Preach, Preacher, Preachers, Preaching

The Ideal Preacher

After hundreds of fruitless years, a model minister has been found to suit everyone. It is guaranteed that he will please all the people in any church.

He preaches only 20 minutes, but thoroughly expounds the Word.
He condemns sin, but never hurts anyone’s feelings.
He works from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m., doing every type work, from preaching in the pulpit to janitor work.
He makes $200 a week, wears good clothes, buys good books regularly, has a nice family, drives a nice car, and gives $50 a week to the church.
He stands ready to give to any good cause, also.
His family is completely model in deportment, dress, and attitude.
He is 26 years old and has been preaching for 30 years.
He is tall, short, thin, heavyset, handsome, has one brown eye and one blue eye, hair parted in the middle, left side dark and straight, right side blond and wavy.
He has a burning desire to work with teenagers and spend all his time with the older people.
He smiles all the time with a straight face because he has a sense of humor that keeps him seriously dedicated to his work.
He makes 15 calls a day on church members, spends all his time evangelizing the unchurched, and is never out of the office.

Darrell W. Robinson, Total Church Life, (Broadman & Holman Publishers, Nashville; 1997), p. 64

Communicating Clearly

The Los Angeles Times recently printed a sampling of signs from around the world that attempted to communicate in English.

In a hotel elevator in Paris: “Please leave your values at the front desk.”
In a hotel in Zurich: “Because of the impropriety of entertaining guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the lobby be used for this purpose.”
On the door of a Moscow inn: “If this is your first visit to Russia, you are welcome to it.”
In a Soviet newspaper: “There will be a Moscow exhibition of arts by 15,000 Soviet Republic painters and sculptors. These were executed over the past two years.”
In a Bucharest hotel lobby: “The lift is being fixed for the next day. During that time we regret that you will be unbearable.”

What we intend to say and what others hear us saying are not always the same thing. We need to pray that God will help us clearly communicate the gospel (Col. 4:4).

B. Paul Greene, Santa Barbara, California

Qualities the World Looks for in a Preacher

He must have a fine accent.
He must be learned.
He must be eloquent.
He must be a handsome person.
He must take no money, but have money to give.
He must tell people what they like to hear.
Qualities and virtues of a good preacher:
Able to teach in a right and orderly way.
A good head.
A good voice.
A good memory.
Know when to stop.
Be sure of his material and be diligent.
Stake body and life, goods and honor on it.
Suffer himself to be vexed and flayed by everyone.

Martin Luther, Quoted in Leadership, Winter Quarter, 1988, p. 135

Martin Luther

It is not necessary for a preacher to express all his thoughts in one sermon. A preacher should have three principles, first, to make a good beginning and not spend time with many words before coming to the point; secondly, to say that which belongs to the subject in chief, and avoid strange and foreign thoughts; thirdly, to stop at the proper time. - Martin Luther

Leadership, Spring, 1993, p. 105

Stirring the Conscience

The great 19th century British statesman and prime minister, William Gladstone, once said, “One thing I have against the clergy both of the country and in the towns. I think they are not severe enough on congregations. They do not sufficiently lay upon the souls and consciences of their hearers their moral obligations, and probe their hearts and bring up their whole lives and actions to the bar of conscience.

“The class of sermons which I think are most needed, are of the class which once offended Lord Melbourne. He was seen coming from church in the country in a great fume. Finding a friend, he exclaimed, ‘It is too bad I have always been a supporter of the church, and I have always upheld the clergy, but it is really too bad to have to listen to a sermon like that we have heard this morning. Why, the preacher actually insisted upon applying religion to a man’s personal life!”

Gladstone concluded,

“That is the kind of preaching I like best, the kind of preaching which men need most, but it is, also, the kind of which they get the least.”

Morning Glory, Sept./Oct., 1997, p. 34

Charles Haddon Spurgeon

“I have often been surprised at the mercy of God to myself. Poor sermons of mine, that I could cry over when I get home, have led scores to the cross; and, more wonderful still, words that I have spoken in ordinary conversation, mere chance sentences, as men call them, have nevertheless been as winged arrows from God, and have pierced men’s hearts, and laid them wounded at Jesus’ feet. I have often lifted up my hands in astonishment, and said, ‘How can God bless such a feeble instrumentality?”

