“The man who serves his God with his whole heart is apt to forget his surroundings, and to fling himself so completely into his work that the whole of his nature comes into action, and even his humour, if he be possessed of that faculty, rushes into the battle” (Spurgeon, Eccentric Preachers, pp. 75-76).
Don’t Toy with the Text
“Moderation is not the virtue of many. If one man casts a sprinkling of the salt of wit into his sermon straightway some half idiotic brother must set the people grinning all the sermon through. If one, to whom it is natural, is so carried away by his earnestness that his action becomes at time …
The Holy Spirit and Sermon Prep
We must first smite and slay the extempore bias. From at least the time of Rousseau, we have been taught that that which is spontaneous is that which is honest, fresh, sincere, and untrammeled. On the other end, we have been taught that that which is prepared beforehand is stiff and insincere. But like many …
Pulpit Sins
Pulpit sins can be divided into two general categories — sins of attitude and sins of delivery. Mechanics of the pulpiteering arts want to reduce everything to the latter, but the real adjustments in our day have to begin with the former. This is nothing less than the classic Pauline division between credenda and agenda, …
Preaching and Cultural Transformation
Early on in Moby Dick, Melville has this great statement about preaching, comparing it to the bow of a ship. “What could be more full of meaning? — for the pulpit is ever this earth’s foremost part; all the rest comes in its rear; the pulpit leads the world. From thence it is the storm …
What Preaching Is
Preaching is the authoritative declaration of the Word and will of God, with the intention of revealing Christ to the hearers. Christ is seen through a window, and not painted on the wall. The medium of the preacher is to be Windex, not oil base paint. This definition has three components — the manner, the …
Earthy Examples in the Pulpit
“No creature, truly represented, is common or unclean. It is only a sort of Pharisaism of taste which makes it so” (Spurgeon, Eccentric Preachers, p. 38).
And Some Want to be More Correct Than the Multiplication Table
“If you will be as dry as sawdust, as devoid of juice as the sole of an old shoe, and as correct as the multiplication table, you shall earn to yourself a high degree in the great university of Droneingen, but if you wake up your soul and adopt an energetic delivery, and a natural, …
Whether Fine Foppery or Foppish Finery
“The centre is not here. They that wear soft raiment are in king’s houses, but the King of kings cares nothing for the finery and foppery of ecclesiastical parade” (Spurgeon, Eccentric Preachers, p. 25).
Still a Shame
“If gold ruste, what shal iren do?For if a preest be foul, on whom we truste,No wonder is a lewed man to ruste;And shame it is, if a prest take keep,A shiten shepherde and a clene sheep.” (Chaucer, Canterbury Tales, ll. 500-504)