Theology That Bites Back
“There is truth in the belief that much of the best thinking and preaching of the land is done in obscure parishes and by unfamous preachers . . . To set one’s heart on being popular is fatal to the preacher’s best growth. To escape from that desire one needs to know that the men who are in no sense popular favorites do much of the very best work of the ministry.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, pp. 156-157
“Often the horse knows the rider better than the rider knows the horse.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 155
“Trust the people to whom you preach more than most ministers do.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 154
“However difficult it may be to do it, it is clearly recognized that men ought to preach so that the wisest and the simplest alike can understand and get the blessing.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 153
“There are two effects of every sermon, one special, in the enforcement of a single thought, or the inculcation of a single duty; the other general, in the diffusion of a sense of the beauty of holiness and the value of truth.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 148
“It is not [the preacher’s] business to despair of anybody.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 148
“A parish of critics would be killing, but a critic here and there is a tonic.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 147
“These three rules seem to have in them the practical sum of the whole matter. I beg you to remember them and apply them with all the wisdom that God gives you. First. Have as few congregations as you can. Second. Know your congregation as thoroughly as you can. Third. Know your congregation so largely and deeply that in knowing it you shall know humanity.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 143
“It is a strange thing to say, but when the number of any public body exceeds that of forty or fifty, the whole assembly has an element of joyous childhood in it, and each member revives at times the glad, mischievous nature of his schoolboy days.”
Arthur Helps, as quoted in Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 139
“I have known many ministers who were frank and simple and unreserved with other people for whom they did not feel a responsibility, but who threw around themselves a cloak of fictions and reserves the moment that they met a parishioner.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 138
