Postscript

Postscript

Once upon a time there was an Anglican clergyman who was lazy. He had long ago given up the bother of preparing his sermons. He had considerable native intelligence and fluency of speech, and his congregation were simple people. So he got by pretty well with his unprepared sermons. Yet in order to live with his conscience, he took a vow that he would always preach extempore and put his trust in the Holy Spirit. Everything was fine until one day, a few minutes before the morning service began, who should walk into church and find a place in one of the pews but the bishop, enjoying a Sunday off. The parson was embarrassed. He had managed for years to bluff his uneducated congregation, but he was much less sure of his ability to hoodwink the bishop. So he went over to welcome his unexpected visitor and, in an endeavor to forestall his criticism, told him of the solemn vow he had taken always to preach extemporaneous sermons. The bishop seemed to understand, and the service began. Half-way through the sermon, however, to the preacher’s great consternation, the bishop got up and walked out. And after the service a scribbled note from the bishop lay on the vestry table: “I absolve you from your vow”!

Then there was the young American Presbyterian minister whose besetting sin was not laziness, but conceit. He frequently boasted in public that all the time he needed to prepare his Sunday sermon was the few minutes it took him to walk to the church from his manse next door. Perhaps you can guess what his elders did: they bought him a new manse five miles away!

My little ecumenical parable is not yet finished. For there was a Baptist preacher who had no besetting sins like his Episcopal and Presbyterian colleagues. His trouble—if one may call it a trouble—was super-spirituality. He did not prepare his sermons either, but this had nothing to do with laziness or pride. On the contrary, it was due to genuine piety. Like his Episcopal brother he placed his confidence in the Holy Spirit, but unlike him he appealed for support to Scripture itself, not to a vow of his own. “Have you not read the words of Jesus in Matthew 10:19 and 20?” he asked his friends in unfeigned astonishment, when they ventured to take him to task: “‘Do not be anxious how you are to speak or what you are to say,’ Jesus commanded, ‘for what you are to say will be given you in that hour, for it is not you who speak but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you.’” What this ingenuous brother failed to do, however, was to read his Lord’s words in their context. They actually began, “When they deliver you up,” and refer not to the church, but to the law court. “You will be dragged before governors and kings for my sake,” Jesus said (v. 18). In such a situation, he implied, we may have no time to prepare our defense. It is then that the Holy Spirit will give us words to speak. Jesus’ promise has brought great comfort to prisoners who lack a counsel for the defense; it offers no comfort to preachers who are either too lazy or too proud or too pious to prepare their sermons.

I think we must agree with Spurgeon that “habitually to come into the pulpit unprepared is unpardonable presumption.” What would we think of a lawyer who enters court to defend his client without having prepared his case? J. H. Jowett quotes the dictum of a distinguished English judge that “cases are won in chambers.” That is, “so far as the barrister is concerned, his critical arena is not the public court but his own private room.” The same principle applies to the preacher: “if the study is a lounge, the pulpit will be an impertinence.”

The great preachers who have influenced their generation have all borne witness to the need for conscientious preparation. You might not think so as you listen to them. For as the sermon proceeds, it all sounds deceptively simple. The opening up of the text, its illustration and application, the straightforward outline, the framing of sentences and choice of words—what could be easier? Yet behind it lies a lifetime’s discipline and industry. Let me give one example only. After the death of Dr. Leslie Weatherhead in the New Year of 1976, Roy Trevivian wrote an obituary or personal appreciation which appeared in the Church of England Newspaper on 9 January 1977. It included these words:

What was the secret of his extraordinary influence with people? Poor and rich, powerful and dispossessed, known and unknown, all came and all received his undivided attention. And what was the secret of the spell he could cast over a huge congregation who had withdrawal symptoms when he finished preaching? I must have asked him this twenty times, and always he replied “Preparation.”

How, then, shall we prepare? This is a very subjective matter. There is no one way to prepare sermons. Every preacher has to work out his own method, which suits his temperament and situation; it is a mistake to copy others uncritically. Nevertheless, we can learn from one another. As Erasmus once rather playfully said, “If elephants can be trained to dance, lions to play, and leopards to hunt, surely preachers can be taught to preach.” There seem, in fact, to be six stages through which, in one way or another, most of us find it necessary to pass.

I take it for granted that we shall have a text. For we are not speculators, but expositors. Yet how shall we choose our text for a particular sermon? Many a preacher has asked that question as he sat at his desk, sucked and even chewed his pencil, and stared vacantly at a blank sheet of paper before him. Yet the headache in selection is due not to the paucity of texts but to their abundance. If we are regular Bible students, and are keeping notes of our study, then our memory becomes like a well-stocked food cupboard, and biblical texts are lining up, asking to be preached on. How, then, shall we make our selection? There are, it seems, four main factors which will influence our choice.

The first is liturgical. Large sections of Christendom (in particular, Roman Catholic, Orthodox, Lutheran, and Anglican) continue to observe the seasons of the church’s year, which are set out in a calendar and supplied, Sunday by Sunday, with appropriate lections. In 1967 the British interdenominational “Joint Liturgical Group” produced an essay entitled The Calendar and Lectionary: A Reconsideration. The following year the Church of England’s Liturgical Commission followed it up with their report The Calendar and Lessons for the Church’s Year. This advocated “a more rational presentation of the Church’s year in the pastoral interest of worshippers.” Let me simplify its recommendations in a way which may appeal also to members of non-liturgical churches. Most Christians observe at least three major Christian festivals every year—Christmas (celebrating the birth of Christ), Easter (his resurrection), and Pentecost (his gift of the Spirit). Taking these as pivotal points, each has a natural preparation leading up to it and a natural sequel following it. In this way the church’s year divides itself into three periods.

