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By Austin B. Tucker

As the story goes, on a Sunday night a young pastor was driving home, his wife beside him. It had been a busy weekend at the church. The Sunday night sermon had lasted longer than usual since the preacher felt unusual liberty and unction in the pulpit. They drove in silence for some miles, he with his thoughts and she with hers. Finally, he broke the silence saying, “You know, Sweetheart, there are not many truly great preachers in the world today.”

“True,” answered the very weary wife, “and probably one fewer than you think!”

What makes a great preacher? As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so opinions may differ on what makes a great preacher. To be a famous preacher is not the same as to be a great preacher. We may assume, then, that not everyone who preaches a better sermon than his neighbor finds the world beating a path to his door. We may find in heaven that our idea of greatness misses the measure that really matters. But there seem to be some things that mark a few preachers as head and shoulders above the rest. Some indeed are clearly pulpit giants. What makes the difference?

The question has occupied my attention more than a little bit for more than a few years. I studied the History of Preaching with Dr. H. C. Brown, Jr in 1966 and ‘67. Then it was my privilege to teach a course on Great Preachers as guest professor at Southeastern Seminary in Wake Forest in the spring of 1993. I taught the same course at New Orleans in the fall of the same year. So I have given it some thought. Here is my list of ten character qualities that great preachers tend to have in common. It may be argued that no preacher has all ten of these features. True enough, but these are matters you will most often find in preachers that deserve a place on anyone’s list of great preachers. Read the list and the series and see if you agree. And pray that the exercise will make all of our preachers better servants of the Word.

1. Great preachers are persons of great personal integrity before they are great pulpiteers. Phillips Brooks (1835-1893), an early contributor to the Yale Lectures on Preaching, defined preaching as “truth through personality.” But what did Brooks mean by “personality”? Is this what turns an actor into a star? Is this what helps a politician win elections? Is personality what makes a preacher popular? We may think of personality in those terms, but Brooks had in mind something else. By “personality” he meant the combination of qualities that make a preacher what he really is -– not just what he appears to be. He was talking about the true person, not just the persona.

Brooks had in mind especially issues of personal character. Some people have argued that the character of a minister is incidental to his work including his pulpit work. Phillips Brooks challenged that view. The personal character of the preacher matters. Indeed, it is a priority.

The preacher’s task involves persuasion of the mind, emotions and will. We are more willing to believe good men. The preacher must be a person of integrity. Truly great preachers, as distinct from famous (or notorious!) preachers are servants of God, with Holy Spirit anointing.

Phillips Brooks would not be a model of expository preaching. He did more topical preaching as do most preachers today. He used a text more as a launching pad for his theme than as the real fabric of the sermon. Still, he was a preacher of great character. Historian Ralph Turnbull in completing Dargan’s third volume in the history of preaching declared Brooks as “the living example of his own ideals and counsel regarding preaching. Character is the principal
thing in making a preacher.” Brooks had compassion for the poor of the city as well as the affluent who delighted to hear him preach. Children loved him because they sensed that he loved them. The hymn “O Little Town of Bethlehem” he wrote for the children of his church while on a trip to the Holy Land.

Brooks took a courageous stand on social and ethical issues of the Civil War era and afterward. In a era when Unitarianism and Darwinism were so strong, especially in New England, he held to all Thirty-Nine Articles of his episcopal church. Theologically, some regarded him as rather liberal, since he emphasized the incarnation of Christ more than the atonement. Others thought he was too conservative, since he held to the doctrine of the Trinity. Brooks had a Unitarian father but was shaped more perhaps by his very evangelical mother of New England Puritan heritage. A fitting monument was erected in his memory in front of Trinity Church in Boston, the scene of his last and greatest pastoral ministry. It is a statue of Brooks standing in his pulpit with his open Bible. Standing behind the preacher (who himself stood six feet, four inches and about three hundred pounds) is a larger-than-life Christ with his hand on the preacher’s shoulder.

Jesus came preaching in the power of the Holy Spirit as did John before him and the apostles and others after him. Stephen, Peter, Paul, and Philip preached in the power of that Spirit. The pulpit power of a preacher has much to do with his character. Great preachers in history have learned this lesson.

2. Great preachers tend to feel deeply, and they are not likely to be bashful about expressing those feelings. They are passionate souls. Their love is focused in two directions -- toward their fellow man and Godward. Especially do they have a devout love of Christ.

Take Bernard of Clairvaux for example. He was a monk, a theologian, and a mystic who lived 1091-1153 A.D. By preaching, he enlisted thousands to go on the second (and ill-fated)crusade to free the Holy Land. This assignment took him throughout his native France and through Italy and Germany. He had to preach through an interpreter in Germany, yet people were moved to tears even before the translation. Someone has said, “Painted fire never burns.” With Bernard it was real passion.

He was also a hymn writer who gave the church hymns of deep pathos still in our hymnals nearly a thousand years later. Churches which have not abandoned the hymnal in favor of frothy choruses still sing:

“Jesus the very thought of Thee
With sweetness fills my breast,
But sweeter far Thy face to see
And in thy presence rest.

No voice can sing, no heart can frame,
Nor can the memory find
A sweeter sound than Thy blest name,
O Savior of mankind.”

Baptists and other evangelicals could learn a thing or two from this eloquent Roman Catholic about devotion to Christ and about passionate preaching. We would not want to follow him in his minute allegorical treatment of texts, of course, but Bernard was an excellent preacher.

Richard Baxter (1615-1691 A.D.) often described his own pulpit ministry as that of one who “preached as never sure to preach again and as a dying man to dying men.” He was in poor health nearly all his life, but he considered his physical frailty an advantage. It more easily brought his soul to seriousness. He urged his fellow pastors to give priority to evangelistic preaching and personal soul winning. “The first and greatest work of ministers of Christ” wrote
Baxter, “is acquainting men with the God who made them. . . . Focus on the great work of evangelism whatever else you do or leave undone.”

Baxter earned the right to be heard on Sunday by ceaseless daily labors in the care of his flock. He insisted that a pastor link pulpit work to a personal pastoral ministry. At Kidderminster he spent two days each week, seven hours each day, instructing families in his flock. He devoted one hour per family to their spiritual needs. Part of the hour he gave to one-on-one interviews with each member of the family. Then he taught them the doctrines of the church.

They knew he loved them. He wrote in The Reformed Pastor:

“He that will blow coals must not wonder if some sparks do fly in his face; and that to persecute men and then call them to charity is like whipping children to make them give over crying . . . .I saw that he that will be loved, must love; and he that rather chooseth to be more feared than loved, must expect to be hated, or loved diminutively. And that he that will have children must be a father; and he that will be a tyrant must be contented with slaves.”

Great preachers love God and they love people. They weep for lost souls. They are sensitive to hurting hearts around them, and as Christ’s undershepherds they love the sheep of His pasture.

3. Great Preachers Have a Passion to Preach. They tend to have in common the desire to set others ablaze with the fire that burns in their own souls. Thirty years ago, Donald Demaray published his study, Pulpit Giants: What Made Them Great? He named Paul Rees as “one who preaches on the fire of the Spirit (and) is himself a man on fire.” Then he drew an important conclusion: “This seems to be the one underlying characteristic of all great preachers: they burn
with a holy passion to communicate.”

Some pastors are content to be administrators and organizers. Other ministers would gladly spend all their time in visiting or counseling or other one-on-one ministry. They might wish preaching were never part of their duty. They know nothing of Paul’s burden: “. . .I am compelled to preach. Woe to me if I preach not the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16 NIV) Great preachers must preach or die.

George Whitefield was mightily used of the Lord in bringing the Great Awakening to England and colonial America. He preached year after year over five hundred times a year. In addition, he started a great orphanage ministry in Georgia and promoted it everywhere he went. But he was a preacher first of all. He preached some eighteen thousand sermons of record. These were one-hour and two-hour sermons mostly to vast crowds gathered in the open air. If we count the unscheduled “exhortations” which crowds begged of him, that number would probably double.

