Half a century ago, as a mere stripling out of college, it was my good fortune to become associated with the beginnings of a manufacturing company which now sells its products around the world. Although I have risen through the ranks to major responsibility, the nature of my work has remained essentially the same. For ten months of each year I have traveled among the main cities of the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific and north of the Mason and Dixon Line. For only two months of each year have I ever had the chance to worship in my home church. On the majority of Sundays (some two thousand across the long span of time), I have attended Protestant public worship somewhere in the northern section of our country, always once, sometimes twice and, on occasion, three times. Out of what may well be a unique experience as a layman, I submit certain observations as I retire from active business.

If there has been a penalty in having spent such limited time in my own local church, there has been much advantage in worshipping with fellow Christians in different parts of our land. Never shall I forget, during the first year of my pilgrimage, the time I was in a suburban church listening to a young preacher who had been highly recommended to me by a friend. It was an electrifying experience. There have been many other inspiring experiences, sometimes in very unlikely areas, in which the power of the Christian fellowship has taken on light and meaning for the worshipper.

Sorting out the notes which I have preserved in my visitation of Protestant churches in the northern states across the years, I find five impressions, the first independent and the remaining four related to each other.

RISE OF THE FRINGE SECTS

The first impression concerns the rise of the fringe sects, those worshiping groups which have broken away or originated apart from the traditional churches in search for a greater simplicity of faith and worship. A half century ago these groups were hardly noticeable in the scene of the small, medium-sized, or large American city. Now they are conspicuous in the cities, and are purchasing and displacing churches of more familiar Christian tradition which have yielded to the suburban appeal. Members gather by the hundreds Sunday mornings, afternoons, and evenings, each frequently carrying a Bible. I was astonished recently to find this condition in a city of less than one hundred thousand and known for its world-famous university. These groups have little sense of formal worship. The leader is apt to wear a light grey suit and a loud tie: there are chatty announcements in the service, dance tune hymns, a crude sermon—all offensive to good taste. Yet in such groups of people, obviously comprising the lower income class, the atmosphere of devotion is very real, the sense of joyous faith highly apparent, and a radiancy of spirit unmistakable—much more so than in many of the historic denominational churches. In proportion to their means, the congregations of the sects provide generous offerings. They are “given to hospitality,” they surround the stranger with friendly greetings and ask him home to Sunday dinner. Furthermore, they faithfully send missionaries to many parts of the world.

It is difficult to measure the significance of the rapid rise of these sects in the last few decades. Does it imply more than a search for security in a century that has known terror and destruction in such a frightful degree? Or are these groups finding and expressing for everyday living a doctrine of our faith which organized Christianity as a whole has allowed to lapse?

LARGE LOCAL CHURCHES

The second significant development in the last half century has been the remarkable multiplication of local churches with large memberships. In 1910 the denomination in which I am enrolled had less than half a dozen churches with a membership of or above two thousand. In 1960 the same denomination contained more than one hundred such churches while the churches with a membership of around fifteen hundred had multiplied even faster. All the chief Protestant denominations have experienced the same speedy development of the large parish, particularly in suburban areas. There are, of course, obvious advantages in the larger units of membership, namely, more plentiful budgets, more widespread programs, and more adequate equipment. But there is one decided disadvantage: how can any preacher act as a pastor to a multitude?

In our Protestant tradition, it has been established as sound principle that the pastoral office and the preaching office are best expressed when blended in one individual. There are exceptions, as in the case of a gifted preacher who seldom calls and a gifted pastor who has obvious pulpit deficiencies; but, in general, the history of the local parish indicates that these exceptions prove the rule. With the swift increase in membership, a preacher becomes engulfed as a pastor. What is the answer? Have a multiple staff? That is doubtful. Just as the staff of a college or bank or business enterprise must have someone at the top to assume chief responsibility, so must the staff of the large parish. The man at the top has to be the preacher and when he cannot be the pastor also the whole parish loses. Indeed a good case can be made out for the relative ineffectiveness of the large church. It is better by far, and it means more active workers, more sacrificial giving, more adequate pastoral care, and no less effective preaching, when a church will found other churches rather than gather members to its own ranks. Four churches of 800 members each can offer a more significant witness than one church of 3,200 members. The fetish of size has damaged Protestantism because it has lessened the possibility of adequate pastoral work.

DEVELOPMENT OF FORMAL WORSHIP

Another noticeable change across the decades has been the extensive development of formal, ritualistic worship. Today the village church has its vested choir, even its lighted candles. So far has this process been carried that here, there, and everywhere in the American scene, at least north of the Mason and Dixon Line, it is often difficult for occasional visitors like myself to tell whether he is worshiping in a Presbyterian, Congregational, Methodist or Episcopalian church. The architecture, chancel, lectern, pulpit, prayers, responses, order of service, robed choirs, stained glass, and all else are very much alike in all four. Whether this represents gain, one cannot be sure. Back of any ritual is the one who conducts it. The sons and daughters of John Calvin, John Robinson, and John Wesley inherited and passed on to us a freedom of thought and form which provide a constant challenge in expression. There are no prayers like the prayers that come out of a deep spiritual experience. In many a church I have received the blessing of such utterance. Ritual, too, is a challenge, when its words are read as though for the first time in mingled awe and gratitude, those wonderful words of the Gospel. But too often, alas, the one who reads the prayers does not invest them with any note of reality and authority. So I am not completely reconciled to the trend which has engulfed us.