The first, running from October to December, is a lengthened Advent season. Because in Europe the harvest festival normally comes at the end of September or beginning of October, and in America in November, this is a convenient time to think about creation, to go on to the fall, and to take the Old Testament story and expectation up to the birth of Christ and his “epiphany” or manifestation to the Gentiles.

The second period runs from Christmas to Pentecost, and thus covers the months from January to May. It is the natural season in which to rehearse the mighty acts of God in Christ, his birth and life, character and example, words and works, passion and death, resurrection and ascension, culminating in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit.

The third period should be thought of more as “the Sundays after Pentecost” than as “the Sundays after Trinity.” From May to September inclusive we have the opportunity to think about the Christian life as life in the Spirit and the Christian church as the fellowship of the Spirit. It is a good time to give our minds to Christian ethical, social, and missionary responsibilities, and to the Christian hope, our expectation of the triumphant return of Jesus Christ.

In this way, every year the church calendar recapitulates the story of the biblical revelation, the Old Testament from creation to Christmas in the period from October to December, the Gospels as they portray the life of Christ from January to May, and the Acts, Epistles, and Revelation in the post-Pentecost period from May to September. It is also inevitably a Trinitarian structure as we rehearse how God revealed himself progressively as Creator and Father, as Son of God made flesh, and in the person and work of the Holy Spirit.

Since the set lessons (the Old Testament reading, the Epistle, the Gospel, and others) are appropriate to the season in the church’s calendar, the preacher may sometimes, even often, take his text from one of these readings. A slavish attachment to the prescribed lections can be an unnecessary bondage, however. It is better to regard them rather as suggestive pointers to the day’s theme.

To be sure, one must not be in bondage to the church calendar either. For then one would feel inhibited, for example, from preaching on the incarnation except at Christmas or on the resurrection except at Easter. Colin Morris justly asks: “Pentecost in autumn? Ascension in the bleak mid-winter? Why not? Are not these great verities universally relevant? Certainly they ought not to be subject to the tyranny of the calendar.”

Nevertheless, the value of the calendar is obvious. James Stewart, professor emeritus of New Testament language, literature, and theology at New College, Edinburgh, who retired in 1966 but remains one of the most popular contemporary preachers, has commended “a due observance of the Christian Year” in these words:

The great landmarks of the Christian Year—Advent, Christmas, Lent, Good Friday, Easter, Whit Sunday, Trinity—set us our course, and suggest our basic themes. They compel us to keep close to the fundamental doctrines of the faith. They summon us back from the bypaths where we might be prone to linger, to the great highway of redemption. They ensure that in our preaching we shall constantly be returning to those mighty acts of God which the Church exists to declare.

The second factor which helps us to determine our text I will call external, by which I mean some event in the life of our nation (e.g. an election, the death of a public figure, or a national scandal), some issue of public debate (e.g. the arms race, abortion, capital punishment, unemployment, homosexual practice, or divorce), a natural disaster (flood, famine, or earthquake) or some other catastrophe (a plane or train crash). When Christian people come to church, they neither can nor should shut out of their minds such matters as these which are being given wide radio, television, and newspaper coverage. On the contrary, they bring these anxieties with them to worship and are asking “is there any word from the Lord?” and “how should Christian people react to such things?” Preachers need to be sensitive to the big public questions in people’s minds.

Thirdly, there is the pastoral factor, that is, some discovered need in the congregation’s spiritual pilgrimage. It is often and rightly said that the best preachers are always good pastors, for they know the needs and problems, doubts, fears, and hopes of their people. A conscientious pastor can never preach “regardless of his hearers’ requirements.” “As well might a physician prescribe ointment for eczema on the neck,” comments Douglas Cleverley Ford, “when the patient has corns on his toes.” The assessment of a congregation’s current need, and the decision how to preach to it, are best made by the pastoral team together. Even if a local church has only one full-time, stipendiary pastor, one hopes that he is supported by both part-time and voluntary ministers or elders who share the pastoral oversight with him. They will doubtless spend regular times together for prayer, discussion, and planning, and one of the items on their agenda should be their preaching ministry. At least three times a year Michael Baughen, rector of All Souls since 1975, calls his team together specifically for this purpose. Sometimes he tells the congregation in advance, in order to solicit their prayers, and sometimes invites them, and Fellowship Group leaders in particular, to send in suggestions and requests for sermon topics or sermon series. At times, too, some lay leaders of the church family join us when we discuss our preaching syllabus for the next few months. This gives us the opportunity to plan courses to cover major Christian doctrines and duties, to expound whole books of the Bible, and to ask ourselves if there are areas which we have overlooked. Planned preaching of this kind helps church members to grasp the rich unity-in-diversity of the biblical revelation; one of the dangers of taking an isolated text each Sunday is that it gives the impression that the Bible is a mere anthology of unrelated fragments, with no common themes or overall message.

It may be helpful if I list the main series which we have taken at All Souls Church during the last six years. Doctrinal courses have included the character of God, the life of Christ, the cross, the resurrection appearances, God’s family, and the Bible. More practical series have related to both ethical questions (e.g. discipleship, the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the imitation of Christ, and a series of fourteen on the implications of love) and topical issues (e.g. divine guidance, women’s ministry, suffering, and spiritual gifts). There was also a series of fourteen on prayer.

