“Although teaching is a spiritual gift and a great privilege, it brings with it many dangers”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 78
Fire in the Bones
“The pressure should begin to build inside us, until we feel we can contain it no longer. It is then that we are ready to preach. The whole process of sermon preparation, from beginning to end, was excellently summed up by an African American preacher who said, ‘First, I reads myself full, next I thinks myself clear, next I prays myself hot, and then I lets go.’”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 73
Congregations Also Know
“Every preacher knows the difference between a heavy sermon which trundles along the runway like an overloaded passenger jet and never gets airborne, and a sermon which has ‘what a bird has, a sense of direction and wings.’”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 73
Although Some Still Do
“Wordy preachers can hide careless thinking with clever speech; it is much more difficult to get away with a cover-up on paper.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 71
Start the Journey at the Right End
“We need to start where the people are, rather than where we hope to take them.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 70
The Size of the Front Porch
“A good introduction serves at least three purposes.First, it awakes interest, stimulates curiosity and makes us long to know God’s perspective on this matter. Secondly, it enables the listeners to sense that they are listening to someone who is qualified to speak for God from this text . . . Thirdly, it introduces the dominant idea and leads the hearers into it”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, pp. 69-70
Circling the Airport
“Some of us seem incapable of concluding anything, let alone our sermons! We circle around, like a plane without instruments on a foggy day, unable to land.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 66
No, Not at All
“Every preacher must be constantly on the lookout for illustrations. Not that we read books and listen to people only to collect sermon material!”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 65
Making Illustrations Walk on Their Hind Legs
“Illustrations transform the abstract into the concrete, the ancient into the present, the unfamiliar into the familiar, the general into the particular, the vague into the precise, the unreal into the real, and the invisible into the visible” ().
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, p. 63
Use All the Crayons in Your Box
What we put in words we must always supplement with images or illustrations. The word ‘illustrate’ means to illuminate, to throw light on a dark object, and this is what our sermon illustrations should do. People find it very difficult to handle abstract ideas; we need to convert them either into symbols (as in mathematics) or into pictures.”
Stott, The Challenge of Preaching, pp. 62-63