ENLARGEMENT OF PARISH PROGRAMS

Parallel with the rise of size and ritual among our Protestant churches is the development of programs. In the early period of my itinerant worship across the country, a church with a seven-day program was so rare that it was almost unknown, and well-equipped church buildings now found by the hundred had scarcely appeared. Morning and evening worship services, the Sunday School, and young peoples’ societies—that was Sunday’s program, and the remaining days of the week seldom included more than Wednesday night prayer meeting and the meeting of the women’s organization. The preacher-pastor was supposed to produce two sermons a week, consecrate his mornings to study and preparation, his afternoons and evenings to calling on parish families in a steady annual round which included all the sick and shut-ins. His occasional committee meetings did not take up much of his time. One never heard of nervous breakdowns among the clergy in 1910. How the picture has changed! Consider the printed program the ushers distribute to those who enter for worship at any well-organized church today! What a list of activities through the week! What an appeal for every age group! The beginnings of this can be traced to the period immediately after World War I which revealed on a convincing scale the power of mass appeal based on psychological principles. Ecclesiastical chieftains swiftly learned from the advertising experts, and blueprints began to flow to the parish minister’s desk in increasing volume. Quotas and pamphlets for membership gain, benevolence budgets, more modern teaching methods in the church school, this approach and that approach in the community, youth work, men’s work, women’s work, work among the sick, the preaching of sermons and the offering of prayers—all present a confusing multitude of directions and suggestions from central headquarters to the preacher-pastor of today. If the large parish prevents a pastor from being a pastor because of the sheer weight of numbers, I submit that this deluge prevents a preacher from being a preacher for the same reason. How can a preacher find time for proper sermon preparation when he must carry so many duties?

DECLINE OF EXPOSITORY PREACHING

The multiplicity of demand upon the minister of the local church, be it small or large, means that there is not sufficient time for preparation of sermons that are fruitful and edifying. In the decades of listening to thousands of sermons, I have detected several strata of influence much like the various civilizations an archaeologist uncovers in his excavating. The first decade was dominated by the denunciations of the so-called social gospel. Having read my Bible daily through a lifetime, I am aware of the messages of the prophets; but through those opening years I rarely heard a pulpit message based upon them which ministered to my own need. I was gaining promotion after promotion until I was supervising the work of several thousand men and women of varied creed and color. But there was little that I heard from any pulpit which helped me in my terrific responsibility. During the last decade I have had to listen to many sermons which assure me that if I think enough about success I will be a success, I will rid myself of my tensions, I will overcome my fears, and I will achieve self-mastery. The source of this frightful travesty of the Christian Gospel can be easily traced.

However, every now and then, and sometimes in inconspicuous pulpits, I have heard messages that meant much to me and my need. Invariably they were of the expository type. The preacher selected a text or passage from the Bible, related it to a fundamental human need in his opening sentences, and enlarged upon it in all its helpful suggestions throughout his sermon. Always I left such a church on Sunday wearing seven-league boots. Is that not the test of effective preaching! Why are such sermons so rarely heard? Sooner or later they cover the whole range of human need. But why are they neglected? I believe the reason lies in the multiplied demands made upon the present-day minister which rob him of time for adequate pastoral visitation and uninterrupted sermon preparation.

From time to time some veteran of the cloth will assert that the average level of preaching today is higher than it was yesterday. I would challenge that verdict. There were few mighty men in the pulpit a half a century ago, and there are few mighty men today. Such preachers are exceptional in any decade. The Christian fellowship is obliged to depend upon preachers of ordinary rather than extraordinary capacity. Were those preachers granted the time to become acquainted with human nature in their parish calling and learn the message of the Bible in their study and apply one to the other, there would be great reward for those who worship and listen. It is good to know that there are preachers who, in spite of the obstacles in their way, have achieved this combination. Across the last 50 years, two of them have never failed me whenever I have heard them. The first preacher served a small church just off one of the main highways of our largest city. There, Sunday after Sunday, he gave marvelously uplifting expositions of the Bible to a tiny congregation. Why was his church never crowded? I could never solve that mystery, for it seemed to me that the whole world should have been seeking him out. Now he has passed away. The other preacher served for almost three decades in a famous suburb in the Middle West. His church was always crowded. Today he lives in retirement in a university town and still carries on his ministry as a supply. It happens that one of my business associates was a member of his congregation for many years, and as we left the church together one Sunday morning he turned to me and said, “I have never needed a psychiatrist when I can hear such messages once a week.” As a Christian layman who has faced many problems in our industrial order, I understood and agreed with my associate’s remark.

SALESMANSHIP LAY AND CLERICAL

Throughout my lengthy career in industry, my work has had to do mainly with salesmen, sales methods, and sales conventions. Week by week and month by month, for over half a century, I have had the responsibility of directing an enterprise which now has vast proportions. In the earlier days when I compared the salesmanship that I listened to on Sundays with the salesmanship I dealt with on weekdays, I was able to mediate many hints and suggestions for the latter from the former. Preachers of an earlier period had learned how to present the claims of the Christian Gospel in simple, effective style, relate that Gospel to the needs and problems of human experience, and strive for a verdict. Indeed I gladly admit that what professional success I have had in directing salesmanship I owe mainly to studying the techniques of the preachers of my youth. Today I would say that the situation is reversed. Most preachers, particularly men younger than 50 years of age, would benefit if they studied the techniques of the speakers at a sales convention.

