A POX ON INFORMATIVE PREACHING
Henry S. Coffin spoke of the difference between guides who are
pathetic and those who are truly in touch with what they are guides in
and to. I'd like to say something about that with regard to preaching
and teaching. Hand on my heart, I don't profess to preach well but I
know down into my bones when I hear it done well and for the reason God
willed it into being.
There
are guides who take visitors around the great Continental cathedrals or
magnificent buildings, to look at a much-talked-about statue or famed art
gallery or any great historic site or to some marvellous place from which
you can see half the world.
One
kind is filled with patter, he’s rarely silent and for the 1000th
time reels of the information he has read in a book and tells us what this or
that expert or art critic has said. He regurgitates the facts, the dates, the
places, the measurements and you come away overwhelmed with bits and pieces of
information—and a very temporary recollection of some of the jumble of things
he has said.
The
other is in tune with the grandeur and mystique of it all—he experiences it,
has entered into the heart of it, or at least he has us convinced that he has
because it is more than stuff he has rattled off. He says something, enough, but
he does more than that; he brings us to that “place” and “draws back the
curtain” and we’re confronted with the “thing” itself. He steps aside and
leaves us there to be stunned by someone or something from the hand of a
master instead of a stream of someone else’s experience or opinion or judgement. With this guide we’re not deafened to the “real thing” by the “noise”
of a prepared spiel, well-prepared chatter, of bored and speedy lecturing.
There’s
so much religious talk, a lot of verses are thrown in that give it a biblical
coloration but in the end it’s all a substitute for biblical preaching. We’re
rarely confronted with “the master”. We hear lots of opinions from this
commentator or that, this exegete or that, this theologian or that but it’s so
much hearsay. Christ’s words to Pilate come to mind and we might think
he asks the preacher, “Sayest thou this of thyself or did another tell thee?”
Edward Thomas Taylor
preached a lot and preached a lot to sailors. One of them said: “When a man is
preachin’ at me I want him to take something hot out of his heart and shove it
into mine. That’s what I call preachin’.”
A
pox on “delightful,” “interesting” and “informative” preaching!