“We must search for simple words which our listeners will understand, vivid words which will help them to picture what we are saying and honest words which tell the plain truth without exaggeration.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 62
Which Sometimes Happens
“Tears ran down her cheeks. Her eye makeup was seriously blurred, and she looked out the twin smudges at the camera. Staring at this very spectacle on the screen, John Mitchell told Cindi, who was standing behind him, that News Babe looked like a sensuous and emotionally worked-up raccoon.”
And Neither Can They Preach Them
“An unstructured sermon is like a jellyfish, all flesh and no bones. However, a sermon whose structure is too noticeable is like a skeleton, all bones and no flesh. Neither jellyfish nor skeletons made good sermons.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 60
And Then Sprayed a Little Extra
“So the meeting began with a financial report, which Bill Turner had prepared for them, the bottom line of which looked like somebody had been spraying it with Roundup.”
A Preacher and His Text
“We should extract the sweetness like a bee with a blossom; gnaw it like a dog with a bone; suck it as a child sucks an orange; and chew it as a cow chews its cud.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 57
The Problem with Fat Robins
“She was the kind of woman whose absolute support was freely and completely given, until it gave way like a saturated California hillside. Then it was mostly at the bottom with a car or two underneath. The final event that would cause the hillside to give way might be completely trivial—perhaps a robin landing too heavily—but once the business was underway, well, it was all mostly at the bottom. Chad had clearly and unmistakably lied to her daughter. This was a breach of trust not to be endured. It was clear. It was unambiguous. It was a fat robin. It was clearly time to act.”
And Not What We Would Like It to Have Said
“It is very important that we determine what the text meant when it was first spoken or written. E.D. Hirsch is right to emphasize that ‘a text means what its author meant.’”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 55
Like Dew on the Roses
“What a tangle! Pastoral snarls are like the mercies of God—they are new every morning.”
Which Limits Personal Anecdotes
“And all of us have to preach on death before we have died.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 54
Helps Them Keep Well
“Robert walked out of the 7-Eleven with an order of cheese pump nachos, a hot dog, and a couple of packets of those chocolate thingies with a half-life of seventy-five years”