INFLUENCE ON THE FUTURE

The late John Foster Dulles, addressing a graduating class at a leading theological seminary in 1944, put this question: ‘What can the churches do to influence the pattern of the future?” His reply was, “My judgment is that their influence can be decisive.” These were the words of the most powerful and prominent Christian layman of our time. His judgment will be echoed by anyone who has had the chance, as I have had, to study the local Protestant churches across the areas of our own land. Now, as I cease my rather extensive itineracy and sit Sunday by Sunday in my home church, I give thanks for the countless fellowships of faith across our land and for those who guide and minister unto them. If I have written in criticism I write also in affection. Even in the world of the atom bomb, the message of Christianity abides. The influence of the churches can be decisive.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

Third in a Series

The broken grip of both Barth and Brunner on the theological mood of many German ministers and divinity students is due only in part to Bultmann’s neoliberal counterthrust. The stress and sting of World War II created a distinctive religious atmosphere, one which indelibly marked the spirit of the younger clergy.

Between the appearance of Barth’s Roemerbrief (1919) and the 1960s stand two generations of Protestant ministers. Those of the first generation, who were steeped and submerged in liberalism, heard Barth’s plea for special divine revelation sounding like a thunderbolt from above. Soon divinity students and young pastors told of their revolt against liberalism. “Barth saved us for the ministry,” they confessed, and they dedicated themselves to proclaim “the theology of the Word of God.”

When the second ministerial generation arose, in an era soon to be differentiated by its own peculiar outlook, the theological complex of the Continent had already largely embraced the “theology of crisis.” The tense struggle with National Socialism and the tragic events of World War II secretly shaped a harsh fate for Gennan Protestantism. Nazi antipathy toward outspokenly critical churchmen soon mounted to persecution and punishment of those who resisted government policy. The long tradition of a German Church enjoying special state privilege and public prestige was shattered. A national Lutheran and Reformed mind-set reaching back to the days of the Protestant Reformation was interrupted. These extraordinary developments distinctly colored the heritage and outlook of this later generation of German Protestant leaders in the twentieth century.

THE SHADOW OF HITLER

The “second generation” vividly recalls the anxious decades of Nazi hostility. When Hitler assumed power in 1933, National Socialist propaganda helped the “German Christians” (a scattering of extremists who were both theologically liberal and anti-Semitic) to control a number of churches in the newly-formed German Evangelical Church. Besides distorting the Gospel, these pro-Nazi leaders sought to make the Church a political instrument. Hitler Youth groups soon alienated young people from the churches. Faithful pastors were suspended from office, being reinstated only after congregational pressures. Martin Niemoeller, who had entered the ministry after a submarine command in World War I, sparked the resistance. Leading the newly-formed Pastors’ Emergency Fellowship, he helped to create and then presided over the Confessing Church. The Confessing Church was not only Lutheran. Many of its great leaders were Reformed (among them Karl Barth, Herman Hesse, Paul Humburg, and Ludwig Steil who later died in concentration camp), while others like Otto Dibelius represented a unionist theology. In the face of threats by National Socialists and the “German Christians,” the Confessing Church’s first Synod met in a Reformed church in Barmen in May, 1934, and in a theological declaration rejected any other source than divine revelation for church proclamation. When the subordination of the territorial churches to the German Evangelical Church was attempted, the protest of territorial bishops against subjection to an imperial bishop led to temporary arrest of Bishop Theophil Wurm of Württemberg and Bishop Hans Meiser of Bavaria for opposition to the “German Christians.” Deposed by an illegally-called Synod, Bishop Wurm was interned in his home by police until Hitler several weeks later was persuaded to restore him to office.

By 1935 the National Socialist State was intervening more directly in church affairs, exercising greater financial control, and bringing ecclesiastical cases under government determination. Anti-ecclesiastical propaganda became sharper in 1936. The Gestapo prevented leading churchmen from preaching, and forbade dispatching of delegates to ecumenical conferences. Niemoeller was arrested in July, 1937, remaining until 1945 a personal prisoner of Hitler in the concentration camps at Sachsenhausen and Dachau. The National Socialist State now was determined to harass and then to destroy the Church. Arrests, deportations, and attacks followed in 1938 and 1939. Training divinity students and collecting offerings became increasingly difficult. When World War II began, about 45 per cent of the clergy were called to military service, leaving parish work only to the old and weak. After 1940, no paper was allotted for Bibles, and after 1941 most religious publications ceased and the work of chaplains in the armed forces was impeded and systematically sabotaged.

A BROKEN STATUS

In West Germany, persecution of the Church is, of course, now a thing of the past. The 1950 census disclosed that 96.3 per cent of the Germany people, despite the methodical Nazi hostility to Christianity, still regard themselves as Christians. But Protestantism at mid-century held remarkably different status than it held earlier in the century. No longer did it exist in the favored form of a State Church. Almost everywhere it was confronted with indifference on the part of the multitudes whose acknowledged membership in the churches now meant astonishingly little. In Hamburg on Pentecost Sunday, 1960, a pastor preached a moving sermon on Acts 2 and the work of the Holy Spirit. Then, turning to the scant 75 worshipers present at one of the church’s high festivals in a city where multitudes have been baptized and confirmed, he remarked: “Ich bin ratlos!” (“I’m at the end of my rope!”).