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The Soul-Winner, quoted in Prokope, 1997

Getting in the Way of the Story

Ward Kimball was just out of art school in 1934 when he was hired by Walt Disney to work on his studio’s newest project, the full-length cartoon Snow White. Kimball labored 240 days and many nights to animate a four-and-a-half-minute sequence in which the dwarfs show their love for Snow White by making her some soup. After Kimball had completed his task, he was summoned to Disney’s office. “I don’t know how to tell you this,” said Disney, “because I love the sequence. But we’re going to have to cut it out of the picture. It’s getting in the way of the story.”

Today in the Word, July, 1995, p. 34

Faithful Stewardship

The faithfulness of a steward consists in his dispensing to the household exactly what has been committed to him; the faithfulness of a witness lies in his declaring with honesty and candour exactly what he knows, neither concealing part of the truth, nor distorting it, nor embellishing it. It is so easy to exaggerate, to give to others the impression that we have progressed further along the narrow way than we really have. We must have the honesty to confess the truth. We should not be afraid to say with the apostle, ‘not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect’ (Phil. 3:12, A.V.). The true witness is devoid of any suspicion of hypocrisy; he is transparently sincere.

All this lays upon us who are called to be witnesses to Christ the solemn obligation to take heed to ourselves, and not to neglect the culture of our own soul, lest we become dumb witnesses and have nothing to say. Truly the apostles were right to give themselves to prayer and to the ministry of the Word, for preaching without prayer is an empty mockery. There is no greater need for the preacher than that he should know God. I care not about his lack of eloquence and artistry, about his ill-constructed discourse or his poorly enunciated message, if only it is evident that God is a reality to him and that he has learned to abide in Christ.

The preparation of the heart is of far greater importance than the preparation of the sermon. The preacher’s words, however clear and forceful, will not ring true unless he speaks from conviction born of experience. Many sermons which conform to all the best homiletical rules, yet have a hollow sound. There is something indefinably perfunctory about the preacher of such sermons. The matter of his sermon gives evidence of a well-stocked, well-disciplined mind; he has a good voice, a fine bearing, and restrained gestures; but somehow his heart is not in his message; it can not be said as a young clerk in a dry-goods store once said about Peter Marshall, ‘He seems to know God, and he helps me to know Him better.’

Catherine Marshall, A Man Called Peter (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952), p. 43.

Alexander Whyte

Alexander Whyte apparently once said: ‘Though you had the whole Bodleian Library and did not know yourself, you would not preach a sermon worth hearing.’ This is true, but more important even than to know oneself is to know God.

Famous Unanswered Prayers, Warren Wiersbe

Intimate Knowledge of God

The preaching of a witness has a spontaneity about it, an infectious warmth, a simple directness, a depth of reality, which are all due to an intimate knowledge of God. So we must hunger and thirst after Him. We must claim the promise of Jesus that He will manifest Himself to those who love Him and who prove their love by their obedience (John 14:21). We shall remember that the real preparation of a sermon is not the few hours which are specifically devoted to it, but the whole stream of the preacher’s Christian experience thus far, of which the sermon is a distilled drop. As E. M. Bounds has put it, ‘The man, the whole man, lies behind the sermon. Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life. It takes twenty years to make a sermon, because it takes twenty years to make a man.’

E. M. Bounds, Power through Prayer (London: Marshall Brothers), p. 11.

Resources

John R. W. Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, Some New Testament Word Studies (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1961), pp. 75-77.
Integrity of Heart, Skillfulness of Hands, Charles H. Dyer & Roy B. Zuck, editors, (Baker Books; Grand Rapids, MI, 1994), pp. 332.
Preaching from the Old Testament, W. A. Criswell, in Tradition and Testament, p. 293.

Mental Patient

I was told of a patient in the chapel of a mental hospital who, after listening for a time to the Chaplain, was heard to remark, “There, but for the grace of God, go I”!

John R. W. Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, Some New Testament Word Studies (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1961), p. 92

Cold Professionalism

If we can preach Christ crucified and remain altogether unmoved, we must have a hard heart indeed. More to be feared than emotion is cold professionalism, the dry, detached utterance of a lecture which has neither heart nor soul in it. Do man’s peril and Christ’s salvation mean so little to us that we feel no warmth rise within us as we think about them”? Very different was Richard Baxter, who wrote in his Reformed Pastor (1656):

‘I marvel how I can preach…slightly and coldly, how I can let men alone in their sins and that I do not go to them and beseech them for the Lord’s sake to repent, however they take it and whatever pains or trouble it should cost me. I seldom come out of the pulpit but my conscience smiteth me that I have been no more serious and fervent. It accuseth me not so much for want of human ornaments or elegance, nor for letting fall an uncomely word; but it asketh me: “How could’st thou speak of life and death with such a heart? Should’st thou not weep over such a people, and should not thy tears interrupt thy words? Should’st not thou cry aloud and shew them their transgressions and entreat and beseech them as for life and death?”

Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor (London: Epworth Press, 2nd ed. rev. 1950), pp. 106, quoted in The Preacher’s Portrait by John R. W. Stott, (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1961), p. 58

Street Preaching

Realize the liberty we have in western society. Read Spurgeon’s advice on the subject of street preaching and witnessing in the seventeenth century:

“The preachers needed to have faces set like flints, and so indeed they had. John Furz says, ‘As soon as I began to preach, a man came forward and presented a gun at my face; swearing that he would blow my brains out if I spoke another word. However, I continued speaking and he continued swearing, sometimes putting the muzzle of the gun to my mouth, sometimes against my ear. While we were singing the last hymn, he got behind me, fired the gun, and burned off part of my hair.’

“After this, my brethren, we ought never to speak of petty interruptions or annoyances. The proximity of a blunderbuss in the hands of a son of Belial is not very conducive to collected thoughts and clear utterance.”

Hell’s Best Kept Secret, by Ray Comfort, (Bellflower, CA: Ray Comfort, 1989), pp. 77-78.

Albert Einstein

Albert Einstein was invited to speak at a banquet held in his honor at Swarthmore College. Hundreds of people from all over the country crowded an auditorium to hear what he had to say. When it came time for him to speak, the greatest physicist walked to the lectern, solemnly looked around, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I am very sorry, but I have nothing to say.” Then he sat down. The audience was in shock. A few seconds later, Einstein got up, walked back to the podium, and spoke again. “In case I have something to say, I will come back and say it.” Six months later he wired the president of the college with the message: “Now I have something to say.” Another dinner was held, and Einstein made his speech.

Point Man, Steve Farrar, pp. 11-12

Two Fingers

The new minister’s sermons were so dull that the congregation voted to give him his notice. “May I have one more chance?” he pleaded. “If you’re not satisfied with my sermon next Sunday, I’ll leave.”

To everyone’s surprise, the following Sunday’s sermon was interesting and inspiring. The congregation not only voted to retain the pastor but to increase his salary. A church leader said to him: “That was the finest sermon I ever heard. But there’s one thing I couldn’t figure out. Just as you were about to speak, you raised two fingers of your right hand. Was there a significance to that gesture?”

“Yes,” replied the minister. “Those were the quotation marks.”

Source unknown

How Do You Spell ‘God’?

After church one Sunday, I noticed my five-year-old son Dennis writing intently. “Dad,” he said, “how do you spell ‘God’?” Pleased that he must have been paying attention in church, I told him.

And then he asked, “How do you spell ‘Zilla’?”

Contributed by William Schueneman, Reader’s Digest, October, 1994, p. 118

Thomas Hooker

Thomas Hooker in The Soul’s Preparation (1632) wrote: “I have sometimes admired (wondered) at this: why a company of gentlemen, yeomen, poor women, that are scarcely able to know their ABC’s yet have a minister to speak Latine, Greeke, and Hebrew and use the Fathers, when it is certain they know nothing at all. The reason is, because all this stings not; they may sit and sleepe in their sinnes, and goe to hell hoodwinckt, never awakened.”

Thomas Hooker, The Soul’s Preparation (1632)

Longhorn Sermons

Some pastors preach “longhorn sermons,” a point here, a point there, and a lot of bull in between.

Source unknown

Lazy Preacher

One pastor never prepared during the week, and on Sunday morning he’d sit on the platform while the church was singing the hymns desperately praying, “Lord, give your message, Lord give me your message.” One Sunday, while desperately praying for God’s message, he heard the Lord say, “Ralph, here’s my message. You’re lazy!”

Source unknown

Apostle Paul

Paul saw himself as Christ’s herald. When he describes himself as an appointed preacher of the gospel (2 Tim. 1:11), the noun he uses means a herald, a person who makes public announcements on another’s behalf. When he declares “we preach Christ crucified,” the verb he uses denotes the herald’s appointed activity of blazoning abroad what he has been told to make known. When Paul speaks of “my preaching” and “our preaching” and lays it down that after the world’s wisdom had rendered the world ignorant of God “it pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe,” the noun he uses doesn’t mean the activity of announcing, but the thing announced, the proclamation itself, the message declared.