During the same period we have sought to expound some lengthy biblical passages. In the Old Testament we have had series on the early chapters of Genesis, the lives of the patriarchs, selected Psalms, parts of Isaiah, and the book of Daniel. In the New Testament we have studied both shorter letters (Ephesians, Philippians, 1 Peter, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians) and two longer letters, namely 2 Corinthians and Romans (the latter in forty-three sermons, requring two sessions from November to March and from May to July). Our longest series has also perhaps been the most appreciated. This has been to take the whole Gospel of Mark in sixty-two sermons, dividing the text into seven sections and running from September 1978 to April 1981.

In addition to these overviews, paragraph by paragraph, we have found it profitable sometimes to work much more slowly, verse by verse, through shorter passages. Using this method, we have taken Acts 20:19–38 (Paul’s address to the Ephesian elders), Ephesians 1 (“A People for God’s Glory”), Ephesians 4 and 5 (Christian moral standards), Hebrews 11 (the heroes of faith), and a less well-known chapter, Hebrew 13. This was divided up as follows:

All these series were decided on in staff conferences in response to perceived pastoral needs of the church family.

The fourth factor to guide us in our choice of text is personal. Without doubt the best sermons we ever preach to others are those we have first preached to ourselves. Or, to put the same truth somewhat differently, when God himself speaks to us through a text of Scripture, and it becomes luminous or phosphorescent to us, it is then that it continues to glow with divine glory when we seek to open it up to others. Campbell Morgan tells how he was in Dr. Joseph Parker’s vestry at the City Temple one day when a man came in and said to him “I want to thank you for that sermon. It did me good.” Dr. Parker looked at him and replied: “Sir, I preached it because it had done me good.” This does not mean that every sermon has to be born out of our personal experience. Some of us have to preach on marriage while remaining unmarried, or on divorce while remaining married, and all of us have to preach on death before we have died. Yet sermons which emerge from deep personal conviction have a rich self-authenticating quality. This is what James Stalker called “the blood-streak of experience.” He added that “truth is doubly and trebly true when it comes from a man who speaks as if he had learned it by his own work and suffering.”

It is for this reason that most preachers find it necessary to have handy at all times a notebook or (as it was called from about the seventeenth century onwards) a “commonplace book.” I wonder if your experience resembles mine. My mind is usually enveloped in a fairly thick fog, so that I do not see things at all plainly. Occasionally, however, the fog lifts, the light breaks through, and I see with limpid clarity. These fleeting moments of illumination need to be seized. We have to learn to surrender ourselves to them, before the fog descends again. Such times often come at awkward moments, in the middle of the night, when somebody else is preaching or lecturing, while we are reading a book, even during a conversation. However inconvenient the time, we cannot afford to lose it. In order to take fullest advantage of it, we may need to write fast and furiously.

Here, then, are four factors—liturgical, external, pastoral, and personal—which will help us to choose our sermon text. We are now ready for the second stage of preparation.

(2) Meditate on It

If our text is part of a consecutive exposition, or for some other reason has been determined weeks or months in advance, we have the great benefit of a long period of “subconscious incubation,” or what Americans call “maturation.” Certainly Sunday’s text should, at the latest, be chosen by the preceding Monday, so that something of the incubation process can go on. The longer this period, the better. Robert Louis Stevenson once said of himself, “I . . . sit a long while silent on my eggs.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer made a practice of choosing his text in good time. He would then consider it every day and “try to sink deeply into it, so as really to hear what it is saying.”

Sooner or later the time for more concentrated preparation arrives. What should the preacher do now? Read the text, re-read it, re-read it, and read it again. Turn it over and over in your mind, like Mary the mother of Jesus who wondered at all the things the shepherds had told her, “pondering them in her heart” (Luke 2:18–19). Probe your text, like a bee with a spring blossom, or like a hummingbird probing a hibiscus flower for its nectar. Worry at it like a dog with a bone. Suck it as a child sucks an orange. Chew it as a cow chews the cud. To these similes Spurgeon adds two more, the worm and the bath. “It is a great thing to pray one’s self into the spirit and marrow of a text; working into it by sacred feeding thereon, even as the worm bores its way into the kernel of the nut.” Again, “let us, dear brethren, try to get saturated with the gospel. I always find that I can preach best when I can manage to lie asoak in my text. I like to get a text, and find out its meaning and bearings, and so on; and then, after I have bathed in it, I delight to lie down in it, and let it soak into me.”

These vivid metaphors may not, however, indicate clearly enough what the preacher is actually doing while he meditates on his text. Let me put it in this way. He addresses questions to his text, especially two. First, what does it mean? Perhaps better, what did it mean when first spoken or written, for E. D. Hirsch is right to emphasize that “a text means what its author meant.” As we have seen, we cannot avoid the discipline of thinking ourselves back into the text’s historical and geographical context, into its cultural milieu, into its words and images, and so into the mind and purpose of its author. What did he mean? What was he intending to affirm or condemn or promise or command?

The second question to ask is what does it say? That is, what is its contemporary message? How does it speak to us today? This is a different question. It involves the further “bridge building” discipline of relating the ancient Word to the modern world, and translating it into today’s cultural terms.

It is essential to keep these two questions both distinct and together. To discover the text’s meaning is of purely academic interest unless we go on to discern its message for today, or (as some theologians prefer to say) its “significance.” But to search for its contemporary message without first wrestling with its original meaning is to attempt a forbidden short cut. It dishonors God (disregarding his chosen way of revealing himself in particular historical and cultural contexts), it misuses his Word (treating it like an almanac or book of magic spells), and it misleads his people (confusing them about how to interpret Scripture).