[Under the Weimar Republic in 1919, Church and State were first separated in Germany, thus bringing the State Church to an end. From 1919–1924 the churches adopted new constitutions providing self-government. But in 1922 the German Evangelical Church Federation was formed by the territorial churches (the indigenous “peoples’ church”) which represented 62.7 per cent of the population. During the Nazi era, the Confessing Church was organized on an emergency basis. After World War II, German religious leaders passed up an opportunity to shape a genuinely free church situation. (Already in the second half of the nineteenth century, there had emerged Lutheran free churches as a protest movement against the “Prussian Union,” and Reformed free churches influenced by trends in the Netherlands in 1834 and later.) The territorial churches were no longer a State Church, under state controls such as still exist in Sweden; yet neither were they wholly free, the state continuing to appoint theological professors along with other faculty members at the state universities, and still collecting taxes to support these churches (even from citizens who are not members). The German Evangelical Church was abandoned in 1945, and a new Evangelical Church in Germany (EKD) replaced the emergency government of the Confessing Church. In its 1948 constitution, EKD declared itself a federation of Lutheran, Reformed, and Union “territorial churches.” In more recent years VELKD (United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Germany) has emerged as a somewhat more tightly knit organization of territorial churches of confessional emphasis.

[In 1950, the Evangelical Churches (EKD) embraced 51 per cent of the population in West Germany, 80 per cent in East Germany. The independent (free) churches in Germany represent less than one per cent of the population. Some 70,000 members of Lutheran Free Churches came into this movement from territorial churches without any confessional change, as did 8,000 members of Reformed Free Churches. But American evangelization was mostly responsible for other related religious bodies: 62,000 Baptists, 60,000 Methodists, 12,000 Evangelical United Brethren. (Seventh-day Adventists, Christian Scientists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses also had made German cities an evangelistic objective.)

[In 1933, Roman Catholics had represented only 32.5 per cent of the German population. But the partitioning of Germany bulked the Catholic population largely in West Germany: in 1950, Catholics represented 45 per cent of the population in West Germany, 17 per cent in East Germany. One third of the total German population is Catholic, and there is doubtless more Protestant-Catholic dialogue and liaison than in America. But Roman Catholic concentration in West Germany forces Protestantism to contend disadvantageously against an aggressive Catholic thrust for power.]

The speculative deformities of liberalism and the modern spirit of secularism had already encouraged much of the public’s disregard and disrespect for the Church as a unique divine organism. Despite enthusiasm at the elite professional level over a “springtime in theology,” the Protestant pulpit seemed to the masses to be mostly engaged in private intellectual dialogue with itself. When pagan rulers openly defied and demeaned, and privately restrained and repressed the Church, attendance sagged to new depths. Subtle Nazi indoctrination of youth additionally widened the chasm between the younger generation and the churches.

Although remaining Germany’s territorial church (or “people’s” church), Lutheranism has seen attendance at services slip (except at Christmas and Easter) to as low as one per cent of the membership in many cities in West Germany. This spiritual decline is all the more conspicuous alongside the nation’s remarkable industrial and economic recovery.

A SPARK OF HOPE

Something more than anxiety and sympathy is involved, however, in the standing West German awareness of the ongoing Communist repression, if not persecution, of believers still in the East Zone (both in Lutheran and in Union churches as the Church of Saxony West [Magdeburg] and the Church of Berlin-Brandenburg and Pommeranis), and of the Christian task force elsewhere behind the Iron Curtain. For the post-war inheritance of the “second generation” of German ministers includes a firm conviction that the Church in the East Zone in some local situations has become spiritually stronger through trial and persecution. Small fellowships of believers meeting in many homes have found a new theological and evangelistic earnestness, and they refuse to be cowed by fear of Communist tyrants. Nor are they discouraged by the defection of nominal church members. In Saxony, the churches lost 600,000 members in a single year, yet this detachment of those of nominal affiliation gave the Christian remnant a dedication and vitality that shames the indifferent church memberships in large West German cities where multitudes of adults, once confirmed, are seldom seen again in church between their wedding and funeral ceremonies. In the East Zone some dedicated Christian leaders are exhorting others: “Don’t just stay with your people, but stay with them to witness. The Communists can be converted!” The temper of this bold witness is described in Johannes Hamel’s A Christian in East Germany.

THEOLOGY AND FIRE

After World War II, the divinity student-mind was gripped by the “living theology” represented in a professor like Peter Brunner of Heidelberg, who lost his position at the university and suffered persecution by the Gestapo; or Helmut Thielicke of Hamburg, who was forbidden to teach theology and deprived of his university post through political pressures; or Hermann Sasse (now of North Adelaide, Australia), who, while on the faculty at Erlangen, was thrown into prison by the Nazis and rescued by American troops. Divinity scholars eagerly read the literary fragments of Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison), and of Paul Schneider, put to death by political persecutors. Bishop Johannes Lilje, then general secretary of the Lutheran World Convention, was arrested in 1944 for “defeatism” because he anticipated the conquest of Germany, and when rescued by American troops in 1945 he had already penned the manuscript Luther, Anbruch und Krisis der Neuzeit (English translation, Luther Now) in expectation of execution. Writings of churchmen who had endured suffering at the hands of the tyrants now took top place on the study desks of the clergy. Americans are only now being introduced to the sermons of Helmut Gollwitzer (now professor at Bonn) in the Berlin suburbs as Niemoeller’s successor at Dahlem where, until the Gestapo removed him from his pulpit and expelled him, Gollwitzer interpreted the congregation’s conflict with Nazism through powerful messages on the trial, passion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ (English translation, The Dying and Living Lord). Niemoeller’s influence has been compromised in recent years because of disappointment over his doctrinal laxity and a feeling that he tends to underestimate political perils in East Germany. To this day in Hamburg, where church attendance generally dips as low as in other German cities, Thielicke’s presence in the pulpit fills St. Michaelis Church with 2500 worshippers who come early for a seat, many being university students. Some leaders trace this following in part to public discernment that Thielicke, as shown by his resistance of the Nazis, is obviously not also a pulpit “voice for the state.” And some of these church leaders ask privately whether perchance the evasion of a wholly free church in Germany may not have compromised Christian opportunities. The German masses today think more readily of the Beast-State than of the God-State, and they seem more open to the voice of God that obviously lacks a government accent.

