Beware The Vices Of Preaching!
Let’s be difficult, preacher-brothers! Your tart, if paradoxical, rejoinder is, “That’s easy.” But perhaps we are not thinking of the same thing. What is harder than to catch ourselves in those pulpit vices that mar our preaching? “Be willing to ‘unlearn,’ and especially to cure yourself of noticeable faults,” urged Dr. James Black in The Mystery of Preaching.
Easy? One wonders if the man who says it has seriously tried.
Our inventory of these “noticeable faults” will be restricted to those that fall under the head of sermon delivery. Perhaps another time we can tackle those which are linked more particularly with the preacher’s personality or with the organization of the sermon.
Chief among the mischief-makers are, quite obviously, the Speech Culprits.
1. Poor volume control. Speaking too softly is an imposition on the courtesy of the hearers, while speaking too loudly is an affront to their dignity. The aim should be (assuming normal hearing) to make every person present hear every word uttered. Experienced speakers have found it helpful, when speaking to a large congregation in an assembly room to which they are unaccustomed, to fix attention on some person among those farthest away from the pulpit and so address him that he will hear without strain. The opposite of “too soft” is just plain “too loud.” “Scream no more” was John Wesley’s pithy, peremptory counsel to one of his younger preachers. Few preachers worth their salt can proclaim the Gospel without an elevation of voice, but this scarcely justifies a verbal version of assault and battery on the congregation. Noise is not to be equated with anointing. Unction yields to no exact measurement in decibels. One small but important point often overlooked: it is slightly maddening to a congregation when the preacher lets his voice drop low at the end of his sentences. The sentence-ending should be handled with change of pitch, not an extreme change of volume.
2. Slovenly enunciation. We in the United States are notorious for this defect of speech, and far too often our ministers rise little, if at all, above the prevailing cultural level. Let the preacher put himself to this test: “How do I actually pronounce the phrase ‘months and months’?” Most of us, most of the time, will be found saying it “munsenmunse,” all run together in an atrociously unarticulated mumble! My own experience, especially that which has come through conversation with the hard-of hearing, fully confirms James Black’s contention that “it is not loudness so much as good articulation that makes a speaker heard.” Needless to say, no one has any orchids to offer to the pedantic brother who has swung to the opposite extreme, and, like some telephone operators, pronounces “three” as if it were spelled “tha-ree” and “nine” as if it deserved an additional syllable, “nine-a.”
3. Faulty pitch and pace. Wesley, in a fascinating and perceptive passage, warns his younger ministers against getting stuck with a “tone” in their preaching. The several tones against which he inveighs include the “womanish, squeaking tone,” the “singing or canting tone,” the “high, swelling, theatrical tone,” and (who has not heard it?) “an odd, whimsical, whining tone.” The answer to all of this is, of course, the practice of modulation. The trained voice of the speaker, no less than that of the singer, is capable of organ-like control. It is difficult, I believe, to improve on this advice: speak naturally, with a variety of pitch and pace that will alike keep the voice of the preacher and the ears of the listeners from tiring. At all costs, shun a monotone.
Add now to the speech culprits the Gesture Goblins If pulpit gesturing is an art, it yields to no rule of thumb. I heard Billy Sunday and I heard George Truett. Those who have had a like experience will know how complete was the disparity between them at this point. Sunday could be dervish-like—wildly uninhibited. Truett was more often statuesque. The gesture to be avoided is the meaningless one, or the artificial one (borrowed from some other preacher), or the excessively theatrical one (“excessive” meaning that there is neither mood nor situation to justify the exorbitant piece of acting). Obviously, the purely “manneristic” movement of the hands should be guarded against carefully. Here the gowned brethren have an advantage over the ungowned: they are not seen nervously fingering a watch-chain or (more often in the old days of cutaways) sending their roving hands feelingly over their not infrequently ample abdomens. Let preachers remember that visible details have strange power over listeners. The hand can be friend or foe to sermonic effectiveness.
And, finally, a word about the Redundancy Snares. For example, it is pointless to say, “Let me illustrate this.” Proceed with the illustration. If it is worth shucks it will be seen for what it is. Don’t begin preaching with an apology. If you are ill prepared, trust God’s mercy to help you make the best of it. Let God and the people judge in the end how poor or peerless the sermon was. Rarely say, “And now in conclusion,” and never say it twice! It is that sort of guile that has incited some cynic to define an optimist as “a man who reaches for his hat when the preacher says, ‘Now in conclusion.’ ” Be a life-long student of economy with words. Wordiness is usually the sign of shallowness.