Paul, in his own estimation, was not a philosopher, not a moralist, not one of the world’s wise men, but simply Christ’s herald. His royal master had given him a message to proclaim; his whole business was to deliver that message with exact and studious faithfulness, adding nothing, altering nothing, and omitting nothing. And he was to deliver it not as another of people’s bright ideas, needing to be beautified with the cosmetics and high heels of fashionable learning in order to make people look at it, but as a word from God spoken in Christ’s name, carrying Christ’s authority and authenticated in the hearers by the convincing power of Christ’s Spirit (1 Cor. 2:1-5).

Your Father Loves You by James Packer, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986, page for May 21

To Whom Do You Call Attention?

“You cannot at the same time give the impression that you are a great preacher”—or theologian or debater or whatever—”and that Jesus Christ is a great Savior” (James Denney). If you call attention to yourself and your own competence, you cannot effectively call attention to Jesus and his glorious sufficiency.

Your Father Loves You by James Packer, Harold Shaw Publishers, 1986, page for March 26, 1993

Theodore Epp

Theodore Epp, founder of Back to the Bible radio ministry, realized something was wrong when he stopped receiving critical mail. Convicted that he was not challenging the flock enough, he changed his preaching. “I’m afraid that when I’m pleasing everybody, I’m not pleasing the Lord,” he later said, “and pleasing the Lord is what counts.”

This is not to suggest that a pastor is only successful when he is upsetting people! But he must be certain that he is first and foremost faithful to the One he serves. He is fulfilling a divine commission when he preaches. Just as an ambassador is entrusted not with his own message but with his superior’s message, so the minister is entrusted with the Word of God. Before it is delivered, therefore, every message should be laid at the foot of His throne with one questions: “Is it faithful to You, my Lord?” Or as one German pastor would always pray in the pulpit, “Cause my mind to fear whether my heart means what I say.”

The Body, Charles W. Colson, 1992, Word Publishing, p. 121

Wake Up Call

The Rev. Dr. Robert South, while preaching one day in 1689, looked up from his notes to observe that his entire congregation was fast asleep—including the King! Appropriately mortified by this discovery, he interrupted his sermon to call out, “Lord Lauderdale, rouse yourself. You snore so loudly that you will wake the King.”

Source unknown

Real Stories

Don Hewitt, creator of “60 Minutes,” on his special talent as a journalist: My philosophy is simple. It’s what little kids say to their parents: “Tell me a story.” Even the people who wrote the Bible knew that when you deal with issues, you tell stories. The issue was evil; the story was Noah.

I’ve had producers say, “We’ve got to do something on acid rain.” I say, “Hold it. Acid rain is not a story. Acid rain is a topic. We don’t do topics. Find me someone who has to deal with the problem of acid rain. Now you have a story.”

Terry Ann Knopf, Boston Globe Magazine, quoted in Reader’s Digest

Does it Feed the Soul?

The officer in charge of the royal pew in the chapel at Windsor, England, noted that King George frequently commented on the sermon as he left the church. If he had been blessed by it, he would say in a cheerful voice, “That will do very well. That will feed souls!” When the preacher’s delivery was cold and his words were lifeless and barren of Gospel teaching, he would shake his head sorrowfully as he left the pew and mutter under his breath, “That won’t do. That just won’t feed souls!” The king’s criterion for determining the value of a sermon is scripturally sound. Ministry of all kinds, whether oral or written, may well be judged by the same standard—does it feed souls?

Our Daily Bread, January 2

David Livingstone

W. G. Blaikie says in his Life of Livingstone that when David Livingstone was sent as a student to preach at Sanford Rivers, he stood up in the pulpit and completely forgot what he was going to say. Although this incident would have signaled the end of public speaking for many, Livingstone knew he must not give up. When God called him to be a missionary, he was ready to go. Later he wrote, “I am still a very poor preacher and have a bad delivery; and some say that if they knew I was to preach, they would not enter the chapel.”

Our Daily Bread, May 17

Chinese Jugglers

Some preachers are like the Chinese jugglers. One stood against a wall and the others threw knives at him. They’d hit above his head, close by his ear, under his armpit, and between his fingers. They could throw within a hair’s breadth and never strike.

N.T. Images of Preaching—J. R. W. Stott, Between Two Worlds, pp. 135-6

The Text

“That is my text.
I am now going to preach.
Maybe we’ll meet again, my text and I,
maybe not.”

Source unknown

Voltage Captive

In Ralph Emery’s autobiography, Memories, the country-music D.J. and host of TV’s “Nashville Now” relates one of his early experiences in radio:

An exuberant man of the cloth came into the studio one day with his wife, another woman and a guitar with an electrical short in its amplifier. I could tell it was defective by the loud hum in the speaker. I walked from the control room into the studio to exchange pleasantries, and then assumed my position on my side of the glass separating the rooms. I raised the sound as they played their opening theme song and then said, “Here again is Brother So-and-So.”