As we address our two questions to the text, respecting its meaning and its message, we may well need to turn to a lexicon, concordance, or commentary for help. They can save us from misinterpreting the passage, illumine it, and stimulate our thinking about it. But they can never be more than aids. They cannot replace our own direct and personal encounter with the text as we cross-examine it for ourselves and allow it to cross-examine us. Besides, after a few years of Bible study we shall never come to a text as a complete stranger, but rather approach it in the light of our previous meditation.

All the time we shall be praying, crying humbly to God for illumination by the Spirit of truth. We shall repeat Moses’ petition “I pray you, show me your glory” (Exod. 33:18) and Samuel’s “Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening” (1 Sam. 3:9–10). Christian meditation differs from other kinds in being a combination of study and prayer. Some preachers are very diligent students. Their desk is piled high with theological works, and they give their mind to the elucidation of the text. But they hardly if ever pray for light. Others are very diligent in prayer, but hardly ever engage in any serious study. We must not separate what God has joined. Speaking personally, I have always found it helpful to do as much of my sermon preparation as possible on my knees, with the Bible open before me, in prayerful study. This is not because I am a bibliolater and worship the Bible; but because I worship the God of the Bible and desire to humble myself before him and his revelation, and, even while I am giving my mind to the study of the text, to pray earnestly that the eyes of my heart may be enlightened (Eph. 1:18).

Of this combination of prayer and thought Daniel supplies an excellent Old Testament example. Having “perceived in the books the number of years” that Jerusalem would lie derelict, he turned his face to the Lord God, “seeking him by prayer and supplications with fasting and sackcloth and ashes.” Then, while he was still praying, Gabriel came to him and said, “O Daniel, I have now come out to give you wisdom and understanding” (9:1–3, 20–23). In a subsequent vision a human figure appeared to him, touched him, and said to him: “Fear not, Daniel, for from the first day that you set your mind to understand, and humbled yourself before your God, your words have been heard” (10:1–14). The New Testament equivalent seems to be Paul’s word to Timothy: “Think over what I say, for the Lord will grant you understanding in everything” (2 Tim. 2:7). In both cases there was on the one hand the reading of books, serious thought, and the setting of the mind to understand, while on the other there was self-humbling in prayer and in confession. It was only in response to both study and petition that the desired insight was given. As R. W. Dale wrote, quoting an old English writer, “work without prayer is atheism; and prayer without work is presumption.”

It goes without saying that during this period of prayerful study called “meditation,” we are scribbling down, though haphazardly, the thoughts which clarify in our minds. “How long does this stage last?” I have often been asked. “As long as it has to” is the only answer I can give. There is no substitute for spending time with the text. Take as long as you need. Go on probing the flower until there is no nectar left. Go on sucking the orange until you have sucked it dry.

I have so far assumed that our study of the text will be private and individual. There is also a place for corporate sermon preparation, however, and Bishop Lesslie Newbigin has described to me his experiment in Madras Diocese (South India), when he was bishop:

“Once a month clergy from a group of pastorates gathered either for half a day or for a full day.” They began with “thorough exegetical study of the passages prescribed for the Sunday in question.” This was done both in plenary session and in groups, four or five groups being asked to prepare a sermon outline each for the Sundays of the ensuing month. “The outlines would then be submitted to the plenary for comment, criticism and discussion.” Usually, the sermon texts would be chosen from the lectionary published by the Church of South India. “On some occasions, however, especially when something of over-riding importance was happening in the life of the Church or in the life of the nation . . . the groups would be asked to consider what the proper Christian response to the situation should be, and what passages of Scripture would be appropriate for the worship of the Sunday in question.” Bishop Newbigin’s final comment was that, although “in the end each one had to go home and prepare his own sermons,” yet “these exercises helped to ensure that there was more meat in them than would otherwise have been the case.”

As we continue to meditate by prayer and study, and jot down a miscellany of ideas, we should be looking for our text’s dominant thought. Indeed, we should persevere in meditation until it emerges and clarifies. Why so?

First, because every text has a main theme. If, as we argued in Chapter Three, God speaks through what he has spoken, then it is essential to ask ourselves “What is he saying? Where does his emphasis lie?” I am not denying that there may be several legitimate ways of handling a text, and several different lessons to learn from it; what I am asserting, however, is that every text has an overriding thrust. We need the integrity to discern this and to resist the temptation to give the text a twist or stress of our own.

For example, it would surely be permissible to teach from the parable of the good Samaritan that true love always expresses itself in sacrificial and constructive service. Yet the main thrust of Jesus’ story is the shocking fact that a despised Samaritan outsider did what the two religious Jews were unwilling to do. It would therefore be impossible to expound the parable accurately without stressing this racial point and its implied criticism of all religion which, however orthodox, is yet bogus because loveless. Again, it would be possible to teach several truths from Romans 5:8, “But God shows his love for us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us.” We could preach on the sin of man or the death of Christ or the love of God, for all three are mentioned in this verse. Yet the text’s dominant thought is that Christ’s death for sinners like us is “God’s own proof of his love towards us” (NEB). So a sermon on Roman 5:8 would have to be on “how God proves his love,” and would also have to relate the objective proof through Christ (his cross, v. 8) with the subjective experience through the Holy Spirit (in our hearts, v. 5).