While this later generation saw plainly that the old liberalism lacked power to stand against National Socialism and was itself rooted theologically in crisis-theology, it drew inspiration mainly from thinkers who belonged to the era after Barth. The resistance of the German Confessional Church to Hitler’s anti-Semitism was in part a consequence of the renewed interest in biblical theology stirred up by Barth’s teaching, which nourished spiritual resources to oppose totalitarian forces. Barth himself became a symbol of resistance to National Socialism and was a leader in the church struggle against Hitler. He influenced the Confessing Church’s theological formulations expressed in the Barmen Confession. But the loss of his chair at Bonn, through his expulsion by Hitler in 1935, meant his removal to Basel, Switzerland, where the Protestant world followed at greater distance his contributions to dogmatics. Bultmann, too, although drastically redefining the content of the Gospel, nonetheless strenuously resisted the pagan frontal attack against the Gospel as such, and throughout the Third Reich maintained his open identification with the Church alongside his professorship at the state-supported university. Bultmann’s co-worker, Von Sodon, went still further; at the beginning of World War II he confessed the unorthodoxy of his theological beliefs to both colleagues and students and took higher ground.

A CHANGED ROLE

More and more this new generation of ministers measured the fortunes of Christianity in the modern world in apostolic dimensions. They saw a Church without worldly prestige and, worse yet, downgraded by many of her own members. The real Christian task force was a remnant, an ignored if not despised minority. A specially formative influence was this changed role of the German Church—no longer a State Church although the people’s church; no longer a majority influence in national life but supported only by a scant minority of its own members; its plight in a totalitarian age dramatized by imprisoned or exiled theologians and by pastors who suffered at the whim of dictators. The “second generation” has a desire to prepare the laity to meet the Communistic dialectic, a concern for the renewal of the Church, and an eagerness to reflect the Christian witness in a socially hostile age. This special outlook, however, is determined by ecclesiastical reaction to historical factors and by existential awareness of the Church’s actual situation in life, somewhat more than by conscious reorientation in terms of biblical theology. Nor has it broken through the limitations of contemporary theology in a rededication to biblical evangelism.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

“If Protestantism ever dies with a dagger in its back, the dagger will be the Protestant sermon.” So quotes Donald Miller, a New Testament professor, from an unknown critic of preaching in The Way to Biblical Preaching (Abingdon Press, 1957, p. 7).

Why such critical words?

Miller finds in the contempt some preachers hold for the task of preaching one reason for its low fortune today. In his book Fire in Thy Mouth, he excerpts a letter written by a ministerial student: “I consider preaching as a necessary evil. I shall do as much of it as my position demands in order to qualify for the other more important tasks on which my heart is set. But I could well wish to avoid preaching almost entirely” (Fire in Thy Mouth, Abingdon Press, 1954, p. 14). The sad fact is that many otherwise capable preachers hold such convictions about preaching. The world’s disdain for the preaching of the pulpit is evidence of the modern evaluation of preaching.

The “clown complex” found in some ministers also tends to cheapen preaching. Because rhetoricians, statesmen, politicians, salesmen, and preachers have known for centuries that humor is a devastatingly effective weapon, some men have elevated humor to first importance among homiletical devices. Dr. Ellis A. Fuller, the late president of Southern Baptist Seminary, appealed to his students to refrain from playing the fool, the jester, and instead to live the role for which they were divinely commissioned.

The major question to be faced by some ministers, as they rise in the morning, is ‘who am I today?,” as Pierce Harris noted in the Atlanta Constitution:

The modern preacher has to make as many visits as a country doctor, shake as many hands as a politician, prepare as many briefs as a lawyer, see as many people as a specialist. He has to be as good an executive as the president of a University, and as good a financier as a bank president, and in the midst of it all, he has to be so good a diplomat that he could umpire a baseball game between the Knights of Columbus and the Ku Klux Klan [used by permission].

Dr. Samuel W. Blizzard during two years of research and investigation uncovered some interesting facts concerning ministers (see “The Roles of the Rural Parish Minister, the Protestant Seminaries and the Sciences of Social Behavior,” November, December, 1955, pp. 383–92). Dr. Blizzard attempted to find the preacher’s image of himself. He asked 1300 ministers to arrange six roles or functions—preacher, pastor, priest, teacher, organizer, and administrator—in the order of importance according to what they believed to be an ideal pattern. The more than 700 who replied felt the minister is: first, a preacher; second, a pastor; third, a priest; fourth, a teacher; fifth, an organizer; sixth, and last, an administrator.

Blizzard also asked them to arrange the same six roles functionally, according to the amount of time they spent performing these roles. The results were: first, administrator; second, pastor; third, priest; fourth, organizer; fifth, preacher; sixth, teacher.

During an average ten and one-half hour workday, these men spent an average of only thirty-eight and one-half minutes preparing to preach. The time spent on administration was seven times more than that spent on preaching. They declared that preaching ought to be their primary function, but they had reduced it to a very weak fifth-rate role by actual conduct and performance.