Sarah Edwards, wife of Jonathan Edwards, in a letter to her brother, described Whitefield’s preaching: “He speaks from a heart all aglow with love, and pours out a torrent of eloquence which is almost irresistible.”

Whitefield’s consuming passion was for souls. Some sermons dealt with pastoral and ethical concerns, but every sermon was evangelistic. He seldom preached without tears. Critics despised the display of emotion; the multitudes knew it was from a deep heart longing for their salvation. Great preachers, like Jeremiah, have fire in their bones, and they are driven by the desire to set others ablaze with that fire.

In 1770, in Whitefield’s last tour of New England, he preached at Boston, at Portsmouth, and at Exeter. When he reached Newbury Port, he was too tired to get out of the boat. With help, he made it to the parsonage of Old South Church. As evening came he regained a measure of strength and took supper with his host family. A crowd began to gather at the door. Some of them pushed on into the house in hope of hearing his voice again.

"I am too tired,” Whitefield said “and must go to bed.” He took a lighted candle and started climbing the stairs. But the sight of the patient people gathered in the street and crowding into the house was too much to refuse. He paused on the staircase to say a few words. Soon he was “exhorting” them to trust the savior. He grew stronger, then weaker, then stronger again. He preached until the candle burned down to the socket and flickered out. Then one of the greatest of all preachers and evangelists went up to bed and died.

4. Great Preachers are anchored to the Bible. John Wycliff, “the Morning Star of the Reformation,” burned with a passion to get the Bible into the hands of every man in his native tongue. Translating the Latin Vulgate into fourteenth century English, he became the first to give the whole Bible to his generation in their native tongue. A granite pillar in his honor fittingly stands in Lutterworth, England where he did most of his preaching. On it is the text, “Search the Scriptures.” Great preachers are usually readers of many books, but they are anchored to the Bible supremely.

John Bunyan (1628-1688) spent twelve years in Bedford jail. He was guilty only of preaching God’s Word without the license of the established church. He was not idle in jail. He had a wife and four children to support; one child was blind. He made long lace tags for them to sell. He served as counselor to a great many people who sought his wisdom. He wrote undying literature, most notably Pilgrim’s Progress. Most of all he searched the Scriptures and preached through the bars to crowds who gathered outside his cell window.

He was a great preacher and a great writer, but he was not a writer of great sermons. His sermons that have come down to us tend to be ponderous and lacking in the clarity and drama of his narratives. Yet the crowds gathered to hear him explain and apply the Word of God.

An occasional Billy Sunday or D. L. Moody became great evangelists without much theological education. They were exceptions to the rule. Sunday and Moody both knew their great limitations and sought to help others have the advantage of education not afforded them. G.Campbell Morgan, Alexander Maclaren, and John A. Broadus were great nineteenth century expositors. Skill in Bible exposition made them great. Therefore they, though dead, still speak. Broadus, unfortunately, did not leave us many sermons, but his treatise On the Preparation and Delivery of Sermons may still be the all-time greatest textbook on Preaching.

Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878-1969) was a Baptist without the high view of Scripture that most Southern Baptists hold. We would call Fosdick a liberal. He preferred the label “Modernist.” But here is a strange thing: he was usually faithful to his text in a way that many who loudly defend the Bible miserably fail to be. Preaching about the Bible is not the same as preaching God’s Word. Great preaching is not scrounging for a text to buttress the preacher’s preconceived beliefs. Great preachers let the text shape the sermon, as homilitician Wayne McDill likes to say.

Clarence Macartney (1879-1957) could preach a masterful sermon on three words in a single verse. Hundreds of times he preached his sermon on Paul’s plea, “Come Before Winter”(2 Tim. 4:21). Before the sermon is over, those three words are a sparkling diamond in a skillfully crafted setting of the whole chapter. Masterful application to the hearer’s personal life enliven the text as well. In his autobiography, The Making of a Minister, Macartney could say factually, “My preaching has been based entirely on the Bible.”

5. Great Preachers are Relevant. A minister retired after spending more than forty years in one pastorate. A reporter interviewed him for a feature article and asked the secret of his long tenure. He answered: “In forty years I have never preached on a controversial subject.” Personally, I should not like to be in that brother’s sandals at the Judgement Seat of Christ! Great preachers speak to the burning issues of their time.

Clyde Fant and Bill Pinson, came to one over-arching conclusion at the end of their monumental study of ninety preachers that issued in the ten-volume set Twenty Centuries of Great Preaching: “Great Preaching is relevant preaching. . . .The preachers who made the greatest impact upon the world were men who spoke to the issues of their day” (Vol. I, p. v.).

Martin Luther was scandalized by the teaching of his church that a sinner might purchase for himself or for a departed loved one the indulgence of the Almighty with money. On October 31, 1517 he tacked to the chapel door at Wittenberg Castle his Ninety-Five Theses Against Indulgences. It was in Latin, of course, as was the custom of clerics proposing topics for scholarly debate. Someone translated it, however, and it was soon spread all over Europe. Luther found himself the center of a reform movement. He did not set out to lead a breakaway party from Rome. He wanted to correct the abuses he found in it. A preacher who has something to say about the burning issues of his day will likely find himself leading the way to change.

One time the reform movement at Wittenberg was in danger of being taken over by extremists. They were demanding more radical and rapid change. Against the advise of his protectors, Luther left the security of Wartburg Castle where he was occupied with the vital task
of translating the Scriptures into the language of his people. He returned to Wittenberg, and in a series of eight sermons in one week, he curbed the influence of the radicals and settled the anxiety of his friends. The Reformation was back on track.

Reinhold Neibuhr said the function of a sermon is “to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable.” Read the New Testament record: Stephen’s preaching disturbed people. So did Paul’s sometimes. So did John’s, and so did the preaching of Jesus! They did not come to deliver a few pious platitudes to give people a nice warm feeling down in their souls. All great preachers come with a “Thus saith the Lord” for the need of the hour.

Some preachers today studiously avoid disturbing the status quo. They never preach sermons that deal with ethical issues like race relations, gambling, world hunger, alcohol and tobacco addiction. They justify their silence by saying “People don’t want to come to church and hear about pornography and promiscuity and every problem of society.” They may be right, but they risk being irrelevant. Great preachers in the history of the church from New Testament times to last Sunday are prophets who shirk not to thunder the Word of the Lord on the issues that matter today.

6. Great Preachers are Overcomers. An interesting thing that appears commonly in the lives of great preachers is that many of them tasted failure or rejection early in life and suffered great hardships but rose above it all. They are overcomers.

Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847) was twenty-three years old when he became pastor of rural Kilmany church in Scotland in 1793. Scotland already had a rich heritage of great preachers, but in these early years Chalmers was neither a good preacher nor a good pastor. He was powerless in the pulpit, among the flock, and in the community. His first pastorate was a disaster. He began in Kilmany with no care for his flock and little interest in Christianity. This went on for seven years while he nearly emptied the church. Then the dry and dusty domine discovered the cause of his spiritual poverty. A series of personal crises led him to realize that he was lost! He came to the
Savior and immediately began to preach with a new spiritual power. His consuming hobby of mathematics and other distractions fell away as he fixed his heart on the excellencies of the Father in heaven. His conversion dramatically transformed his life and ministry. He fell in love with the Bible, his pastoral duties, and the preacher’s task. The next four years, the people flocked to hear him preach.