Prayer is indispensable to the making of a preacher. But so is the verbal pruning knife!
PAUL S. REES
He that hath sent me is with me; he hath not left me alone; I do always the things that are pleasing to him (John 8:29; read vv. 12–36).
In a brief phrase our Lord sets up the perfect ideal for a man’s life. He makes the stupendous claim that he himself has lived up to this ideal, and that he has done so because of his relation to the Father. So he sets up the loftiest ideal for any believer today: “I do always the things that are pleasing to God.” This ideal has much to do with four notes in the music of Jesus’ life.
I. Spirituality, a term that needs redemption from abuse. To our Lord spirituality means, not asceticism, but the sort of heart purity that ever sees God, and gladly responds to his holy will. If somewhat like him you have like purity of heart, you see God everywhere: in the flower that blooms, in the march of history, in the sorrows of men, above the darkness of the blackest cloud; and you know that he is on the field when he is most invisible.
II. Subjection, a contrasting note in the music of our Lord’s daily life. Many a would-be great man boasts: “I thank God I am my own master.” Because such men have ignored the Kingship of God, we have all the wreckage and ruin that blights our poor earth today. But as a believer when you next face a difficult dispensation of God’s dealing look him in the face and exclaim: “Hallelujah!”
III. Sympathy, when our Lord faces a crowd, or a person in distress. Why? Because he is right with God, right with men, one by one, and right with himself. In Christ-like sympathy lies the way to the settlement of every problem in this world. Ah, believe me, our sorrows are more felt up in heaven than here on earth. In Christ we behold the perfect sympathy of the One who ever did what was pleasing to God.
IV. Strength. We think of his weakness and frailty, but there never was anyone so mighty as our Lord. Hear him say: “I am King for I have faced the enemies of mankind—sin and sorrow, ignorance and death—and my foot is upon the neck of every evil. All authority is given unto me.”
Ah, my brother, here is the pattern for you. Here is the ideal. How can you fulfill it? Let the Apostle answer: “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” If by the power of the Spirit Christ is in you, he will keep you ever aware of God’s nearness. From hour to hour he will take your will, blend it with his own, and then remove all that ever makes it hard to say, “God’s will be done.”—From The World’s Great Sermons, Funk & Wagnalls, 1908, X.
The God of our fathers raised up Jesus, whom ye slew and hanged on a tree. Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Saviour (Acts 5:30, 31a; read vv. 17–32).
The resurrection of Christ is a miracle, far beyond all the other Gospel miracles. What concerns us now is the meaning of this miracle. From the Bible the answer comes again and again: The resurrection of Christ is the creative act of God, a new revelation of his living power. From this resurrection fact spring three new hopes today.
I. A New Hope for the Believer, the hope of a resurrection to a new quality of life. This is what Paul kept preaching: “Do not hold the Resurrection far off, as a fact for some future hour when God shall call forth the dead. See in it a fact with power for today.” This lesson Paul learned on the Damascus road: the assurance of a risen life here and now. For this new life, Christ-created and Christ-governed, the world is looking today; it is life that comes to the believer through the Resurrection Gospel.
II. A New Hope for the Church. I need not describe what we see today at home and abroad: in Russia and elsewhere, chaos and dread. The hope for the Church still rests in God, and the power he has revealed in the Risen Christ. The faith that makes believers mighty is not an artificial creation of our own fancy; it is the response to the vision of God’s power in the resurrection of his Son.
Is anything too hard for such a Risen Lord? Is it beyond the power of the Church to meet victoriously any evil, however deeply entrenched? Power to engage in any crusade, no matter how stupendous? Is anything God wills beyond the resources of the Church for which he lives in Christ, raised from the dead and now exalted to be a Prince and a Saviour?
III. A New Hope for the World. Who can fitly describe the world as he beholds it today? In Russia and elsewhere moral confusion abounds, with many a cause for alarm. But why do we in the Church not look up to God? What does the Resurrection say to such a world as this? Does it not declare that in God there is power? Now that we seem to have reached the end of our resources, we are only at the beginning of our resources in him whom God raised from the dead and exalted to be a Prince and Saviour.