The drought in the content of preaching today should surprise nobody once we frankly admit our generation’s aversion to study, to work, and to creative thinking. Whether because of laziness, plagiarism, or lack of understanding, modern preachers show an alarming preoccupation with topical preaching and shallow content. Professor Luccock strongly urged, “If you have anything peculiarly Christian to say at this hour, for God’s sake, say it! But if you can do nothing but mouth over the slogans of the street corner, or the usual banalities of the chamber of commerce, for God’s sake, keep still!” (In the Minister’s Workshop, Abingdon-Cokesbury, 1944, p. 39).

SIGNS OF HOPE

In spite of the obvious decadence of preaching, signs of hope are apparent. It is encouraging to sense a quickening of interest in preaching in the seminaries throughout our land. An investigation on theological education in 1935 reported preaching to be one of five departments common to 25 seminaries. Dr. Richard Niebuhr found that in 1955 preaching was still one of the five departments common to the same 25 seminaries. Niebuhr’s conclusion was that “the ‘classical’ disciplines [of theological education], Bible, Church History, Theology, Pastoral Care, and Preaching, must certainly be included in any theological curriculum.…” (H. Richard Niebuhr, Daniel Day Williams, and James M. Gustafson, The Advancement of Theological Education, Harper, 1957, p. 86.)

A further hopeful sign is the practice of outstanding preachers who dare to lock the doors of their offices in order to pray, to study, and to prepare sermons. They are encouraged to believe that when they find messages from the Lord, people will rejoice to hear those messages. They dare to believe that people will excuse them from many aimless activities which plague the modern preacher provided they are busy finding God’s message.

An additional sign is evident in the heart-hunger of laymen for pastors who preach the Word. Again and again laymen have volunteered their convictions that ministers should pray more, study more, and rightly divide the Word of Truth. Jesse Johnson, an attorney from Richmond, Virginia, has written:

To my mind, the first and greatest work of the man in the pulpit is to preach the Word. If God has called him at all, He has called him to do just that. Nothing else should come before it. Nothing else can take its place. Almost every other work in the church can be accomplished by laymen or laywomen, but preaching is still the preacher’s job” (Messages for Men, ed. H. C. Brown, Jr., Zondervan, 1960, p. 88).

Moreover, we may take hope in some facts often overlooked in analyzing Blizzard’s report. While Blizzard has pointed up the alarming neglect of preaching by preachers, he has also presented documentary proof that all the combined pressures, programs, and problems of these preachers have been unable to convince them that preaching is not their primary task. Ministers still believe that they are first of all preachers, although other duties have usurped the place of preaching.

The most promising hope on the homiletic horizon is that theologians and biblical scholars have introduced three vital insights concerning the preaching ministry.

First, they are saying again, as it has not been said for some time, though often said in days past, that “preaching is vitally important in Kingdom affairs.” One of the first to emphasize the supreme importance of preaching was P. T. Forsyth, whose Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind rises like Mount Everest among the literature of homiletics. He said: “With preaching Christianity stands or falls because it is the declaration of a gospel. Nay more—far more—it is the Gospel prolonging and declaring itself” (Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind, A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1907, p. 5).

The second vital insight of leading scholars pertains to the content of preaching. Those who have attempted to make a sharp distinction between preaching and teaching in the New Testament and in the ministry of Jesus lack valid reasons for doing so. The record of the Synoptics is such that preaching and teaching overlap and complement each other in concept, function, and terminology. There is not so much a sharp distinction between gospel content and teaching content as there is a vital dependent relationship. The Gospel is the missionary evangelistic message, and upon this basic message is built the proper theological interpretation and proper ethical application.

The third significant contribution pertains to the importance of communication. Rules and principles of homiletics are vital. Since preaching is God’s way of telling man that he is lost and needs salvation, since preaching is God’s way of instructing his children, it logically follows that the way the preacher prepares and speaks God’s message is important.

The preacher has many functions. But “the primacy of preaching” means that the most important thing a preacher can do in the course of his week’s work is to preach, to speak for God Almighty. As he prepares and preaches, so will he become qualified to perform his other major functions. Only when a minister is first of all God’s spokesman does he truly become an effective administrator, a loving pastor, a wise teacher, a sympathetic counsellor, and an able denominational leader. The North Star of the ministry is the task of preaching.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

2 Corinthians 5:14–20

The Preacher:

Long one of the American Baptist Convention’s outstanding preachers, Dr. Charles W. Koller became third president of Northern Baptist Theological Seminary, Chicago, in 1938. He is presently on leave. A native of Texas, he served in World War I. Dr. Koller holds the A.B. degree from Baylor University, Th.M. and Th.D. from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the honorary D.D. from Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. During the eleven years (1927–38) he ministered to Clinton Hill Baptist Church in Newark, its membership doubled and led Baptist churches in New Jersey in numerical net growth. Dr. Koller’s sermon is based on his favorite passage of Scripture (2 Cor. 5:14–20) and unfolds his favorite theme, the Cross.

The Text:

For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: And that he died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation.

Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.

On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross,

The emblem of suffering and shame.

But I love that old cross, where the dearest and best

For a world of lost sinners was slain.

We have not really seen the cross of Christ until we have seen it as a great plus sign by which God and man are drawn together in holy reconciliation.

Above that cross, a loving Heavenly Father bends down from his throne and offers the hand of reconciliation to an estranged human family. Beneath that cross is the great, confused mass of blundering, sinning, suffering humanity, alienated from God, lost in ways of its own choosing, and divided by those innumerable barriers which sin sets up. Upon that cross, in the form of a Living Plus Sign, is the quivering, bleeding body of the Son of God, the Great Reconciler, who has “broken down the middle wall of partition between us … that he might reconcile both unto God in one body by the cross” (Eph. 2:14, 16).

