Viewpoint: Even This Stutterer Can Preach God’s Word

I am among the 70 million people in the world who stutter, and we represent about 1 percent of the population. The odds are quite high that you know at least one person who stutters. As a child, I experienced the usual taunting and painful embarrassment that any child my age who is disfluent in speech would naturally endure. In various classes I was required to give oral reports, speeches, and other talks that were shear terror for fluent speakers and beyond a nightmare for stutterers. (I once read a list of people’s greatest fears, and public speaking was near the top; it was higher than the fear of death.) One of the worse experiences proved to be talking on the phone. I was ordering merchandize over the phone one day when I blocked on my name. The young man on the other end of the line abruptly asked, “What’s the matter — don’t you know your own name?” I explained that I was a stutterer and if given a few minutes I could sing it to him. (Stutterers can’t speak fluently, but we don’t stutter when we sing, for some strange reason.) I felt sorry for the young man, who became extremely apologetic.

Some very famous people stuttered, including Moses (Exodus 4:10). I love his description, as it reads in Hebrew, of having “a heavy tongue.” In fact, he attempted to use his disfluency as an excuse to decline his divine calling and be passed over as the leader of Israel. Demosthenes, an ancient Greek orator, tried several experiments to treat his own stammering. But other stutterers in more contemporary times have included Lewis Carrol, the author of “Alice in Wonderland”; wartime British prime minister Winston Churchill; and Philip Melancthon, the theological architect of the Reformation and colleague of Martin Luther. King George VI of Britain was a severe stutterer; the Academy Award-winning film, “The King’s Speech,” told his story. Vice-president Joe Biden has often spoken of his struggles with stuttering. If nothing else, these examples should prove that stuttering doesn’t have to be a roadblock to any highway in life. It may be a pothole, but not a roadblock.

In my case, as I was coming to the end of my high school years, I had wanted to get into radio, which seemed like a very unlikely spot for a kid who often had trouble pronouncing his own name. But in 1965 I managed to land my first job at a Christian radio station in northeastern Pennsylvania, and I later moved to another Christian broadcasting company in Syracuse, New York. While employed at that station, I believed God called me into the pastorate and I started seminary in 1973. This year I’ll be celebrating my 40th year of pastoring.

There are two great thoughts that stuttering has taught me over the years.

First, you might think this is an odd thing to say, but I don’t believe in accidents. Remember, God had created Moses with that impediment, and He also had the ability to cure Moses’ disfluency, but He didn’t. Instead, He gave Moses a spokesman in the person of his brother, Aaron. David wrote, “Thou hast covered me in my mother’s womb. I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made: marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well” (Psalm 139:13b-14). I’ve often wondered how I would have been different if I hadn’t been a stutterer. I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that I was given this affliction for a reason that is within the purpose and plan of God.

Second, I don’t consider stuttering as a handicap, but it is an occasional nuisance, to be sure. Yet, it should never discourage us or stand in our way. We live in an age when physical anomalies are less and less inhibiting. Yes, God even occasionally calls a stutterer to preach the Word of the Living God.

Jack Williamson is pastor of First Baptist Church of Ridgeway, S.C.