That is what we need today. He can save us only as we accept His rule. When Jacob Boehm, the Christian mystic, was dying, his ears were attuned to the harmonies of heaven. “Open the windows,” he whispered with his last breath, “and let in more of that music!” What music? That of the Easter hope.—From The Victory of God, London, 1921.
Let not your heart by troubled.… I go to prepare a place for you … that where I am, there ye may be also (John 14:1–3; read vv. 1–31).
The Introduction has to do with the most beloved chapter in God’s Book, and with the Saviour’s answers to our perennial question about what lies beyond.
I. The Confidence that Life Follows Death. Not a sunset, but a sunrise! Some day we are going to exchange the frail tents in which we live for the house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Heaven is a place, not a state of mind. Somewhere in God’s wonder world there is a place that Jesus calls the Father’s house, into which we are to go and see him, to be with him and with those whom we have loved and lost a while.
II. The Freedom from Earthly Shackles. Heaven is but another name for home. When death comes it is passing out of one room called “life” into a larger abiding place called “eternity,” which is the Father’s house. In it are many abiding places. In this life many of us keep moving from place to place, but yonder there is an abiding place. Our life here is marred by our shortcomings and choked ideals, frustrated ambitions and thwarted plans. There we shall be free from all the handicaps that characterize us here.
Yonder we shall catch up with reality, and be free from earthly shackles. “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord.” Here we learn that death releases us, and that the joy of creating and serving, of loving and lifting, goes on with us into the land that is fairer than day.
III. The Opportunity for a Wider Ministry. A life awaits us in which there shall be an unfolding of all our best powers and possibilities. Here we struggle for knowledge, purity, and happiness. There we shall know as we are known, be pure as He is pure, with contentment and satisfaction and blessedness, through seeing the King face to face, and being reunited with those we have loved and lost a while.
When the enraged people of France put to death Louis XVII, there was left a little boy who would have become Louis XVIII. Him they put in prison. As the lad grew older, evil companions would suggest some vicious thought or vulgar word. He would stand at full height and say: “No, I will not think that. I cannot say that. I was born to be a king!”
That is the thought I leave with you. You cannot spend your life on trivialities, on collecting material substance. You were born to be a king. If you listen softly Jesus will say: “Let not your heart be troubled.… In my Father’s house are many mansions.… I go to prepare a place for you.… I will come again and receive you unto myself.”—From The Mighty Saviour, Abingdon Press. 1952, pp. 141–54.
Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the firstfruits of them that slept (1 Cor. 15:20).
Note that word “now”! Every Lord’s Day reminds us anew that the Cross was not the end of the Gospel, but soon led to a glorious beginning, for which we all thank God today, and shall do so evermore.
I. The Resurrection of Christ Vindicates the Cross to All Eternity. After the brutal show of sin on Calvary, holy men rested on their Sabbath Day. What else could they do but wait on their God? In a sense that agelong warfare of sin against God still goes on. But the Resurrection shows us once for all that the final victory rests with God.
II. The Resurrection Reveals the Suffering of the Cross as the Pathway to Glory. Here in this world is something vastly worse than suffering. This is the inability to see above the suffering, the refusal to see that anything glorious lies beyond. Beyond the darkness of Good Friday the dying Redeemer beheld the brightness of Easter Morn, and the remainder of the New Testament throbs with the same Christian hope. So do the church of Christ and the heart of every believer in Christ today.
III. The Resurrection Means that God’s Final Word Is a Word of Life. What we believe about the Cross and the Resurrection depends on what we believe about Christ. On the cross and in his resurrection glory Christ is our perfect, sinless Representative. Because he lives, we too shall live. We may now have a sense of being lost in a wilderness of hatred and fear. But we can follow Christ with confidence, because by faith we have seen beyond the blackness of Good Friday to the brightness of Easter Day.
Christ is risen! Hallelujah! Therefore we have no fear of committing ourselves to the darkness. By faith we can walk the way of the Cross because by faith we have seen beyond the Cross.—From Beneath the Cross of Jesus, Abingdon Press, c. 1961, pp. 82–92.