His most famous sermon speaks of “The Expulsive Power of a New Affection.” It could be a personal testimony of how his new love for Jesus made his former fascinations fade away.The seed thought for that sermon came as he was riding a stage coach. He noticed the driver begin to crack the whip for no apparent reason. When the preacher asked him about it, the driver told of one horse in the brace who was once terrified by something at that particular bend in the road. Ever after, the steed would shy and bolt in drawing near to that place. So the driver gave him something else to occupy his mind until the critical place was past. It set the preacher to thinking
of how God graciously redirects our minds from the things that would drag us down and turns us to higher and nobler pursuits. Chalmers preached in a city famous for great preachers and in the century that many consider the greatest era in the history of preaching. He has been called the greatest preacher Glascow ever heard.

Peter Marshall (1902-1949) struggled desperately in Scotland growing up without a father. Then he came to America for seminary training. After he married Catherine, tuberculosis broke her health. Caring for her and their small son as well as his pastorate was almost more than he could bear. In time God healed Catherine, but Peter developed the heart disease that shortened his life. He was not yet forty-seven when he died, but this dynamic pastor and greatly respected chaplain of the U. S. Senate had said, “The measure of life, after all, is not its duration, but its donation.”

7. Great preachers are given to thinking and meditation. Not all great preachers in the history of the church thought alike, but all truly great preacher alike are thinkers. They tend to have minds
given to reflection, to innovation and to originality. Some, like Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin were theoretical and abstract thinkers. Others, like Thomas Chalmers and F. W. Robertson were
creative thinkers. Their sermons were marked by fresh insights and lucid language.

Take Fredrick W. Robertson(1816-1853)as a case study. Many preachers suppose every sermon has to have three points regardless of the natural divisions of the text. Robertson liked texts that suggest two points. They might be contrasting ideas or comparisons; the second idea might complete the first. For example, a sermon is based on John 16:31-32. “Behold the hour cometh, yea is now come that ye shall be scattered. . .and shall leave me alone, and yet I am not
alone, because the Father is with me.” Robertson’s title is “The Loneliness of Christ.” The twin themes in the text as he preached it are first, the loneliness of Christ, (“ye. . .shall leave me
alone”), and second, the spirit or temper of that solitude, (“and yet I am not alone, etc.”). It is, of course, a sermon also about our struggle with loneliness and isolation.

Robertson grew up on a military post and wanted a military career. His father, however, urged him to consider the gospel ministry. Shortly after he entered Oxford at age twenty-nine, an
offer of an officer’s commission came to him. He had made his choice, though, and did not look back. At thirty-two he was ordained and began a rigorous agenda that might break anyone’s health. Up at dawn, skip breakfast, spend all morning in Bible study. All afternoon rush from hovel to hovel in the slums of London. Spend the evenings in discussions with your supervisor. No leisure, no social life, no rest until his health broke and his doctor sent him to Switzerland to
recover.

When he came back a year later, he began his pastorate at Trinity Chapel, Brighton. Though he was thoroughly evangelical in theology and evangelistic in ministry, many of his fellow pastors were suspicious of his concern for social reform. After all, the “social gospel” was making inroads into many churches. While Robertson was ministering in the slums of London, Karl Marx was in that city’s library writing his Communist Manifesto. Robertson preached the true gospel of Christ, however.

Robertson died at thirty-seven years of age counting himself a failure. In fact, acclaim as a great preacher came but only after he died. Though his life was cut short, he had memorized the whole New Testament in English and much of it in Greek. He always preached
extemporaneous sermons after thorough study and reflection on his text. Then on Sunday night after he preached, he wrote out his sermon manuscript. After his death, these sermons began to be published. They are still widely read and praised today.

8. Great preachers have the shepherd heart. They have compassion for the lost sheep and a loving concern for the whole flock. Some preachers, like Charles G. Finney and John Wesley were great preachers as missionary evangelists. They were itinerant preachers more than local church pastors, but they kept in touch with the common man. Their great passion was for winning the lost. Other preachers focus more on tending the sheep already gathered into the fold. A pastor ought to do both. Great preachers who are pastors will go after the one lost sheep and not fail to feed the ninety and nine.

Some great preachers turned their passion for people toward redeeming society as well as souls. The name Walter Rausenbusch (1861-1918) is indelibly printed on the pages of history as the Father of the Social Gospel. True enough, he did preach to change society. He sought to bring the transforming Christ into the institutions of society–especially business and government. Yet Rausenbusch, in fact, was one Baptist who preached the need for a personal, transforming conversion experience with Christ. That is foundational to reforming society.

George W. Truett (1867-1934) is a worthy model for a pastoral preacher. He was a true shepherd who went out after the lost sheep in personal evangelism and in evangelistic preaching. Then, like the Good Shepherd, he did more than dip ’em and drop ’em as soon as they were counted. Truett was a shepherd who fed the flock Sunday after Sunday.

When he was a young man, he wanted to be a lawyer. His church in Whitewright, Texas, however, over his vigorous protests, voted to ordain him. In 1890, B. H. Carroll enlisted him to raise funds to save Baylor. He did save the school and a seminary that soon moved to Fort Worth and became Southwestern. Soon after he graduated from Baylor, they elected him president. This time, he did not let others set his course; he declined the honor saying that God had given him the shepherd heart.

If you have not read the sermons of Truett, you should–whether you are layman or preacher. Scan the titles and hear the heartbeat of a pastor. Especially in the dark days of World War II did he offer encouraging sermons like “Christ and Human Suffering,” “Why Be Discouraged?” and “The Conquest of Fear.” This last one takes Rev. 1:17-18 as a text. “Fear not, I am the first and the last: I am he that liveth, and was dead; and behold, I am alive forevermore; Amen, and have the keys of hell and of death.” The outline is in three divisions. First, do not be afraid of life. Jesus said “I am he that liveth.” Secondly, do not be afraid of death; Jesus said “. . .and was dead.” And thirdly, do not be afraid of eternity; Jesus said “. . .and behold, I am alive forevermore, etc.”

Not all great preachers are pastors. This is true today as in the whole history of the Church. There have been great missionary preachers, itinerants, evangelists, and revivalists. But even these, if they deserve recognition for greatness, have taken personally the Words of Jesus to Peter, “Feed my lambs. . . .Take care of my sheep. . .Feed my sheep” (John 21:17 NIV).

9. Great preachers walk with the Lord. Some of them we might call mystics. Some had this walk from childhood; some turned to the Lord in a sudden and dramatic conversion. Others were changed later in life by a “deeper experience.”

Augustine (A.D. 354-430) was one who turned to the Lord in a dramatic conversion. Before that, he led a wild life including a long-term affair with a mistress who bore him a son. But he came under deep conviction. In his Confessions he told of one day hearing a child’s voice over the garden wall saying “ Pick it up, read it; pick it up, read it.” He could think of only one Book that he needed to read. Finding a Bible, he opened it and soon came to forsake all for Christ. Shortly after his conversion, he saw his former lover coming toward him on the street. He turned and ran away. She called after him: “Augustine, It is I!” Without stopping, he called back over his
shoulder, “I know it is you, but I am no longer the same Augustine!”

John Tauler (1300-1361) was ordained at age thirty-five, but years later a layman brought heavy conviction on him, saying: “You must die, Dr. Tauler! Before you can do your greatest work. . .you must die to yourself, your gifts, your popularity, and even your own goodness.” He quit preaching for two years. When he returned to the pulpit, it was with a power and zeal to exalt Christ. His writings were a strong influence on many including Martin Luther.

John Bunyan’s (1628-1688) adult conversion experience is well known. He was a traveling tinker, making and selling pots and pans. One day he overheard three women sitting on their respective door stoops, talking about the joys of knowing Christ. He went through a long incubation of conviction on the way to conversion. At that time he could not read or write. Before he finished his pilgrimage, he wrote a hundred books. His Pilgrim’s Progress is still counted as one of the greatest books in English literature.

Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) was reared by parents and grandparents who were devout Congregationalists and ministers. At age ten he wrote a tract on “The Nature of the Soul.” Then one day, in the year he graduated from Yale at age seventeen, he was reading the Bible when suddenly he became aware of the presence of God. He was captured then and there with the thought of the union of the soul with God. That experience became the defining moment of his life and ministry. We probably remember him most for his famous sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” We should remember also that he was mightily used of God in the Great Awakening in colonial America.

F. B. Meyer (1847-1929), was a British Baptist greatly used of God in the Keswick movement as well as in notable pastorates. He confesses that it was many years after he took Christ as Savior and several years after he entered the ministry that he took Christ as his Judge, Lawgiver, and King. He said, “It was a very memorable night in my life when I knelt before Christ and gave myself definitely to Him, and committed the keys of my heart and life to His hands. . . .and though I had no joy, no emotion, no ecstacy, I had a blessed feeling in my heart that I had but one Lord, one will, one purpose in all my life and for all coming time– . . .Jesus. . .for whom henceforth my life was to be spent.”

10. Great preachers work hard. In the history of preaching, those who excelled at their task were all hard workers, busy preachers, never idle, never slackers. How a Calvin or Wesley or Whitefield could preach every day and sometimes several times a day, and still find time to study and write and organize and promote a mighty movement of men and nations, boggles the mind! Whatever other gifts or talents they had, they worked hard!

Consider Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892). Besides preaching and serving as pastor of a great church, he established a pastor’s college and lectured to the young men regularly. He established an orphanage and ministered to the children. He published a monthly magazine called The Sword and the Trowel that included in every issue his exposition of a psalm or some other text. It enjoyed wide circulation all over the English-speaking world. Wilbur Smith calculated that Spurgeon’s writings would approximate twenty-seven volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica. He founded a literature distribution society and arranged for colporteurs to distribute wholesome Christian reading material in a society woefully in need of it.

Spurgeon himself read tons of books. Though he was without theological schooling, he was certainly not without theological education. Many of the twelve thousand volumes of his personal library have his handwritten notes in the margins, evidence of thousands of hours spent in study. A common misconception about Spurgeon’s sermon preparation is that he spent only a couple of hours on Saturday evening after supper on his Sunday morning sermon. Not true! He spent many hours of the week working on several texts. Then at the end of the week he selected the one most ready to preach and sketched out his final sermon plan.

When John Henry Jowett (1863-1923) was a new pastor, he was awakened early in the morning by the clomping of work shoes going past his window. The mills started work at six o’clock. He aid, “The sound of clogs fetched me out of bed and took me to my work.” In his
Yale Lectures on Preaching (among the very best in that illustrious series named for Lyman Beecher), Jowett advised young pastors to enter their study at an early hour. He recommended that hour be as early as the earliest of their business men goes to his office. Jowett occupied some of the most illustrious pulpits in England including Westminster Chapel in London following G.Campbell Morgan. In 1911, he moved to New York City’s Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church.

Pastors today are tempted to wring their hands and bemoan the plethora of promotional and organizational work that demands their time. We think he could prepare great sermons if we just didn’t have so much else to do. Of course, preachers in earlier generations didn’t have to spend ten or fifteen hours a week watching television, and I don’t know of a single one who had to spend one day every week on the golf course. The task of a preacher is too great and too glorious to command less than total commitment. Christ deserves no less than our best. abt -30-


An abridgment of this lengthy meditation by Austin B. Tucker was published in serial form in The Baptist Message (Louisiana Baptist Convention),2004.
]]> http://www.pastorsdesk.org/pblog/index.php?entry=entry061127-152135 Richard Baxter: He Preached as Never Sure to Preach Again
and as a Dying Man to Dying Men.
by Austin B. Tucker

All his life Richard Baxter thought he was dying, and often he came close. In a time when leeches and blood letting were standard medical practice, a man with internal bleeding might do better without the aid of a physician. Several times in his more than two hundred books and booklets he wrote that he “preached as never sure to preach again and as a dying man to dying men.”

His most enduring book, The Saints Everlasting Rest, began as his own funeral sermon. He sought to turn his thoughts toward heaven for his own consolation. As he lingered on earth, the sermon grew into a full book. It was first published in 1649 when he was only thirty-four.

In spite of frail health, this minister who anticipated his early demise survived seventy-six years, from 1615 to 1691. He lived through the seventeenth century turmoil of England’s transition from absolute monarchy to parliamentary government. His life spanned the reigns of King James I, King Charles I, through England’s civil wars and Cromwell’s rule. He saw the monarchy restored under King Charles II and King James II, and lived to see the coming of William of Orange.

Baxter should be on everyone’s short list of great pastors and great preachers. Of course, there are some ways in which he would not be a model for today’s pastoral preacher. He preached remarkable long sermons. Sermons in his day were traditionally measured by the hourglass, and it was common for Baxter to turn the hourglass once or twice. One sermon checked at random contains more than nineteen thousand words! That is about ten times the length of this article and would take the typical preacher about two and a half hours to read aloud. But those were days when people didn’t have to get in and out of church in an hour. A public prayer might last half an hour. Though Baxter regularly preached from a full manuscript, it might include frequent byways from the main trail. In many other ways, however, Baxter merits our emulation.

1. Baxter was a man of serious study. He considered his sense of impending death invaluable mercy because it made him “study and preach things necessary” and it stirred his heart “to speak with compassion.” Circumstance prevented gaining the university training he desired. He made up for it with devotion to study of serious books. Over the years, he accumulated a large library. When he wrote The Saints Everlasting Rest, he was in a time of convalescence away from his library with no books but his Bible and a concordance. In a later addition, however, he made copious notes and quotations in the margins from some 150 different authors. Such was his wide reading. These notes show great acquaintance with the Church Fathers and a preference for Augustine and Clement of Alexandria. He also read Greek and Latin and sometimes quoted the Latin in his sermons. Scarcity of time for study he considered “the greatest external personal affliction of all my life.”

2. Baxter was committed to preaching, but he insisted that pulpit work be wedded to a personal pastoral ministry. It was partly his sense of impending death that moved him to enter the ministry.
Here he felt he could make the best use of his limited time on this earth. He urged his fellow pastors to give priority to evangelistic preaching and personal soul winning. “The first and greatest work of ministers of Christ” wrote Baxter, “is acquainting men with the God who made them. . . . Focus on the great work of evangelism whatever else you do or leave undone.” Then the minister should teach them as much as he can of the word and works of God.

Young people especially flocked to hear Baxter, though he ministered to the whole family. In addition to his pulpit ministry, he considered the family as the appropriate unit for teaching. At
Kidderminster he spent two days each week, seven hours each day, one hour per family, instruct ing his flock. He dealt with the family on the basis of their spiritual needs and level of doctrinal understanding. He gave part of the hour to one-on-one interviews with each member of the family. In spite of his advise to other ministers about the priority of preaching, Baxter considered the personal conference with the family and pastoral calls in the homes the most important work he did. No doubt his personal attention to families in a large and growing flock made him a better minister in the pulpit.

The Kidderminster church was a large edifice but nearly empty when he arrived. He saw them build five balcony additions so that it became the largest church he had ever seen. Still when
he preached, he focused on individual souls and their holy lives rather than on numbers.

3. Baxter’s pulpit power, no doubt, flowed much from his personal prayer and meditation. He was serious about spending time with the Master. He recommended that a minister devote one hour a day to personal prayer in addition to preparation time for preaching
and teaching and other pastoral duties.

4. His sermon style was marked by clarity, interest, and force. One of his great strengths was the use of clearly stated outlines. In all his preaching, he labored to speak “the plainest words.” Simplicity, he believed, was a great virtue in preaching. He did recommend, however, that a pastor preach over the heads of his congregation from time to time. This would keep them humble and show them the pastor did know more than the congregation. Baxter planned to preach such a sermon once a year.

