“Give your sermon an orderly consistent progress, and do not hesitate to let your hearers see it distinctly, for it will help them first to understand and then to remember what you say.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 134
The Prophecy of Micah [8]
Sermon Video Introduction: We are still in the mid dle of one of Micah’s consolation sections, and we have come to the passage where the birth of the Messiah is promised. The Text: “Now ...
Exactly
“The true way to get rid of the boniness of your sermon is not by leaving out the skeleton, but by clothing it with flesh.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 134
Write Down Every Other Word
“I think that the best sermons that ever have been preached, taking all the qualities of sermons into account, have probably been extemporaneous sermons, but that the number of good sermons preached from manuscript have probably been far greater than the number of good sermons preached extemporaneously; and he who can put those two facts together will arrive at some pretty clear and just idea of how it will be best for him to preach.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 132
Was It Ever Fresh?
“The real question about a sermon is, not whether it is extemporaneous when you deliver it to your people, but whether it ever was extemporaneous, whether there ever was a time when the discourse sprang freshly from your heart and mind” ().
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 130
The Prophecy of Micah [7]
Sermon Video Introduction: We are continuing to work through the consolation section of the second cycle. Each cycle consists of warning, judgment, and consolation. As this section encompasses ...
Either Way, It Should Be On Fire
“With regard to the vexed question of written or unwritten sermons I have not very much to say. I think it is a question whose importance has been very much exaggerated, and the attempt to settle which with some invariable rule has been unwise, and probably has made stumbling speakers out of some who might have been effective readers, and stupid readers out of men who might have spoken with force and fire. The different methods have their evident different advantages.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 129
Copying the Wrong Thing
“The positive evil [of imitation] comes from the fact that that what is worst in any man is always the most copiable.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 127
Fear Not, Little Flock
Introduction: Our attitude toward the future reveals, as few others things do, our actual doctrine of God, our actual theology. It is perilously easy to have our catechism truths down pat, there on ...
So Watch It
“The range of sermon-writing gives it a capacity of various vices which no other kind of composition can presume to rival.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 126