We have not really seen Christ until we have seen him as the Christ of the cross. Thus we see him through the eyes of Peter who knew him so well and so devotedly, and who emphasizes not his prepossessing personality, superior mind, magnificent character, lofty ethics, or flawless life, but his atoning death (1 Pet. 1:18f.). We see him through the eyes of Paul who emphasizes not the Christ of the wayside, of the seaside, the synagogue, or the market place but the Christ of the cross (1 Cor. 2:2). It is in the cross, primarily, that Christ himself desires to be remembered. How did he spend the last evening with his disciples before his death? Did he devote those brief and precious moments to a review of his life, or to the Sermon on the Mount? On the contrary, he gave a preview of his death, of the Sacrifice on the Mount.

“This is my body which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me … This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you” (Luke 22:19–20). Thus it is the Christ of the cross, primarily, whom we memorialize in the Lord’s Supper “till he come.”

We have not really seen our earthly mission or our heavenly destiny until we have seen it in the light of the cross, that great plus sign on the sky line of Calvary. There, suspended between heaven and earth, is the Living Plus Sign, the throbbing, outstretched form of the Son of God with hands uplifted in a holy prayer of reconciliation: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Beyond the cross, we behold the gates of Paradise swung open, and the angels singing their welcome to the returning, crucified, yet resurrected and glorified Son of God! And who are those that follow in his train? Are they not sinners, cleansed, forgiven, reconciled? We as the people of God move toward a high destiny, but all around us are the lost, the unreconciled, in whom we have a great uncompleted mission to fulfill. Nowhere is the earthly mission of God’s people more perfectly expressed than in the words of the apostle, “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). To the reconciled and unreconciled alike, the great plus sign speaks.

TO THE UNRECONCILED

1. The atoning work of Christ is finished. The chasm between the sinfulness of man and the holiness of God has been bridged. The way is thrown open for the lowliest of sinners to come to the throne of grace and receive cleansing and forgiveness.

It was a great day in American history when the first transcontinental railway was completed. A memorable occasion was planned for the laying of the last rail and last tie, and the driving of the last spike along the border between Colorado and New Mexico. A laurel wood tie had been provided, and two silver spikes which represented the two adjoining states. At the appointed moment the two governors stepped forward, and each in turn drove one of the silver spikes into the laurel wood tie. When the last spike had been driven, the assembled crowd broke into applause, while reporters who had tapped the telegraph wires flashed the good news to the world. The great feat had been accomplished which spanned the continent from coast to coast! It was indeed a great day. But it was a far greater day when the reconciling Christ, with spikes driven through his hands and feet, cried out from the cross, “It is finished!” Now angels could flash the news to the ends of the earth, and sinners could forever rejoice, “It is finished!”

2. The great plus sign is still adding! It continues to add souls to the household of God. It makes men brothers through the only means by which the brotherhood of man is ever to be achieved, namely, through the fatherhood of God. There is a sense in which all the sons of men are the sons of God; but in the prevailing New Testament sense not all the sons of men are sons of God by any means. Only “as many as received Him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God” (John 1:12). And when, through the new birth, two men have become sons of God, they have by the same token become brothers to one another. To a mixed company of believers, Jesus said, “all ye are brethren … one is your Father, which is in heaven” (Matt. 23:8–9). To a group of unbelievers, Jesus said, “Ye are of your father, the devil” (John 8:44).

The Living Plus Sign unites hostile elements by the only tie that truly binds. After World War I, the Arabs in Palestine and the British soldiers of the army of occupation generally regarded one another as mortal enemies. One of the British soldiers, a devout Christian, visited the reputed tomb of Jesus. As he approached the tomb he was startled to note, just inside the opening, a tall, swarthy Arab warrior with hands folded in deep meditation. The British soldier waited, not wishing to intrude, and not knowing what might happen next. When finally the Arab warrior turned to leave the tomb, their eyes met. The Englishman extended his hand and uttered one word, “Jesus!” The Arab took his hand and responded with the Arabic equivalent of “Jesus.” It was a warm, lingering handshake. Not one further word was spoken, but both men realized that they were brothers, sons of the same Father, servants of the same Master.

3. The reconciling Christ is still at work. The ancient invitation still stands: “Be ye reconciled to God!” He purifies as he reconciles. The sinner could never, in the filthiness of his unforgiven state, be lifted to the holy bosom of the Heavenly Father. Helpless and hopeless, he must look to the reconciling Christ. Dr. Samuel Chadwick of Leeds, England, once announced a service for infidels only. A large crowd came. They would not sing or join in prayer, and the preaching was under constant heckling. After the service, Dr. Chadwick invited any who were interested in further discussion to meet him in the vestry. Nineteen men followed. After long and apparently fruitless discussion, Dr. Chadwick said, “Suppose we grant your philosophy to be sufficient for the man who has moral character, social position, economic sufficiency, and domestic happiness; what will you do for the man who has none of these, whose life has been wrecked by the ravages of wrong living, and from whom all hope has departed?” The lawyer who had become spokesman for the group arose, offered his hand to the minister, and said, “I would bring him to you, Dr. Chadwick, for you have his only hope.” What a tribute to the redeeming, reconciling Christ!

