In a day when everyone’s cause is a “holy crusade,” when a cacophony of voices shrills the latest “ism” continually through the mass media, when no one can finish a sentence without being interrupted, and when false christs appear on five continents at once, there remains a constraining and compelling need for one more voice. It is the voice of God which, Scripture tells us, is as the voice of thunder and of many waters.
“So long as the Church pretends or assumes to preach absolute values, but actually preaches relative and secondary values, it will merely hasten the process of disintegration (of our civilization). We are asked to turn to the Church for our enlightenment, but when we do so we find that the voice of the Church is not inspired. The voice of the Church today we find is the echo of our own voices.… When we consult the Church we hear only what we ourselves have said.… There is only one way out of the spiral and the way out is the sound of a voice, not our voice, but a voice coming from something beyond ourselves, in the existence of which we cannot disbelieve. It is the duty of the pastors to hear this voice, to cause us to hear it, and to tell us what it says.” This comment is from one of the most provocative editorials ever published in Fortune magazine (gauged by reader response), appearing in January, 1940. It dealt with the churches and the tensions of peace and war, and the basic tenet of the editorial is as valid today as it was at the beginning of World War II. When all maxims of Christian education, techniques, of visitation evangelism, skills of linguistics and other forms of outreach have been exhausted, the truth remains that it is by “the foolishness of preaching” that men believe and the Church is built. The hearing of man’s word will not transform but only deform, as our century bears eloquent testimony. If a life-changing Word is to be heard, it must be a supernatural Word, the Word that was in the beginning and that will outlast the universe. Nothing else is powerful enough to shake man loose from sin and self-obsession.
It is not easy to preach the Gospel in America in the year A.D. 1961. Problems of communication are mounting. How, to put it in the idiom of some of the younger set, does a “square” reach a “cat”? How is the Gospel made relevant to the modern issue, then attuned to the modern ear? Many a day has passed since the United States government was concerned about the moral turpitude of the Countess of Cathcart; and Mrs. Grundy’s ghost seems to have been laid forever. So completely have the mores of society been tipped upside down that, as Dean Robert E. Fitch suggests, more sympathy exists for the murdered than for his victim, and more for the adulterer than for the one whose love is betrayed.
Who speaks for God in such a time? Who points the way to Christ and his cross? Confident that the apostolic preaching of the Word of God is the Church’s paramount commission, CHRISTIANITY TODAY presents in this issue the first of a series of sermons, chosen by outstanding homileticians throughout the nation for brilliant effectiveness in proclaiming the message of Jesus Christ, and here published for the first time. Dr. Andrew W. Blackwood, many years professor of homiletics at Princeton Theological Seminary and author of many books on preaching, heads the list of able teachers of homiletics in seminaries and Bible schools engaged in this effort. The others will analyze sermons they themselves have nominated; Dr. Blackwood will comment on the analysts and their analyses.
Faithful preaching is one of the high and holy traditions of the Church. From the apostles Peter and Paul down through John Chrysostom, Ambrose, Savonarola, Knox, Whitefield, Wesley, and on into our own time, God has raised up voices to speak his truth. May the series to follow plant seeds that will reap rich harvests for the Lord of glory in 1961.
Turn the page for the first of the sermons nominated for CHRISTIANITY TODAY’SSelect Sermon Series by a dozen professors of preaching in American seminaries. Each month CHRISTIANITY TODAY will print a sermon representative of evangelical preaching in America, with comments by a leading homiletician.
Turn to the News Section for a feature on “the pursuit of good preaching”—and discover the practical difficulties faced by the divinity professors CHRISTIANITY TODAY assigned to make these nominations.
Next month: A sermon chosen from the preaching tradition of the Reformed Church in America.