These fundamentalist preachers, many self-proclaimed and well-meaning, were, however, loud and demonstrative. To escape the screaming, I would simply turn off the monitor in my control room. I couldn’t hear any of his yelling, although I could see through the glass his jumping and straining. Every so often, I would raise my eyes from a newspaper and watch the Gospel pantomime.

Suddenly I heard him yelling through his sheer lung power, “Oh-oh-oh-oh!”—his face contorting.

My God, he’s having a seizure, I thought, and jumped to my feet. Then I noticed his thumb. The instant he had touched the steel string of his guitar and simultaneously reached for the steel microphone in front of him, he grounded himself because of the short in his amplifier. He was jumping and shaking at 110 volts shot through is torso. His moist palm was rigidly clamped to the microphone. The guy couldn’t let go. He was a captive of voltage. Suddenly his wife raised her arm, and in karate fashion, hit his arm with all her force. The blow broke his grip from the charged microphone, but his painful yells had gone over the air.

As calmly as I could, I said, “One moment please.”

With Tom Carter, Memories (Macmillan), Reader’s Digest, June, 1992, p. 66

Quotes

For nothing reaches the heart but what is from the heart, or pierces the conscience but what comes from a living conscience. - William Penn
The world does not need sermons; it needs a message. You can go to seminary and learn how to preach sermons, but you will have to go to God to get messages. - Oswald J. Smith
A lot of preaching is motivated by love for preaching, not love of people. - Vance Havner
For your people’s sakes,…look to your heart. - Richard Baxter
A prepared messenger is more important than a prepared message. - Robert Munger
Don’t unsay with your life what you say with your tongue. - Richard Baxter
Study universal holiness of life. Your whole usefulness depends on this. - E. M. Bounds
Never rely on the cleverness of the exposition, but on the Holy Spirit. - E. M. Bounds
All God’s giants have been weak men and women who did great things for God because they reckoned on God’s power and presence being with them. - Hudson Taylor

Sources unknown

Mark Twain

Samuel Clement (Mark Twain) attended a Sunday a.m. sermon. He met the pastor at the door afterward and told him that he had a book at home with every word he had preached that morning. The minister assured him that the sermon was an original. Clement still held his position. The pastor wanted to see this book, so Clement said he would send it over in the morning. When the preacher unwrapped it he found a dictionary and in the flyleaf was written this: “Words, just words, just words.”

Source unknown

Alexander White

The great preacher Alexander White, when he was too old to mount the pulpit, would rise every morning to prepare a sermon, even though he never preached them. He did so until the day he died. He was convinced that study of the Word was essential to saving himself (1 Tim. 4:16).

Source unknown

Long-Winded Speakers

Long-winded speakers exhaust their listeners long before the exhaust their subjects. Recognizing this danger, one speaker began his talk this way: “I understand that it’s my job to talk to you. Your job is to listen. If you quit before I do, I hope you’ll let me know.”

Bits & Pieces, May 28, 1992, p. 13

Awaken Your Own Heart

O sirs, how plainly, how closely, how earnestly, should we deliver a message of such moment as ours, when the everlasting life or everlasting death of our fellow-men is involved in it!…There [is] nothing more unsuitable to such a business, than to be slight and dull. What! speak coldly for God, and for men’s salvation? Can we believe that our people must be converted or condemned, and yet speak in a drowsy tone? In the name of God, brethren, labor to awaken your own hearts, before you go to the pulpit, that you may be fit to awaken the hearts of sinners…Oh, speak not one cold or careless word about so great a business as heaven or hell. Whatever you do, let the people see that you are in good earnest…A sermon full of mere words, how neatly soever it be composed, while it want the light of evidence, and the life of zeal, is but an image or a well-dress carcass.

Richard Baxter in The Reformed Pastor (1656); abridged edition (1829), in Christianity Today, February 10, 1992, p. 38

John Wesley

John Wesley used to ask his young men whom he had sent out to preach on probation two questions: “Has anyone been converted?” and “Did anyone get mad?”

If the answer was “No,” he told them he did not think the Lord had called them to preach the Gospel, and sent them about their business. When the Holy Ghost convicts of sin, people are either converted or they don’t like it, and get mad.

Moody’s Anecdotes, p. 123

Slave Preacher

During the time of slavery, a slave was preaching with great power. His master heard of it, and sent for him, and said: “I understand you are preaching?”

