MH

Effective Preaching Defined.....

 

"You must root your preaching in reality, remembering that the people before you have problems, doubts, fears and anxieties gnawing at their faith. Your problem and mine is to get behind the conventional fronts that sit row upon row in the pews, consider for example, the needs of the people who will come to hear you preach.

 

Use your imagination as you try to deal with problems that are most real to them. If, when you write your sermons, you can see the gleaming knuckles of a clenched fist, the lip that is bitten to keep back tears, the troubled heart that is suffering because it cannot forgive, the spirit that has no joy because it has no love, if you can see the big tears that run down a mother's face, if you can see these things, preach them. Preach them--and get down deep."

 

Peter Marshall, 1902-1949, former Chaplain of the U.S. Senate, speaking to young ministers at the Gettysburg Theological Seminary.