Then there is a second reason why we should look for each text’s dominant thought, namely that one of the chief ways in which a sermon differs from a lecture is that it aims to convey only one major message. Students are expected to take copious notes during lectures, and to revise them afterwards. On this assumption the lecturer feels free to be discursive, to cover a wide territory, and even to digress. Indeed, the eccentric digressions of an absent-minded professor constitute one of the chief delights of listening to him; otherwise one might just as well cull his material direct from books. A sermon is quite different, however. It is true that in some congregations note-taking goes on, while in others duplicated summaries and cassette recordings are made available. Each is valuable as an aide-memoire. Yet this provision is exceptional. It can also prove harmful if people stop listening to the sermon because they intend on some later occasion to study the notes or play back the cassette. For the sermon, as a living word from God to his people, should make its impact on them then and there. They will not remember the details. We should not expect to do so. But they should remember the dominant thought because all the sermon’s details have been marshaled to help them grasp its message and feel its power.

The masters of sermon craft all seem to be agreed on this matter. In olden days the dominant thought was usually called “the proposition,” and preachers labored to clarify it. “I think that every sermon,” said Charles Simeon, “should have like a telescope but one object in the field.” Here is his account of his own method in his Preface to Horae Homileticae:

It may perhaps be not unuseful to point out the manner in which these discourses are formed. As soon as the subject is chosen, the first enquiry is, What is the principal scope and meaning of the text? (I BEG EVERY YOUNG MINISTER ESPECIALLY TO REMEMBER THIS.)

When a text’s principal meaning has been discerned, Simeon continues, the next step is to express it in “a categorical proposition”; to do this is “the great secret of all composition for the pulpit.” In an anonymous article in the Christian Observer in December 1821, Simeon emphasized the practical importance of this method for fixing a truth in people’s memories:

Reduce your text to a simple proposition, and lay that down as the warp; and then make use of the text itself as the woof; illustrating the main idea by the various terms in which it is contained. Screw the word into the minds of your hearers. A screw is the strongest of all mechanical powers . . . when it has turned a few times, scarcely any power can pull it out.

Richard Baxter also wrote, “screw the truth into their minds.”

J. H. Jowett went further:

I have a conviction that no sermon is ready for preaching . . . until we can express its theme in a short, pregnant sentence as clear as a crystal. I find the getting of that sentence is the hardest, the most exacting and the most fruitful labour in my study. . . . I do not think any sermon ought to be preached, or even written, until that sentence has emerged, clear and lucid as a cloudless moon.

Similarly, Professor Ian Pitt-Watson declares, “Every sermon should be ruthlessly unitary in its theme. ‘This is the first and great commandment!’”

Once the text has yielded its secret and the principal sermon theme has been clarified, ideally the whole service should be built round it. Although doubtless the opening worship can express penitence and praise in more general terms, and although the intercessions should embrace many concerns for the world, the church, and the needy, yet even in these sections of the service it is helpful to begin to draw the minds and hearts of the congregation toward the theme and to prepare them to receive it. Certainly the two lessons should be relevant, together with the hymn expressing our prayer before the sermon and the hymn expressing our response after it. We should not be afraid of simplicity and repetition. This is a further lesson we can learn from the Black experience in the United States. Dr. Henry Mitchell draws an interesting parallel between the Negro spiritual and “the slow rate characteristic of the Black preaching style”:

The Black-culture sermon is the homiletical twin brother to the spiritual. In the case of the sung culture, a whole song can be formed on a very small word base. Haunting choruses are built on as few as four words: “Remember me, O Lord, remember me.” Where a white-culture hymn has long stanzas full of words delivered at a fairly rapid rate, a Black spiritual might simply say slowly, “Lord, I want to be a Christian in my heart.” The slow rate of Black preaching, as well as the repetition, is the natural pattern of Black speaking and singing, neither of which is prone to depend on great numbers of words in a brief utterance.

So then, in our sermon preparation, we must not try to by-pass the discipline of waiting patiently for the dominant thought to disclose itself. We have to be ready to pray and think ourselves deep into the text, even under it, until we give up all pretensions of being its master or manipulator, and become instead its humble and obedient servant. Then there will be no danger of unscrupulous text-twisting. On the contrary, the Word of God will dominate our mind, set fire to our hearts, control the development of our exposition, and later leave a lasting impression on the congregation.

So far, in the process of sermon preparation, we have gathered from our text a lot of miscellaneous ideas, which we have scribbled higgledy-piggledy on a sheet of paper, and we have labored to isolate its dominant thought. Now we have to knock the material into shape, and particularly into such shape as will best serve the dominant thought. The purpose of this stage is not to produce a literary masterpiece (“fine sermons are one of the most dangerous of the Devil’s snares,” writes Charles Smyth), but rather to enable the text’s main thrust to make its maximum impact. This chiseling and shaping process has both negative and positive aspects.

Negatively, we have to be ruthless in discarding the irrelevant. This is easier said than done. During our hours of meditation numerous blessed thoughts and scintillating ideas may have occurred to us and been dutifully jotted down. It is tempting to drag them all in somehow. Resist the temptation! Irrelevant material will weaken the sermon’s effect. It will come in handy some other time. We need the strength of mind to keep it till then.

Positively, we have to subordinate our material to our theme in such a way as to illumine and enforce it. In order to do so, we need the help of a structure, words, and illustrations. Something must be said about each.

First, a structure. Most communicators agree that orderly arrangement is necessary. True, we live in an increasingly visual culture. True again, the majority of people in developed nations are more used to being bombarded with images on their television screen than to listening to linear logic. Hence the value, as David Gillett writes, of what has been called the “blob” teaching method. This “takes one point as a subject and comes at it from different angles, reinforcing and making clearer the picture that is forming in the person’s mind.”

