“My earnest advice to you is that you never make the attempt to extemporize without being sure of your matter. Of all the defects of utterance I have ever known the most serious is having nothing to utter” (Alexander from Thoughts on Preaching, as quoted in Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 442).
Preach Like You’re Working
“The preacher should be careful of his health, not only on other accounts, but because speaking, real speaking, demands a high degree of nervous energy and power of endurance” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 439).
If You Would Speak, Write
“Both the beginner in oratory and the experienced ready speaker, must constrain themselves to write, much and carefully” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 435)
So Make Sure It Fits
“What fits exactly, we repeat, can be easily remembered” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 432).
The Order Is Important
“You are free to break the rules once the rules have broken you” (Wiersbe, Preaching and Teaching With Imagination, p. 232)
Preaching Wheels Up
“This exaltation of soul, rising at times to rapture, can never be fitly described; but the speaker who does not in some measure know what it means, was not born to be a speaker” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 428).
Denial Prep
“Fanatical or slothful men who say that they never make any preparation, deceive themselves” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 426).
In Deadly Earnest, not Acting Like It
“To do so is not natural, it is to be an actor; and acting, however skilful and however much admired, is in the pulpit a crime, — and, as the diplomatists say, not only a crime, but worse, a blunder” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 418).
An Eye That Actually Sees
“The most potent element in the delivery of a real orator is often the expressiveness of the eye” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 415).
The Authority is Not in Technique
“Moreover, men of high talent can speak effectively in any way. Luther laid on his back, bound hand and foot, would have preached impressively” (Broadus, Preparation and Delivery, p. 407).