“Yes,” said the slave.

“Well, now,” said the master, “I will give you all the time you need, and I want you to prepare a sermon on the Ten Commandments, and to bear down especially on stealing, because there is a great deal of stealing on the plantation.”

The slave’s countenance fell at once. He said he wouldn’t like to do that; there wasn’t the warmth in that subject there was in others.

I have noticed that people are satisfied when you preach about the sins of the patriarchs, but they don’t like it when you touch upon the sins of today.

Moody’s Anecdotes, p. 91

Charles Haddon Spurgeon 1

Charles Haddon Spurgeon, known as “the prince of preachers,” felt he delivered his sermon so poorly one Sunday that he was ashamed of himself. As he walked away from his church, the Metropolitan Tabernacle in London, he wondered how any good could come from that message. When he arrived home, he dropped to his knees and prayed, “Lord God, You can do something with nothing. Bless that poor sermon.”

In the months that followed, 41 people said that they had decided to trust Christ as Saviour because of that “weak” message. The following Sunday, to make up for his previous “failure,” Spurgeon had prepared a “great” sermon—but no one responded.

Spurgeon’s experience underscores two important lessons for all who serve the Lord. First, we need the blessing of God on our efforts. Solomon said in Psalm 127:1, “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it.” And second, our weakness is an occasion for the working of God’s power. The apostle Paul said, “I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in needs, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:10).

Our Daily Bread, May 18, 1992

Charles Haddon Spurgeon 2

When Charles Spurgeon sent his ministerial students out to pastor churches, he gave this charge: “Cling tightly with both your hands: When they fail, catch hold with your teeth; and if they give way, hang on by your eyelashes!”

Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, W. Wiersbe, p. 220

Sodom and Gomorrah

The story has been told about several famous preachers, but it actually happened to Joseph Parker, minister of the City Temple in London. An old lady waited on Parker in his vestry after a service to thank him for the help she received from his sermons.

“You do throw such wonderful light on the Bible, doctor,” she said. “Do you know that until this morning, I had always thought that Sodom and Gomorrah were man and wife

Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, Moody, 1984, p. 213

G. Campbell Morgan 1

A Presbyterian deacon once asked one of Campbell Morgan’s grandsons if he intended to become a preacher like his grandfather, his father, and his uncles. (All of Morgan’s four sons went into the ministry.) “No, sir!” said the lad. “I’m going to work!”

Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, Moody, 1984, p. 213

G. Campbell Morgan 2

Early in his ministry, when he was pastor of the Congregational Church at Rugeley, Campbell Morgan studied hard and preached often. He was discovering and developing the gift of Bible exposition that later made him the prince of expositors. His preaching made him popular. One evening, as he sat in his study, he felt God saying to him, “What are you going to be, a preacher or My messenger?”

As Morgan pondered the question, he realized that his desire to become a “great preacher” was hindering his work. For several hours Morgan sat there struggling with God’s call and human ambition. Finally he said, “Thy messenger, my Master—Thine!” He took the precious outlines of his sermons, messages that he was proud of, and laid them in the fireplace where they burned to ashes. That was when the victory was won.

As the outlines were burning, Morgan prayed: “If Thou wilt give me Thy words to speak, I will utter them from this day forward, adding nothing to them, taking naught away. Thine whole counsel I will declare, so help me God!”

Wycliffe Handbook of Preaching & Preachers, Moody, 1984, p. 212

In Good Earnest

Whatever you do, let the people see that you are in good earnest…You cannot break men’s hearts by jesting with them, or telling them a smooth tale, or patching up a gaudy oration. Men will not cast away their dearest pleasures upon a drowsy request of one that seemeth not to mean as he speaks, or to care much whether his request be granted.

Richard Baxter, The Reformed Pastor

Hugh Lattimer once preached before King Henry VIII. Henry was greatly displeased by the boldness in the sermon and ordered Lattimer to preach again on the following Sunday and apologize for the offence he had given. The next Sunday, after reading his text, he thus began his sermon:

“Hugh Lattimer, dost thou know before whom thou are this day to speak? To the high and mighty monarch, the king’s most excellent majesty, who can take away thy life, if thou offendest. Therefore, take heed that thou speakest not a word that may displease. But then consider well, Hugh, dost thou not know from whence thou comest—upon Whose message thou are sent? Even by the great and mighty God, Who is all-present and Who beholdeth all thy ways and Who is able to cast thy soul into hell! Therefore, take care that thou deliverest thy message faithfully.”

