Usually Steve and I like to keep towards the fundamental Four Noble Truths. You don't have to say the Four Noble Truths and state it in Buddhist terms, however. A simpler way to state it is that we want to be able to find the difficulties and problems that we have within ourselves and Buddhism seeks to end those problems by developing our mind and uncovering the deeper human potential within ourselves. If you want to expand a little on that, you could say that Buddhism encourages people to develop the unselfish emotions of compassion, lovingkindness, and wisdom, in order to understand the nature of things as they are. This is actually the fundamental aspect of Buddhism, understanding the suffering and problems that we have. Usually if you use the word "suffering" they'll turn off. So it's better to use the words "difficulties and problems", and how we try to understand their causes and end them through developing the mind. So we can transcend these problems within ourselves through mental development. A lot of people have some strange ideas about what Buddhism is, but if we keep it simple, then a lot of these types of misunderstandings and misperceptions may be lessened. This is what I have found.