Yet, whether our approach is visual or logical, we still have to organize our thoughts into some structure if they are to be communicable. Borrowing the imagery of the primeval chaos described in Genesis 1:2, W. E. Sangster conceded “that a sermon can be without form and—such is the grace of God—not utterly void.” Nevertheless, he added, this “borders on the miraculous. No sermon is really strong which is not strong in structure too.” Just as bones without flesh make a skeleton, so flesh without bones makes a jellyfish. And neither bony skeletons nor jellyfish make good sermons.

We face two main dangers when developing a sermon structure. The first is that the skeleton obtrudes, like the ribs of a skinny human being. They thrust themselves before us; we cannot take our eyes off them. It is the same with too prominent a sermon outline. It distracts from the content by drawing too much attention to the form. This may be because it is too clever (the double and even triple alliterations which some preachers manage to contrive for their headings are the main offenders) or because it is too complicated (like Richard Baxter who, according to Simeon, once reached “‘sixty-fifthly,’ as if any person could remember the sixty-four preceding heads”). Outlines which advertize themselves in these ways are always distracting. Their perpetrators have forgotten that the purpose of the skeleton is to support the body, and in so doing to keep itself largely out of view.

The second danger to which we are exposed when structuring our sermons is that of artificiality. Some preachers impose an outline on their text which neither fits nor illumines it, but rather muddies the clear waters of truth and confuses the listeners. The golden rule for sermon outlines is that each text must be allowed to supply its own structure. The skilful expositor opens up his text, or rather permits it to open itself up before our eyes, like a rose unfolding to the morning sun and displaying its previously hidden beauty. One of the greatest experts at this was Dr. Alexander McLaren, the nineteenth century Baptist preacher at Manchester. William Robertson Nicoll described him as having “a swift and clear-cutting intellect,” and went on to write of his “extraordinary gift of analyzing a text. He touched it with a silver hammer, and it immediately broke up into natural and memorable divisions.” Spurgeon used the same metaphor. He once spoke to his students about the difficulty he had with some texts. You “try to break them up,” he said; “you hammer at them with might and main, but your labour is lost.” Then “at last you find one which crumbles at the first blow, and sparkles as it falls in pieces, and you perceive jewels of the rarest radiance flashing from within.” All preachers have had that experience, at least from time to time. We need to pray that the Lord will distribute a few more silver hammers among us today.

A discussion of sermon-structure inevitably raises the issue of the popular three-point sermon, and this in its turn usually provokes a wry smile. It is not a modern invention, but has a long history. Charles Smyth goes into great detail about the rigid structure of the medieval “sermon scheme” which, especially in England, demanded a theme text which was divisible into three, if possible into “three significant words.” To make the three-point sermon our invariable practice, however, would be to confine ourselves in a strait-jacket. It also does violence to many texts which make only one point or two, or for that matter may be naturally divisible into four and even five. Yet it is strange how often the natural is the triple. I have often wondered if it is because Christians are Trinitarians who easily discern allusions to Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, or to God above, for, and in us. I was interested, therefore, to discover that this thought occurred to Robert de Basevorn, whose Forma Praedicandi was published in 1322. “This rule may be judged,” he wrote, “by the desire to reverence the Trinity.”

There are many ways of structuring a sermon. W. E. Sangster distinguished five main possibilities which he called “exposition,” “argument,” “faceting,” “categorizing,” and “analogy.” Halford Luccock was more ambitious in his classification and listed ten types. He also gave them suggestive names, like the “ladder sermon” (which “takes one from point to point like the rungs of a ladder”), the “jewel sermon” (which “consists in turning one idea around as one might turn a jewel in his fingers, allowing different facets to catch the light”), and the “sky rocket sermon” (so called “not because it goes with a fizz or a bang and is a sensational affair” but because “it begins on the ground, rises to a height, then breaks into pieces and comes down to earth again”). Different texts and topics demand different treatment. We need to cultivate diversity and seek deliverance from a single stereotype.

I turn now from structure to words. If we preach only once a week for forty years, we shall utter about nine million of them. Words matter. In order to communicate clearly, we have to clothe our thoughts in words. It is impossible to convey a precise message without choosing precise words. Think of the time and trouble we give to composing a message we want to send by cable: because the number of words is severely limited, we go over it again and again, changing a word here, adding or deleting a word there, until we are sure not only that we shall be understood, but also that we shall not be misunderstood. The same should be true of sermons. “The Preacher sought to find pleasing words, and uprightly he wrote words of truth.” Such “sayings of the wise,” it is added, especially when they thus combine grace and truth, are “like goads” to prick the conscience and stimulate the mind, and also “like nails firmly fixed” because they lodge in the memory and are not easily dislodged (Eccl. 12:10, 11). So it is worth taking trouble over our words. Not because we shall read our sermons, nor because we shall memorize and recite them, but rather because the discipline of clear thinking demands writing (“writing maketh an exact man” said Bacon), and because if our preparation has extended at least in some parts of the sermon to the words we want to use, it is extraordinary how readily these come back to our mind even when we take only notes into the pulpit. What sort of words, then, shall we use?