He pays as he reconciles. What the sinner in his bankrupt state could never do for himself, Christ does on his behalf. He gave his life “a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). A pastor came to a new realization of this fact through an almost fatal illness. When he had recovered to the point where he could walk again, he became concerned about the staggering bills that had accumulated. There had been two nurses and two or three doctors, costly prescriptions, and other extraordinary expenses. But in all those weeks of illness he had of course paid nothing. He walked to the nearby business district of his little town and stopped first at the druggist. When he asked about his account, the druggist opened the old fashioned ledger and showed him a long list of items. “You see, it’s a big bill,” said the druggist. “Yes,” said the preacher, weakly, “I was afraid of that. I can’t pay now, but I will pay just as soon as I can.” Then the druggist removed his hand from the bottom of the page, and the preacher saw in big, red letters the word PAID. His deacons had paid the bill. He went to two other places where huge bills had been accumulating. Every debt had been paid. As he walked home, overwhelmed with gratitude, he began to sing in his heart, “Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe; sin had left a crimson stain, He washed it white as snow.”

The great plus sign on the sky line of Calvary speaks again.

TO THE RECONCILED

1. “He hath reconciled us,” says the text. We are “redeemed,” says the apostle Peter, not with “corruptible things, as silver and gold … but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1:18–19). We are “cleansed,” says the apostle John, not by the exemplary life of Christ, but by his sacrificial death, not by his lofty teachings, but by “the blood of Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:7).

In speaking of our redemption, the apostle Paul borrows from the vocabulary of the slave market of his day. Some of us have vivid memories of the old market place of horse and buggy days. The first Monday of each month was the traditional “Trade Day,” when every farmer with livestock to sell or trade would bring it to the public square in the county seat. Here, a mule offered for sale would be tied to the hitching rail, where he might stand for hours in the broiling sun. Prospective purchasers might open his mouth to determine his age, prod him in the flanks, drive him around in a gallop to make sure that he was sound of wind, and then perhaps decide that he would not do. This might be done repeatedly before a purchaser was found, and next year the mule might be returned to the same place, and subjected to the same experience. In the slave traffic of Paul’s day, the usual word for such a purchase was “agoradzo” (from “agora,” meaning “market place”). But, in speaking of our redemption, Paul uses the much stronger term “ex-agoradzo,” which suggests the finality of our redemption, our permanent removal out of the market place (Gal. 3:13).

2. He hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Our supreme task is to interpret the Living Plus Sign and to introduce our unreconciled, unforgiven friends to the reconciling Christ. Our motivation is that of the first century: “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). The great divine embarrassment is the prevailing shortage of dedicated men and women to bear witness. How shamefully casual we are! “I don’t want to be tied down.” How familiar that sounds! Our Lord was willing not only to be tied down but to be nailed to a cross for our redemption. “Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all!” The most rewarding of all human endeavors is that of introducing others to the reconciling Christ. “He that winneth souls is wise” (Prov. 11:30), and “they that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and they that turn many to righteousness, as the stars for ever and ever” (Dan. 12:3). Without a doubt, the sweetest music in heaven will be reserved for those who have directed others into the great heavenly chorus of the redeemed. There is something intensely personal about the Cross. From each of us, it calls for a response. To the unreconciled, it says, “Come, be reconciled!” To the reconciled, it says, “Go, tell others!” There are said to be 31,102 verses in the Bible, but not one could be more important than this: “Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us; we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God” (2 Cor. 5:20). For the unreconciled, nothing could be more urgent than to heed this invitation. For the reconciled, nothing could be more urgent than to convey the invitation to others. It is the world’s only hope.

Comment On The Sermon

The sermon “The Living Plus Sign” was nominated forCHRISTIANITY TODAY’SSelect Sermon Series by Dr. Faris D. Whitesell, Professor of Homiletics in Northern Baptist Theological Seminary. Dr. Whitesell’s overcomment follows:

A perfectionist in all he does, Dr. Koller’s homiletical work is virtually flawless. Having taught senior preaching in his seminary for some twenty years, he has perfected a plan of untold blessing to hundreds of his students now out in the preaching ministry. His homiletical principles clearly appear in this sermon.

Along with its major virtues of being expository, evangelical, and evangelistic, this message reveals unity, order, proportion and mastery of details in its organization; thoughtfulness, urgency and warmth in its spirit; and clarity, precision, energy and elegance in its style.

The title captures the reader’s interest by painting a unique picture, “The Living Plus Sign.” The introduction holds that interest by three powerful affirmations concerning the centrality of the cross in Christianity and in life. The introduction moves to its climax in a controlling statement or thesis, “To all alike, the reconciled and the unreconciled, the great plus sign speaks.” The rest of the sermon develops the thesis.

Following the two-point sermon pattern of F. W. Robertson, Dr. Koller’s message has two main points each in the form of a question: 1. What does the cross say to the unreconciled? 2. What does it say to the reconciled? To the first question he furnishes three answers which constitute his subpoints: 1). The atoning work of Christ is finished; 2). The great plus sign is still adding; 3). The reconciling Christ is still at work. To his second main question, he suggests two answers: 1). Christ has reconciled us; 2). Christ has committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Thus the outline for this sermon cuts a deep and straight channel for the flow of the preacher’s vigorous thoughts.

This sermon speaks to the average American congregation for it addresses both professing Christians and those who make no profession.

Its five major illustrations do their work of changing the pace of thought, illuminating truth, arousing the emotions, and appealing for response. This message leads the hearer to encounter God and creates the mood for decision, whether he be a Christian who should witness to the good news of reconciliation, or whether he be a lost sinner needing reconciliation with God. This is the supreme test of any sermon.

F. D. W.

Samuel M. Shoemaker is the author of a number of popular books and the gifted Rector of Calvary Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. He is known for his effective leadership of laymen and his deeply spiritual approach to all vital issues.

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.