He then preached the same sermon he had preached the preceding Sunday—and with considerably more energy.

Evangelism, A Biblical Approach, M. Cocoris, Moody, 1984, p. 126

Getting Our Guns in Position

An English preacher of the last generation used to say that he cared very little what he said the first half hour, but he cared a very great deal what he said the last fifteen minutes. I remember reading many years ago an address published to students by Henry Ward Beecher, in which he gave a very striking account of a sermon by Jonathan Edwards. Beecher says that in the elaborated doctrinal part of Jonathan Edwards’ sermon the great preacher was only getting his guns into position, but that in his applications he opened fire on the enemy. There are too many of us, I am afraid, who take so much time getting our guns into position that we have to finish without firing a shot. We say that we leave the truth to do its own work. We trust to the hearts and consciences of our hearers to apply it. Depend upon it, gentlemen, this is a great and fatal mistake.

Dr. Dale, quoted in Preaching, G. Campbell Morgan, p. 89

The Actor and the Preacher

There is a tale told of that great English actor Macready. An eminent preacher once said to him: “I wish you would explain to me something.” “Well, what is it? I don’t know that I can explain anything to a preacher.” “What is the reason for the difference between you and me? You are appearing before crowds night after night with fiction, and the crowds come wherever you go. I am preaching the essential and unchangeable truth, and I am not getting any crowd at all.”

Macready’s answer was this: “This is quite simple. I can tell you the difference between us. I present my fiction as though it were truth; you present your truth as though it were fiction.”

G. Campbell Morgan, Preaching, p. 36

The Complainer

Dr. Clarence Bass, professor emeritus at Bethel Theological Seminary, early in his ministry preached in a church in Los Angeles. He thought he had done quite well as he stood at the door greeting people as they left the sanctuary. The remarks about his preaching were complimentary. That is, until a little old man commented, “You preached too long.” Dr. Bass wasn’t fazed by the remark, especially in light of the many positive comments. “You didn’t preach loud enough,” came another negative comment; it was from the same little old man. Dr. Bass thought it strange that the man had come through the line twice, but when the same man came through the line a third time and exclaimed, “You used too many big words” —this called for some explanation. Dr. Bass sought out a deacon who stood nearby and asked him, “Do you see that little old man over there? Who is he?” “Don’t pay any attention to him,” the deacon replied. “All he does is go around and repeat everything he hears.”

Pulpit and Bible Study Helps, Vol. 16, #5, p. 1

Soul Food

In a recent issue of Glass Window, a contributor recalls that several years ago, The British Weekly published this provocative letter: It seems ministers feel their sermons are very important and spend a great deal of time preparing them. I have been attending church quite regularly for 30 years and I have probably heard 3,000 of them. To my consternation, I discovered I cannot remember a single sermon. I wonder if a minister’s time might be more profitable spent on something else?

For weeks a storm of editorial responses ensued… finally ended by this letter: I have been married for 30 years. During that time I have eaten 32,850 meals—mostly my wife’s cooking. Suddenly I have discovered I cannot remember the menu of a single meal. And yet …I have the distinct impression that without them, I would have starved to death long ago.

Glass Window, John Schletewitz

Make Sense!

It was King James I, I believe, who became annoyed with the irrelevant ramblings of his court preacher and shouted up to the pulpit: “Either make sense or come down out of that pulpit!”

The preacher replied, “I will do neither.”

Steve Brown, in Tabletalk, August, 1990

John Wesley

Mr. Wesley, at the age of 87, in a letter to Alexander Mather, uttered these thrilling words: “Give me one hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen: such alone will shake the gates of hell, and set up the Kingdom of Heaven upon earth.”

Resource, July/August, 1990

Longest Sermon

The longest sermon on record was preached by Clinton Lacy of West Richland, Washington in February of 1955. It took 48 hours and 18 minutes to deliver it.

Small wonder someone proposed the adoption of a new Beatitude: “Blessed is the preacher whose train of thought has a caboose.”

- E. Eugene Williams

Source unknown

Long Topic—Short Sermon

When Roy DeLamotte was chaplain at Paine College in Georgia, he preached the shortest sermon in the college’s history. However, he had a rather long topic—”What does Christ Answer When We Ask, “Lord, What’s in Religion for Me?” The complete content of his sermon was in one word: “Nothing.”

He later explained that the one-word sermon was meant for people brought up on the ‘gimme-gimme’ gospel. When asked how long it took him to prepare the message, he said, “Twenty years.”

