Theology That Bites Back
“Only, as one rule that has no exceptions, let your use of texts be real. Never make them mean what they do not mean. In the name of taste and reverence alike, let there be no twists and puns, no dealing with the Word of God as it would be insulting to deal with the word of any friend”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 124
“We assume the center when we are filled with the Spirit, and when He flows out of us. The Spirit is the center. This happens using physical things. Spiritual does not just mean like a spirit. Spiritual also means obedient. When we offer our bodies rightly, it is our spiritual worship (Rom. 12:1-2). The devil is a spirit who is unspiritual in this sense, and you have ten toes, which can be spiritual—if they are shod with the gospel of peace”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 17
“Constant quotations in sermons are, I think, a sign of the same crudeness. They show an undigested knowledge . . . Learn to study for the sake of truth, learn to think for the profit and joy of thinking. Then your sermons shall be like the leaping of a fountain, and not like the pumping of a pump.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 123
“The church is not supposed to function as a rain barrel, or a collection tank. The church is a place from which the water is supposed to flow everywhere else.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 16
“Technology is therefore a form of wealth. The reason this is important is because the Bible says very little about technology as such, but it gives us a great deal of blunt and pointed teaching on the subject of wealth. If we learn how to deal with wealth scripturally, then we will have learned how to deal with technology. This also makes it obvious that these problems are not new problems at all”
Ploductivity, p. 11
“Some preachers are always preaching the last book which they have read, and their congregations always find it out. The feeling of superficialness and thinness attaches to all they do . . . If I am right in this idea, then it will follow that the preacher’s life must be a life of large accumulation”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 122
“There are people who go to respectable churches because it seems like a good place to network with people who might want to buy insurance.”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 12
“We have a perennial temptation to locate sin as resident in the stuff. Some refuse to see sin in the stuff, and therefore conclude there must not be any sin. Those are the technophiles. Others see clearly that there is sin, and so they conclude that it must be in the stuff, though maybe it is not in the earlier stuff. These are the technophobes . . . Maxwell’s silver hammer did come down upon somebody’s head, but we go astray when we blame the silver hammer. The problem was in Maxwell.”
Ploductivity, p. 10
“When the saints start to come in for the service, the building should say, ‘Shhh . . . the church is here now.’ The saints should not say, ‘Shhh . . . you’re in church now. The building is not God’s mausoleum”
Let the Stones Cry Out, p. 9
“Always have the topic if your sermon in your mind as long as possible before you begin your preparation. Whatever else is hasty and extemporaneous, let it not be your decision as to what you will preach about.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 121