Baxter did not pad his sermons with stories or anecdotes. The interest value of his discourse owed much to his skill with simile and metaphor. Here is a sample from his autobiography of his way with words.

"He that will blow coals must not wonder if some sparks do fly in his face; and that to persecute men and then call them to charity is like whipping children to make them give over crying. . . .I saw that he that will be loved, must love; and he that rather chooseth to be more feared than loved, must expect to be hated, or loved diminutively. And that he that will have children must be a father; and he that will be a tyrant must be contented with
slaves."

Baxter preferred the textual sermon. A sermon entitled “Making Light of Christ and Salvation” takes a single sentence in Matthew 22:5 as text: “But they made light of it.” He sometimes assumed the congregation was familiar with the setting, but he was always faithful to the context. His sermons began with the careful explanation of the text. Then as was customary in the homiletics of his day, he dealt with possible objections or difficulties in accepting it. Then came application (called “uses” of the text) and a climax of urgent exhortation to obey the Word.

5. His sermon delivery was passionate in keeping with his twin focus on his own mortality and that of all his hearers, “as dying man to dying men.” He lamented, “How few ministers preach with all their might.” One of his biographers speaks of “his eyes, roving, ranging eyes. . .(that) kindled his audience like a fire, (and) his voice (that) swept it as the wind in a cornfield.”

His voice was “soft, flexible and melodious” according to another who heard him preach. He advocated an informal delivery. “Speak familiarly to them as you would if you were talking to any one of them personally.” His hearers indeed felt that he was talking to each of them personally. Broadus considered the strength of Baxter’s delivery his “tremendous earthshaking earnestness.” Another called it “vehement intensity.” Another referred to it as “the eloquence of a soul burning with ardent devotion to God, and inspired with the deepest compassion for men.”

6. Baxter’s writing ministry must be considered an extension of his pulpit. He turned to writing, he said, not from any literary ambition, but simply because it “hath a louder voice than
mine” with which to preach the gospel. In another place he cited the same motivation that seemed to drive so much of his ministry– his dance with the death angel.

"While I was in health I had not the least thought of writing books or of serving God in any public way than preaching, but when I was weakened with great bleeding, and was sentenced to death by the physicians, I began to contemplate more seriously on the Everlasting Rest which I apprehended myself to be just on the borders of."

Soon writing became the major focus of his ministry. Of the relative importance of this work, he spoke in his Autobiography:

"But all these my labours (except my private conferences with the families), even preaching and preparing for it, were but my recreations and, as it were, the work of my spare hours. For my writings were my chiefest daily labour, which yet went the more slowly on that I never one hour had an amanuensis to dictate to, and specially because my weakness took up so much of my time."

Why did Baxter enjoy such success in nearly two decades in the Kidderminster pulpit? One reflective piece is included in the collection of his writings called Autobiography. In it he listed a dozen reasons for his success in preaching. First, he came to a community ripe for the Word. The old curate he replaced preached only once a month and was notorious for cold and formal sermons. A second was his enthusiastic delivery and “a familiar moving voice (which is a
great matter with the common hearers).” The enthusiasm he attributed to his bodily weakness. “As a dying man, my soul was the more brought to seriousness, and to preach as a dying man to dying men.”

Third, he considered his greatest advantage “the change that was made in public affairs by the success of the wars.” Nonconformists regained more liberty and popular acceptance. Fourth,
Baxter’s ecumenical attitude was a great advantage in a community blessed with unity and concord. There was “not a Separatist, Anabaptist, Antimomian . . .in the town!” Fifth, the people of his community were carpet weavers by trade allowing time to “read and talk of holy things.” As they stood at their looms in their own homes, they could set a book before them, perhaps one of their pastor’s writings. Or they could carry on edifying conversations even as they worked. Sixth, the fact that Baxter was unmarried for most of his life, he considered an advantage. He could take his people as his children. Seventh, he considered the “quality of sinners of the place” an advantage. For example, drunkards were so notoriously loud and obnoxious they made that sin ridiculous.

Eighth, Baxter took church discipline seriously, a thing almost as rare then as now. Ninth, he shaped his sermons to fit the needs of the congregation. Tenth, the Kidderminster people were not rich. “The poor receive the glad tidings gladly. They are rich in faith.” Eleventh, he stayed long enough to see fruit. And finally, he believed God blessed the labors of “his unanimous faithful ministers” by which he meant the unity of fellowship in an ecumenical association of pastors that he organized. He had a passion for Christian unity without doctrinal compromise and without denominational or sectarian exclusivism. Horton Davies called Baxter “the first exponent of Ecumenism in England.”

Richard Baxter was an extremely successful pastor and preacher. Looking back over his Kidderminster days he could say with reference to family devotions:

"When I first came there, there was about one family in a street that worshiped God; when I came away there were some streets where there was not one family that did not so, and that did not by professing serious godliness give any hopes of their sincerity."

And when he did go away, forbidden to come within five miles of Kidderminster by England’s new laws against nonconforming pastors, no doubt the community grieved the loss of the minister who preached to them as dying man to dying men.

abt
]]> http://www.pastorsdesk.org/pblog/index.php?entry=entry061005-145017 by Austin B. Tucker

The prospect of preaching terrified John Knox before his first sermon. Afterward he became one of the most fearless of preachers ever. This article will briefly sketch the life of Knox the reformer and then focus on his preaching.

Knox the Reformer

John Knox first appeared on the stage of history bearing the two-handed great sword as bodyguard to reformer George Wisehart. Canon law forbad priests to carry a weapon, but Knox, already disgusted with Rome, was committed to reforming Scotland. For five weeks Wisehart and his bodyguards spent each night in a different house to avoid arrest. Knox was willing to die with the reformer, but when Wisehart could no longer elude his pursuers, he sent Knox away, saying, "Nay, return to your bairns [children] and God bless you. One is sufficient for a sacrifice." Biographer Jasper Ridley believed "if Knox had stayed with Wisehart some nine hours longer, he would have been burnt as a heretic in 1546."

A few weeks later, a band of Protestants set out to revenge Wisehart. They raided St. Andrew's Castle and killed Cardinal Beaton. They abused the corpse shamefully. Though Knox did not share in that raid, he soon shared the blame by moving into the castle as teacher to children of the rebels. He was indeed in total sympathy with their deeds, as he would later record in his History of the Reformation. Detailing the assassination of the cardinal and the desecration of his body, Knox inserted, “These things we write merrily.” Those were violent times – especially in Scotland. In the hundred years before the birth of Knox, every king of Scotland without exception met a violent death.

The rebel force in the castle grew to about two hundred. John Rough, their preacher and Henry Balnavis, another leader, became increasingly impressed with Knox. One day a Romanist named Arnaud debated in the chapel and spoke of the Roman Catholic Church as the spouse of Christ. Knox interrupted the speaker from the audience to say Rome was no spouse but a harlot. He challenged the Romanist to debate him on that subject. Though Arnaud refused, the congregation insisted that Knox express his views in a sermon on the next Sunday.
Knox had never preached, and the prospect of intruding into that holy office terrified him. They would not be denied, however, so after a week of great soul struggle, in April, 1547, he preached his first sermon. His text was Daniel 7:24-25. Knox summarized the sermon in his History. He called the Church of Rome the Antichrist and cited the scandalous lives of some of the popes. He preached that jus-tification is by faith alone and not by any works of human righteousness. The reception of this first sermon convinced him that he had God's call to preach. He never doubted it again.

The French fleet came in July 1547 to retake the castle. When the defenders surrendered, Knox and one hundred twenty other captives were sentenced to be galley slaves. They were chained to a rowing bench twenty-four/seven with a daily ration of one ship's biscuit and water. It was sometimes as little as three ounces of food daily. Every three weeks they were afforded a little vegetable soup. Knox was thirty-three years old and in robust health when he began. Lesser men did not survive.

