Conquer \bur Cliches By JAMES W. REAPSOME Old-time printers who had to set type entirely by hand, one letter at a time, thought up a short cut: make up in advance a supply of frequently occurring phrases. On busy days or lazy days some print ers grossly overused those preset phrases. Result: their printed ma terial often did not communicate naturally. Some of today's Christians do the same. They use stock words and phrases to describe their spiritual
experiences. We call them clichés: the printer's stereotype plates, the Christian's prepackaged platitudes. Result: poor communication. Now everybody is prone to fall back on clichés—even the best of writers and speakers. But for the Christian the problem is not pri marily one of professional speech or literature, it is a problem of communicating with those who need the gospel he can share but who do not understand his lan-
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