First, a preacher’s words need to be as simple and clear as possible. The famous rendering of 1 Corinthians 13:1, although a misprint, was true: “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not clarity, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal.” Sometimes, to be sure, our search for the right word may lead us to an unusual one, but we shall avoid verbiage. Many professional people fall into this trap. There are still politicians who resemble Disraeli’s description of Gladstone in 1878 as “a sophisticated rhetorician, inebriated with the exuberance of his own verbosity.” Lawyers seem to delight in drawing up documents which only legally trained people can interpret. Doctors are sometimes guilty of using quite unnecessary jargon. Dr. K. D. Bardhan of Rotherham, South Yorkshire, has given an example from a social services report:

This elderly geriatric (sic) female has multiple joint problems which limit perambulation. Absence of verbal intercourse aggravates her detachment from reality and reinforces isolationism. She is unable to relate to events at this point in time. Psychogeriatric consideration in the context of conceptual distortion, and paranoia is also a parameter in the total dimensions of her problems.

Dr. Bardhan goes on to offer his own translation, “This lady of eighty-three has arthritis, cannot get about, and is lonely, confused, and frightened.” His letter was prompted by an article by Christopher Reed about the spread of “psychobabble” in middle-class America. This is jargon which reduces a genuine psychological understanding of human behavior to empty slogans.

There is no need, however, for the British to look across the Atlantic to find examples of the misuse of language. There is plenty of it at home, not least in the civil service, and no one has documented it better than Sir Ernest Gowers in his well-known books on Plain Words. Their purpose, he explains, is “to help officials in their use of written English as a tool of their trade,” but what he writes is almost equally applicable to spoken English. There is no such thing as style, he maintains, apart from the use of words, and he quotes Matthew Arnold and Dean Swift in support. “Have something to say and say it as clearly as you can. That is the only secret of style.” “Proper words in proper places make the true definition of style.” So he urges upon us a careful choice of words, avoiding the superfluous, and choosing the familiar and the precise. Our basic fault is that our speech is complicated. “Instead of being simple, terse and direct, it is stilted, long-winded and circumlocutory.” He calls it “gobbledygook”—a word for “pompous officialese” which was apparently coined by Maury Maverick in the New York Times Magazine in May 1944.

Unfortunately, the church is by no means free of this disease. The late Sir Kenneth Grubb quoted Dr. Gordon Rupp’s dictum that the ecumenical movement has been “the First Murderer of the Queen’s English,” and went on to give examples of the strange ecclesiastical preference for Latin words instead of Anglo-Saxon:

A meeting becomes a confrontation, a talk a consultation, an aspect a dimension, a display a constellation. These men scorn transitive verbs and the active voice. They despise strong nouns as subjects, and weak adjectives take the place of precise epithets. Nothing happens because the wind is in the west, but only “within the framework of an occidental circulation.” Thus the good news evaporates in bad language.

Over against these examples of diffuse and complex language, preachers have to strive for simplicity and clarity. This will mean using not only straightforward words, but short sentences with few if any subordinate clauses. One is obliged to do this when being translated into another language, which is good practice for doing it habitually. “Preach,” Bishop J. C. Ryle once said, “as if you were asthmatical.”

In addition to being simple, the preacher’s words should be vivid. That is, they should conjure up images in the mind. I shall have more to say in a moment about illustrations. Meanwhile, we need to acknowledge that stories are not the only type there is; even single words or idioms, if figures of speech, can illumine what we are trying to say. “The difference between the right word and the nearly right,” commented Mark Twain, “is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”

When we use metaphorical speech, however, we run the risk of mixing our metaphors and so of confusing people by the jumbled images we present to their imagination. Stephen Leacock gives an admirable example, which serves as a salutary warning to all preachers. He is satirizing the Reverend Rupert Drone, rural dean of Mariposa, north of Toronto:

I don’t think that at first anybody troubled much about the debt on the church (he writes). Dean Drone’s figures showed that it was only a matter of time before it would be extinguished; only a little effort was needed, a little girding up of the loins of the congregation, and they could shoulder the whole debt and trample it under their feet. Let them but set their hands to the plough and they could soon guide it into the deep water. Then they might furl their sails and sit every man under his own olive tree.

If our words are to be simple and vivid, they must also be honest. We have to beware of exaggerations and be sparing in our use of superlatives. Too liberal a supply of these devalues the currency. Besides, Jesus himself has given us some very clear instruction to let our “yes” be yes, and our “no” no, without the need for strong language to elaborate our statements (Jas. 5:12, alluding to the Lord’s teaching recorded in Matt. 5:33–37).

One recent author who has emphasized this is C. S. Lewis. “Verbicide” (the murder of words) can be committed, he maintained, in many ways. But one of the commonest is by “inflation,” e.g. saying “awfully” when we mean “very,” or “tremendous” when we mean “great.” It is worth quoting in full the common-sense advice he gave to a child in America in the course of a letter dated 26 June 1956:

What really matters is:

Perhaps these quotations are enough to convince us how important words are to the preacher. When struggling to communicate some message to our listeners, we shall search for simple words which they will understand, vivid words which will help them to visualize what we are saying, and honest words which tell the plain truth without exaggeration. Malcolm Muggeridge has been described as a “wizard with words.” Yet he confesses in the first volume of his autobiography that, while working as a journalist for the Manchester Guardian, he soon found himself becoming glib, facetious, and even hypocritical.

It is painful to me now to reflect (he writes), the ease with which I got into the way of using this non-language; these drooling non-sentences conveying non-thoughts, propounding non-fears and offering non-hopes. Words are as beautiful as love, and as easily betrayed. I am more penitent for my false words—for the most part, mercifully lost for ever in the Media’s great slag-heaps—than for false deeds.

Now this penitent has changed ambitions. The epitaph he has himself requested is “He used words well.”