Two of the most-often-told episodes in the life of Knox come from these nineteen months of cruel bondage. Once a priest presented the slaves with a painted image of the Virgin Mary to kiss. Knox begged to be excused saying "Trouble me not. Such an idol is accursed, and therefore I will not touch it.” They violently forced the icon into his hands and pushed it to his face. He tossed it overboard, saying:"Let our Lady now save herself. She is light enough; let her learn to swim."

The other incident happened while they were anchored in sight of the spire of St. Andrews parish church where he preached his first sermon. His companions thought he was near death. A fellow slave asked him if he thought he would ever see that chapel again. He answered: "By the grace of God, I will yet again preach there." Knox gained his freedom in 1549 through the intervention of King Edward VI, the remarkable ten-year-old "British Josiah." The reformer accepted appointment as chaplain to the young monarch and as one of six itinerating preachers. He served five years in the court of that "most godly king of England" until Edward died of poison at age fifteen.

Knox spent about ten years in voluntary exile preaching in Germany, Switzerland and France with occasional trips to England and Scotland. He spoke English, French, and German as well as his native Lowland Scots language. He was also capable of reading his Bible in the original languages. In 1559 Knox returned to his very troubled homeland and the next year personally led the reformation forces to a military victory. He also deserves credit for the triumph of Calvin-ism in Scotland and for what became the Presbyterian Church. After Mary Stuart came to the throne in 1560, Knox was arrested, tried for treason, and acquitted. He spent his last years in Edinburgh and St. Andrews and died at home in old age.

F. W. Boreham’s sermonic essay on “John Knox’s Text” tells us how he died. As the end neared, Knox said to his wife, “Go, read where I cast my first anchor!” She needed no more explicit directions to find and read John 17, including especially those words of verse 3 “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent.” Shortly after that, his servant, Richard Bannatyne, asked if his master might give them some signal as the end approached that he still had the hope of glory described in that chapter. Knox agreed. Soon afterward, the dying man heard the servant’s question. “He raised a clay-cold fin-ger, and pointed to the sky.”

The Preaching of John Knox

Study of Knox, the reformer, has largely eclipsed study of Knox, the preacher. One reason surely is that almost none of his sermons in manuscript have come down to us. Perhaps only one or two true sermons, a few other addresses and summary reports of sermons are available. Richard Kyle’s recent study is one with a very helpful chapter on Knox as a preacher.

Knox believed a reformed pastor’s first duty was to preach God’s Word. Two other basic duties were to administer the sacraments and to enforce church discipline. As a true reformer, Knox dethroned the Mass. His calling was to preach the Word of God. Though it is still debated whether he kept the sacraments on a par with preaching, the weight of his writings supports preaching as central. And it was not mere preaching that he elevated but reformation preaching, the kind that returned the Bible to the pulpit as well as the pew. It was preaching a literal understanding of Scripture instead of the moralizing and allegorizing of the Middle Ages. Knox was convinced that the Bible was clear and intelligible to the average person. The preacher’s task was not so much to interpret the Bible as to declare what was self-evident in it.

He liked to preach through books of the Bible verse by verse. He preached through large books in the Old Testament and New such as Isaiah and the Gospel of John. Knox tended to emphasize the Old Testament. His view of God as unchanging led him to conclude that plagues, invasions, and natural disasters must judge Scotland and England as surely as Israel and Judah of old. Deuteronomy 12:32 was something of a key verse for his hermeneutic. “All that I command you, be careful to do it; you shall not add to it, nor take away from it.” By this standard he sought to purify religion.

Knox preached long sermons and preached often. In Geneva he preached several times each week, and each sermon was two or three hours long.

He also was a pastoral preacher. He preached to comfort and encourage Christian living especially after Queen Mary’s rule ended in Scotland. His sermon on the first temptation of Christ in Matthew 4 starts with his specific objective, namely that his hearers not fear the crafty assaults of Satan. He previews a three-fold outline in the first paragraph. First, what the word temptation means and how it is used in Scripture. Second, who is here tempted and at what time this temptation happened. Third, how and by what means he was tempted and what fruits ensue. It is notable for a clear Biblical basis and for systematic treatment of theology of testing and temptation. He presents a Biblical theology of themes such as the forty days as a period of testing, and he gives evidence of thorough research of earlier expositors on the text.

Knox typically organized his sermons into a two-fold structure. First he expounded the text. Then he drew doctrinal or practical application. His closing exhortations often applied the text to society. He focused on political leaders especially, making them heroes or villains. He earned their wrath more often than not. He also liked to select a practical subject like prayer and build a doctrinal sermon from an appropriate text. He did not hopscotch through the Bible for proof texts as in the typical topical sermon of many preachers today.

He spoke in plain terms to reach the common man. Others spoke of “the sacrament of the alta1.” Knox called it simply “the mass.” He could be harsh but said he took no joy in it. He was obeying his Master who commanded him to use plain speech and to flatter no flesh. Dargan, in his History of Preaching cited a report of great boldness in the preaching of Knox in the court of King Edward. Knox asked, "What wonder is it that a young and innocent king be deceived by crafty, covetous, wicked and ungodly councilors? I am greatly afraid that Ahithophel is councilor, that Judas bears the purse, and that Shebnah is scribe, controller and treasurer." Knox later reproached himself for those words; he thought them not strong enough in rebuke of iniquity.

Knox preached to change individuals and nations. He proclaimed the evangel as a true reformer preaching for decision. He wanted Scotland to be a Christian republic; separation of church and state was not a part of his theology. He wanted the evangel “truly and openly preached in every Kirk and Assembly” of the realm. His Book of Discipline called for all doctrine repugnant to the Scriptures to be “utterly suppressed as damnable to man’s salvation.” When in the minority, believers must separate from idolatry; when in the majority they must abolish it. He believed in the priesthood of the believers but made a strong case for state support of the ministry. Probably the long tradition of state support of the ministry and presence of so many ministers in poverty influenced this view.

His delivery was what we usually call today extemporaneous. He prepared thoroughly but did not write out a manuscript. From an incidental remark in his Administration of England we learn that his method was to speak from a few notes made on the margin of his Bible. His preaching made a profound impact on those who heard him. James Melville, the nephew of Andrew Melville, heard Knox preach and took notes on delivery as well as content. His account was written in Old English, but I offer the following summary in updated English.

"He spent the first half hour in opening up of his text. In this he spoke with moderation. . . . But when he began the application of the scripture he caused me so to shudder and tremble that I could not hold a pen to write. . . . He was so vigorous in his pulpit that I thought he was likely to beat the pulpit to pieces and fly out of it."
]]> http://www.pastorsdesk.org/pblog/index.php?entry=entry060929-144854 by Austin B. Tucker

Fifteen-year-old Charles Spurgeon, a few months after his conversion, began teaching a Bible class for younger boys. One day a lad interrupted his lesson. “This is very dull, Teacher. Can’t you pitch us a yarn?” Young Spurgeon could and did. Later the Prince of Preachers said he learned to tell stories in that class because he was “obliged to tell them.”

Lisa Lax, NBC-TV’s Senior Sports Producer needed to know how to keep viewers watching the Atlanta Olympics. The network paid $456 million for the broadcast rights and budgeted $3.5 billion for Olympics coverage through the year 2008. They simply could not afford for you and me to tune out as so many did the Seoul Olympics. So, in the six years leading up to Atlanta, the network interviewed some 10,000 viewers. What do people like and what do they dislike about sports on TV? The big finding of all that research came down to one fact: Tell them stories and they will watch. The result was more than 135 two-to-three minute narratives the network produced and scattered throughout the very successful Atlanta Olympics coverage. People pay attention to a story.