Resources, 1990

Jonathan Edwards

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was a brilliant theologian whose sermons had an overwhelming impact on those who heard him. One in particular, his famous “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” moved hundreds to repentance and salvation. That single message helped to spark the revival known as “The Great Awakening” (1734-1744). From a human standpoint, it seems incredible that such far-reaching results could come from one message. Edwards did not have a commanding voice or impressive pulpit manner. He used very few gestures, and he read from a manuscript. Yet God’s Spirit moved upon his hearers with conviction and power.

Few know the spiritual preparation involved in that sermon. John Chapman gives us the story: “For 3 days Edwards had not eaten a mouthful of food; for 3 nights he had not closed his eyes in sleep. Over and over again he was heard to pray, “O Lord, give me New England! Give me New England!’ When he arose from his knees and made his way into the pulpit that Sunday, he looked as if he had been gazing straight into the face of God. Even before he began to speak, tremendous conviction fell upon his audience.”

Source unknown

Long, Dry Sermon

After a long, dry sermon, the minister announced that he wished to meet with the church board following the close of the service. The first man to arrive was a stranger. “You misunderstood my announcement. This is a meeting of the board,” said the minister. “I know,” said the man, “but if there is anyone here more bored than I am, I’d like to meet him.”

Source unknown

Counting

My young son asked what was the highest number I had ever counted to. I didn’t know but asked about his highest number. It was “5,372.”

“Oh,” I said. “Why did you stop there?”

“Church was over.”

Joanne Weil, in August 1986 Reader’s Digest

Reminders

It was important for Peter to bring known truths to remembrance. Believers are apt to forget them, and then they do not exert the influence that they ought. Amid the cares, the business, the amusements, and the temptations of the world, the ministers of the gospel render us an essential service, even if they do nothing more than remind us of truths which are well understood, and which we have known before. A pastor need not always aim at originality; he renders an essential service to mankind when he reminds them of what they know but are prone to forget. He endeavors to impress plain and familiar truths on the heart and conscience, for these truths are most important for mankind. Though we may be very firm in our belief of the truth, yet it is appropriate that the grounds of our faith should be stated to us frequently, that they may be always in our remembrance.

Albert Barnes, Source unknown

Snoring

A man went to see his doctor for advice about being cured of snoring. The doctor asked, “Does your snoring disturb your wife?”

The patient replied, “Does it disturb my wife? Why it disturbs the entire congregation.”

Source unknown

How Spurgeon found Christ

I thought the sun was blotted out of my sky—that I had so sinned against God that there was no hope for me. I prayed—the Lord knoweth how I prayed—but I never had a glimpse of an answer that I knew of. I searched the Word of God; the promises were more alarming that the threatenings. I read the privileges of the people of God, but with the fullest persuasion that they were not for me. The secret of my distress was this: I did not know the gospel. I was in a Christian land; I had Christian parents; but I did not understand the freeness and simplicity of the Gospel.

I knew it was said, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved,” but I did not know what it was to believe in Christ.

I sometimes think I might have been in darkness and despair now had it not been for the goodness of God in sending a snowstorm one Sunday morning, when I was going to a place of worship. When I could go no further I found a little chapel with fifteen people. The minister did not come that morning because of the snow. A poor man, a shoemaker went into the pulpit to preach. His text was, “Look unto me, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth.” There was, I thought a glimpse of hope for me in his text. He began thus: “My dear friends, this is a very simple text indeed. It says, ‘Look.’ Now that does not take a deal of effort. It isn’t lifting your foot or your finger; it is just ‘look.’ Well, a man need not go to college to learn to look. Anyone can look; a child can look. But this is what the text says. Then it says, ‘Look unto me.’ Many of you are looking to yourselves. No use looking there. You’ll never find comfort in yourself.

Then the good man followed up his text in this way: “Look unto Me; I am sweating great drops of blood. Look unto Me; I am hanging on the Cross. Look! I am dead and buried. Look unto Me; I rise again. Look unto Me; I ascend; I am sitting at the Father’s right hand. Oh, look to me! Look to Me!”

Then He turned his attention to me. He said, “Young man, you look very miserable. And you will always be miserable—in life and in death if you do not obey my text. But if you obey, now, this moment, you will be saved.”

Then he shouted, “Young man, look to Jesus Christ; look NOW!” He made me start in my seat; but I did look to Jesus Christ. There and then the cloud rolled away, and that moment I saw the sun. I could have risen that moment and sung with the most enthusiastic of them of the precious blood of Christ, and the simple faith which looks alone to Him. Oh, that somebody had told me that before—trust Christ, and you shall be saved!

Source unknown

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