrust out a little from the land, at the Pharisee's feast or the table of the publican, He spoke to men of the things pertaining to the higher life. . . . This is the very highest work in which we can employ the talent of speech."⁸

I once knew a man who still lives in my memory as a conversational evangelist. Arthur Gravett had been a zealous worldling, making a mess of his life. Then he gave his heart to God and was baptized a Seventh-day Adventist Christian. I had occasion over a period of two years to observe him in action as a witness for Jesus.

He needed no secular course in conversation. The Holy Spirit was continuously putting him through a course in sanctification. He was marked by gentle-voiced friendliness toward all who crossed his path. Courteous at all times, he was a good listener. He never contradicted people. Even if they were to say, "Of course, the Bible contradicts itself dozens of times," he'd beam and say, "I once thought it contradicted itself hundreds of times, until one day something happened that changed my outlook, my entire life."

He didn't stay with just one subject, Jesus Christ. Yet even when other matters were brought up, you always had a feeling that there was something special about him—a spiritual dimension. He knew his Bible and could easily make an apt reference. He had a burden, a passion in his life. And that passion was not money, sports, gourmet meals, or entertainment. That passion was you.

He would say when meeting a new person, "We're living in interesting times, aren't we?"

"Absolutely. But I'm looking forward to incomparably more interesting times. Do you know when they will come?"

His quiet friendliness was beautiful and impressive to behold. He would say a word about the second coming of Christ, then urge the new friend to come to the prayer meeting on Wednesday evening. He asked for no promise, but he promised, "I'll be looking for you, friend!" When I met him he had been in the church only three years, yet Arthur Gravett had already seen a number of his contacts baptized.

I'll always remember the tears of joy running down his cheeks at the baptism of one of his contacts. Without the slightest presentiment that this 20-year-old would someday be an evangelist (that would have overwhelmed him with a sacred happiness), he put his arms around my dripping shoulders and pressed me to his chest. Two years later, when I stood at his open grave and mourned that a sudden heart attack had deprived us of his tactful zeal and love, the tears were mine.

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* Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New International Version.

¹ Ellen G. White, Christ's Object Lessons, p. 335.
² White, Messages to Young People, pp. 427, 428.
³ White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 4, p. 53.
⁴ White, Messages to Young People, p. 200.
⁵ White, Christ's Object Lessons, p. 102.
⁶ Ibid., pp. 300, 301.
⁷ Ibid., pp. 299, 300.
⁸ Ibid., pp. 336-339.

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Frederick Pelser is a pastor in Edgemead, South Africa.