How can preachers enhance the narrative quality of their sermons? Instead of resorting to omnibus volumes of stale anecdotes, try these exercises. These seven ideas can add storytelling power to your sermons.

1. Summarize a short story. A short story or even a whole novel may be reduced to one or two hundred words. Keep the plot in place. Here’s one that illustrates the destructive power of the tongue warned of in James 3.

A little old man stooped on the dusty road to pick up a “Piece of String” in Guy de Maupassant’s tale by that name. He was embarrassed to note that someone saw him do so, and he quickly hid the innocent scrap. By the time he got to town to discover that a wallet was lost, he was already accused of finding it. His denials and explanations about “a piece of string” seemed only to confirm growing suspicion. Then, a week later, someone did find the wallet and return it. Instead of clearing the old man, this gave the rumors momentum. Shortly after that, he died. Talk killed him.

If the sermon can afford twice the space for this illustration, add dialogue, names and other details from the story.

2. Turn a cartoon or comic strip into a narrative. Comic strips have something of a story line built in, but even a cartoon can provide a bit of narrative with setting, characters, and plot. A Forbes magazine cartoon shows a grandfatherly gentleman in an oversized easy chair talking to a little girl seated opposite him in a matching chair. Around them in the elegant sitting room is ample evidence of wealth. He is answering her question about how he made his fortune.

“It was really quite simple. I bought a pencil for a penny, sharpened it, and sold it for two cents. With this I bought two pencils, sharpened them, and sold them for four cents. And so it went until I had amassed $10.24. It was then that your Great Aunt Selma died and left us $10 million.”

The cartoonist probably never meant that to illustrate spiritual truth, but it might. Think of the testimony of one who does not really appreciate salvation by grace. “I joined the church and was baptized. I started working in the church and giving to the church. Then I discovered that Christ died for all my sins.”

3. Place a quotation in its historical context. As a diamond is shown to its best advantage in the right mounting, so a familiar quote sparkles more in its historical setting. A preacher citing Martin Luther might be surprised how many in the congregation think he is quoting a mid-twentieth century civil rights leader rather than the seventeenth century reformer. I was in college and had heard the “Here-I-stand” statement numerous times before I learned the Diet of Worms was a general assembly of the empire and not what Luther had to eat in prison. Let the preacher give a thumbnail sketch of Luther’s life with focus on that crucial scene. What if you need help with the biographical data and don’t have a good reference book like Moyer and Cairns, Wycliffe Biographical Dictionary of the Church? You can do an online search with the help of Google or Yahoo and probably find more than you ever wanted to know. Just be sure to use a reliable source.

4. Glean from leisure reading and TV time. Sometimes a scene in a Christless book, movie or television show will be useful for presenting Christ as the hope of the hopeless. Get the notebook habit. I keep a few index cards handy while relaxing with TV or leisure reading.

There is a telling scene in the 1986 movie "The Trumpet of Gideon" still seen occasionally on TV. It speaks volumes to the impasse of hostility that continues between Arabs and Jews and to the larger problem of terrorism and war in general. Steven Bauer plays a young Israeli secret service agent named Avner. He and his select team are on a mission to avenge the Munich Massacre. They have traveled the world killing Arab terrorists. This, of course, stirs Arab retaliation. One after another of Avner’s team members are killed. They are blown up or shot or stabbed until he alone is left. Returning home to Israel, Avner expresses his misgivings to his commander, “We can not go on this way—‘an eye for an eye’ – pretty soon the whole world will be blind!”

The commander retorts: “What is the answer then?” To which Avner replies: “I don’t have the answer!” We who preach the crucified Christ claim that we do have the answer.

5. When quoting a verse of a hymn or other poetry, place it in a narrative setting. The poet Edwin Markham, as he approached retirement, discovered that the man to whom he had entrusted his financial portfolio had spent every single penny. Markham's dream of a comfortable retirement vanished in an instant. Of course he was furious; and with time, his bitterness grew by leaps and bounds. One day, Markham found himself trying to calm down by diverting his attention to drawing circles on a piece of paper. Looking again at the circles he had drawn on the paper, Markham was inspired to write the following lines:

He drew a circle to shut me out,
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout;
But love and I had the wit to win,
We drew a circle to take him in.

Those words today are by far the most famous among Markham’s hundreds of poems. They helped the poet give up his anger and find grace to forgive the man who stole his lifelong savings.

6. Narrate in a few sentences your own thoughts on the passing parade of life. Bumper stickers, for example, are often thought provokers. Who of us has never played mind reader with the cues people placard on their autos? I passed a ’70s era Chevrolet on the Interstate that looked about used up. It was so rusted you could hardly tell the original color. The bumper sticker, too, was almost faded away, but I managed to read it: Jesus Christ, the Great Provider. I nodded a smile of affirmation to the young man driving it and wondered what his life was like. “Not a very great Provider, is He?” jabbed the Devil. But then, the old clunker was transportation, after all. It was getting him there about as well as my nicer car. And maybe he was learning a most valuable lesson of stewardship: live within your means. I would almost bet his car was paid for. The Word promises: “My God will meet all your needs” (Phil. 4:19 NIV).

7. Recast a news story. Journalism students are taught to write a lead sentence with the answer to all of “Kipling’s six honest serving men: What and Why and How and When and Where and Who.” Then the editor further summarizes the lead in a headline. Read the following story, and then we will see how the newspaper reported it.

Dianne Mitchell of Blalock’s Beauty School in Shreveport, Louisiana gathered her students at the beginning of the day and gave them a pep talk. “We have to stay together as a team,” she told them. She encouraged them to watch out for one another, never imagining how soon they would need and how dramatically they would heed her admonition.

A little before noon the students and workers were cleaning up. In walked a man wearing a handkerchief over his face and a skullcap over his hair. He carried a large caliber revolver. He entered past a sign on the door that read:

WARNING
This property protected by
JESUS CHRIST

The man with the gun was Jared Gipson, age 24, 5 feet, 8 inches, 140 pounds. He put the gun in the back of instructor Dianne Mitchell who is somewhat taller and considerably heavier. At first she thought it was a joke when she heard “This is a holdup.” Then she “saw that big old gun” and heard him order everyone to get down on the floor. “Get down, big momma,” he barked at Mitchell. She didn’t yet know what court records would show: Gipson has a history of armed robbery and other crimes. Some of the thirty students and staff on the floor started crying as they saw their grocery money and rent money leaving them. When the robber had gathered all the cash, he took the one male student in the class and pushed him with the pistol toward a door. Mitchell thought, “Oh, my God, he’s going to shoot him!”

As the robber stepped over his prone victims, Mitchell saw a bare moment of opportunity and stuck out a foot to trip him. The robber tumbled into a wall and dropped his gun. Someone shouted, “Get that sucker!” And that is exactly what they did. They pounced on him with curling irons, chairs, a wooden table leg, clenched fists, shoes, and a flood of pent-up anger.

The police took the bleeding culprit to the hospital for treatment of numerous wounds, especially lacerations to the head. At his arraignment the next day he wore a white bandage across the right side of his forehead. His right eye was blackened and swollen shut. He hung his head when the judge set his bond at $100,000, but he may consider the jail a safer place than the neighborhood.

The newspaper, however, did not tell the story in chronological order. It never does except in an occasional feature article. The headline tells it all in five words: “Beauticians stomp, stop armed robber.” The first sentence or two gives a little more detail.

"An armed robber brandishing a revolver and some rough talk entered Blalock’s Beauty College demanding money Tuesday afternoon. He left crying, bleeding and under arrest, after Dianne Mitchell, her students and employees attacked the suspect, beating him into submission."

