Theology That Bites Back
“The real question about a sermon is, not whether it is extemporaneous when you deliver it to your people, but whether it ever was extemporaneous, whether there ever was a time when the discourse sprang freshly from your heart and mind” ().
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 130
“With regard to the vexed question of written or unwritten sermons I have not very much to say. I think it is a question whose importance has been very much exaggerated, and the attempt to settle which with some invariable rule has been unwise, and probably has made stumbling speakers out of some who might have been effective readers, and stupid readers out of men who might have spoken with force and fire. The different methods have their evident different advantages.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 129
“The positive evil [of imitation] comes from the fact that that what is worst in any man is always the most copiable.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 127
“The range of sermon-writing gives it a capacity of various vices which no other kind of composition can presume to rival.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 126
“A style which is really a man’s own will grow as long as he grows.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 126
“He who cannot write anything well cannot write a sermon well, although we often think he can. To him who has no literary skill all subjects are alike. If you cannot swim, it matters not whether there be twenty or forty feet of water.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 126
“Never draw out of a text a meaning which you know is not there. If your text has not your truth in it, find some other text which has. If you can find no text for it in the Bible, then preach on something else.”
Phillips Brooks, The Joy of Preaching, p. 125
“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
“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
“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