Now the newspaper reader can skip the other sixty column inches. We need newspapers to be written that way. We scan the headlines. If they interest us, we read the lead. If we are still interested, we may read more. If not, we have the synopsis. We would never get through the newspaper if the stories were not capsuled in the headlines and summarized in a lead sentence or two. But that’s not the way of the storyteller! No one would read a mystery entitled The "Butler Did It!" Would you tell a joke with the punch line first? Newspapers are a great source of sermon support, but a preacher must take care to revise the story in favor of a true narrative with a genuine plot.

The New Testament tells us that Jesus “spoke all these things to the crowds in parables; he did not say anything to them without using a parable” (Matt. 13:34 NIV). Shouldn’t we make the effort to boost our own storytelling power?

Austin B. Tucker
Shreveport, LA.

By permission of Preaching magazine. Vol 22, No. 2 (Sept.-Oct. 2006)
]]> http://www.pastorsdesk.org/pblog/index.php?entry=entry060821-140634 by Austin B. Tucker


When Charles Spurgeon was a teenager, he was a promising preacher but untrained. A friend arranged for him to meet with Dr. Angus, principal of a theological school, now Regents Park College, Oxford. The meeting was to be in the home of Mr. Macmillan, the publisher. Spurgeon arrived on time. A maid ushered him into the drawing room. After a two-hour wait, he rang the bell for the maid. Then he learned to his dismay that Dr. Angus had waited long in another parlor but left to catch his train back to the city.

Spurgeon was terribly disappointed, but soon accepted the providence as divinely ordered. He never earned a theological degree. But those who would use Spurgeon as an argument against educated clergy have picked the wrong model. Spurgeon may have been largely self-taught, but he was anything but unlearned.

He was born June 19, 1834 to a businessman who was also a lay preacher. He spent his early years in the home of his grandfather, a Puritan pastor. When other children his age were struggling with one-syllable words, young Charles was reading serious works from his grandfather’s theological library. He read the Puritans. He read Foxe’s Book of Martyrs. And especially did he read John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. This classic he first discovered before he was six years old. And he began a life-long practice of reading that allegory twice each year. He also devoured Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and other English classics-- Doddridge, Baxter, Allain and James.

Throughout childhood and youth he read and read and read. Most were theological works, but he also rapidly assimilated books on subjects as diverse as botany and history. In a recent history of Preaching, David L.Larson, calls Spurgeon a “compulsive reader.” Once young Spurgeon’s parents found him reading Spanish Bullfights and punished him for it. “Bad books are a terrible thing,” he would later confess and wish that he could forget the half of that one he read! But Spurgeon had a photographic memory. Growing up in the nonconformist tradition of 19th century England, he attended several schools starting with “old Mrs. Burleigh” who held classes in her home. When he was aged 10 and 11 he studied Latin and Greek among other courses in the Stockwell House School. He was attending Mr. Leeding’s school when as a 16-year-old lad he preached his first sermon.

A part of Spurgeon's self education was making sure he heard the outstanding preachers of his day such as John Jay and John Angel James. “The preaching of Christ,” wrote Spurgeon as a boy preacher, “is the thunderbolt, the sound of which makes all hell shake. I must and I will make men listen.”

And they did listen by the thousands and tens of thousands. He was 19 when he moved to London to start as pastor of an old church called the New Park Street Baptist Church. Only about 80 souls heard that first sermon, and these were scattered in a decaying auditorium with 1200 seats. But soon the crowds came. He was forced to move to a rented auditorium of 5,000 seats while the new 6,000 seat Metropolitan Tabernacle went up. He had preached 1,000 sermons by age 21. By age 22, he was the most popular preacher of his day. His printed sermons sold 25,000 copies a week! Vincent Van Gogh, the Dutch artist, began preaching in the London slums using Spurgeon’s sermons.

The preacher who never attended seminary started a Pastor’s College while still a young man of 24 years. And he lectured to the students every Friday evening. He encouraged them to study hard and to learn all they could about as many subjects as possible. “Make the pulpit your first business,” he exhorted them. And it was his first business.

Still he found time to administer a rapidly growing church with many social ministries such as the Stockwell Orphanage he established in 1867. He personally ministered to hundreds of orphans. While the seven-year old Metropolitan Tabernacle underwent renovation and enlargement, he moved his Sunday services to Agriculture Hall where he preached to 20,000 each service. He was known as one who “preached without paper.”

If he was without notes in the pulpit, he was certainly not without time in the study. Throughout his lifetime he was a man of many books. He accumulated a personal library of 30,000 volumes. Most were heavy theological works. Lewis Drummond, his most recent and most extensive biographer noted: “A cursory survey of his library shows how diligently he read and carefully studied virtually every single one.”

Not only was he a well-read pulpiteer, he also wrote with a powerful pen. Sixty-three volumes of his published sermons are still in print and much in demand. Thirty million copies of his printed sermons and other works are in circulation including a half million of Lectures to My Students.That volume is still recommended reading in theological seminaries. A monthly church magazine, The Sword and the Trowel, reached enormous circulation around the English-speaking world. Also still regarded as a classic commentary on the Psalms is his multi-volume “A Treasury of David”. Over 150,000 copies of this set are in print. In addition to writing his own exposition of each of the 150 Psalms, he gleaned other commentaries for jewels worth quoting. He wrote in the preface: “I have ransacked books by the hundred, often without finding a memorable line as a reward, but at other times with the most satisfactory result.” And he added:“Readers little know how great labour the finding of but one pertinent extract may involve.”

Would Spurgeon have been a better preacher had providence turned him toward formal schooling instead of to his own course of study? That will ever be a question for debate. But without a doubt, anyone who thinks Spurgeon was uneducated is himself uninformed about “The Prince of All the Preachers.”
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Is there a distinction to be made between shameful manipulation and acceptable persuasion? If so, where do you draw the line? It is a fact of twenty-first century life that western civilization is no longer moved by logical arguments. Instead we make life-shaping decisions based on emotional appeal.

It has become a cliche to critique the pastor's sermon illustrations as "tear-jerking stories." Is it OK for a speaker to move the listener to laughter but not to tears? Tell me where you draw the line. abt]]> http://www.pastorsdesk.org/pblog/index.php?entry=entry060705-122531
At a recent Thursday morning prayer breakfast, a regular date on my calendar, our host asked what book I am working on at the moment. I told him my main focus at present is a book with the working title; The Preacher as Storyteller. Immediately, a couple of friends in the group, made up of about half laymen and half ministers, expressed frank distaste for the whole concept of a preacher as storyteller. They happen to be laymen in the same church where, it seems, they feel their pastor strings together too many anecdotes in his preaching. I reminded them that Jesus as a preacher and teacher was best known for his parables. Jesus was a storyteller.

I would like to hear the thoughts of you who read this blog. Why do most sermons have so little narrative? Should preachers do more storytelling? ]]> http://www.pastorsdesk.org/pblog/index.php?entry=entry060623-084122
A dramatic monologue presents the truth of the biblical text from the perspective of an eye witness or a participant. For example, with or without costume, the preacher may play the role of Simon Peter and take the congregation back to some New Testament happening with the I-was-there report of a witness.

This way of preaching the gospel works for several reasons: (1) It is a fresh approach that gets attention and sticks in memory. (2) People are interested in other people and not likely to be bored with this approach if done well and not done too often. (3) Personal testimony is convincing. (4) The Bible lends itself to this kind of drama. (5) It also has the advantage of persuasion by indirection. So why have so few preachers ever tried it? abt]]> http://www.pastorsdesk.org/pblog/index.php?entry=entry060620-190050 http://www.pastorsdesk.org/pblog/index.php?entry=entry060619-120527
http://www.pastorsdesk.org/

A Primer for Pastors: A Handbook for Strengthening Ministry Skills. By Austin B. Tucker. Kregel, 2004.

This is a basic pastoral ministry guide written for the beginning pastor, ministerial student, and bi-vocational pastors who want guidance in how to do the work of a pastor and do it right.

May God bless it to your use for his glory. abt
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