From a consideration of the structure and words of the sermon, I move on to illustrations. I do so with considerable diffidence, because I know how bad I am at using them myself. My friends keep teasing me about it, and I am trying to improve.

I cannot help agreeing that a Christian preacher has no possible excuse for neglecting illustrations, for there is ample divine precedent to encourage him. Cyril Garbett, a former Archbishop of York, used to recount how, when a clergyman wrote to Bishop Mandell Creighton of London, asking him to recommend a book of sermon illustrations, “he got a reply consisting simply of two words on a post card, ‘The Bible.’” The bishop was right. The Bible teems with illustrations, particularly similes. Think of the Old Testament. “As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him.” “The wicked . . . are like the chaff which the wind drives away.” “I will be as the dew to Israel; he shall blossom as the lily, he shall strike root as the poplar.” “They shall mount up with wings like eagles.” “Is not my word like fire, says the Lord, and like a hammer which breaks the rock in pieces?” (Ps. 103:13; Ps. 1:4; Hos. 14:5; Isa. 40:31; Jer. 23:29). Or take the New Testament. “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world.” “As the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of man be in his day.” “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within they are full of dead men’s bones.” “We were gentle among you, like a mother taking care of her children.” “What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes” (Matt. 5:13, 14; Luke 17:24; Matt. 23:27; 1 Thess. 2:7; Jas. 4:14). This is but a random selection; the list could be multiplied many times.

Above all, there are the parables of Jesus. The best-known ones like the prodigal son and the good samaritan are an integral part of the average person’s understanding of Christianity. “With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything” (Mark 4:33, 34). W. E. Sangster was not overstating the case for illustrations when he wrote that, with the example of Jesus before us, “only a combination of vanity and blasphemy could convince a man that the matter was beneath his notice.” Besides, it is not only the parables of Jesus which demonstrate the importance of illustrating truth, or making it visible, it is Jesus himself. For Jesus is the Word of God made flesh, the visible image of the invisible God, so that he who saw him saw the Father.

It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the use of illustrations in preaching has had a long and honorable record in the history of the church. The great preachers of the fourth and fifth centuries like Chrysostom, Augustine, and Ambrose used them. One of the major characteristics of medieval preaching, writes Charles Smyth, was “the use of exempla, or what we should call ‘illustrations.’” This tradition was further developed in the thirteenth century by Francis of Assisi, Dominic and their friars. At that time collections of exempla for preachers were made and circulated (Smyth lists more than fifteen), forerunners of the modern “treasury of sermon illustrations.” They included Bible stories, anecdotes from classical literature, historical examples, legends of the saints, animal fables, and lessons from nature. It was because these exempla became used both as vehicles of false teaching and as substitutes for serious biblical exposition that John Wycliffe and his “Poor Preachers” determined to concentrate rather on the text of Scripture and thus paved the way for the Reformers’ emphasis on preaching from the Bible. Charles Smyth concludes this part of his historical survey with what he calls “The Triumph of Tillotson.” John Tillotson was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1691 to 1694. Though brought up as a Puritan, his later sermons were more essays on moral goodness than gospel addresses. In short sentences and simple language he developed “the appeal to reason and common sense, the careful, comprehensive argument, solid, unhurried, unadorned.” Yet he seems to have been reacting against speculations, pedantries, and elaborate exempla of the middle ages, rather than against the Puritans. For, although some Puritan allegorizations were very fanciful, the popularity of Bunyan’s great allegory Pilgrim’s Progress testifies to its strong spiritual influence, and in fact many Puritan preachers depicted the Christian life as a dangerous journey involving struggle and combat. Their sermons were “sown thick with imagery”; indeed, “few sermons lacked and many abounded in such allusions to spiritual wayfaring and warfaring.”

To biblical precedent and historical tradition we now add human psychology as another part of the foundation on which the practice of illustration rests. We human beings find it very difficult to handle abstract concepts; we need to convert them either into symbols (as in mathematics) or into pictures. For the power of imagination is one of God’s best and most distinctive gifts to mankind.

If I were asked [wrote Professor Macneile Dixon] what has been the most powerful force in the making of history, you would probably judge me of unbalanced mind were I to answer, as I should have to answer, metaphor, figurative expression. It is by imagination that men have lived; imagination rules all our lives. The human mind is not, as philosophers would have you think, a debating hall, but a picture gallery. Around it hang our similes, our concepts. The tyranny of the concept, as, for example, the concept of the universe as a machine . . . is one from which the human mind never escapes. . . . Metaphor is the essence of religion and poetry. . . . Nor does science escape from this entanglement.

H. W. Beecher applied this principle to our task as preachers. His fifth Yale lecture has a section entitled “The Power of Imagination.” He wrote: “The first element on which your preaching will largely depend for power and success, you will perhaps be surprised to learn, is Imagination, which I regard as the most important of all the elements that go to make the preacher.” By “imagination,” he went on to explain, he meant “that power of the mind by which it conceives of invisible things, and is able to present them as though they were visible to others.”

Paul referred to his preaching of the cross to the Galatians as a “public portrayal” before their very eyes of Jesus Christ as the one who had been crucified (Gal. 3:1). Now the crucifixion had taken place some twenty years previously, and none of Paul’s Galatian readers had been present to witness it. Yet by his vivid proclamation Paul had been able to bring this event out of the past into the present, out of hearsay into a dramatic visual image. Such is the purpose of every illustration, of whatever kind. It is to stimulate people’s imagination and to help them to see things clearly in their minds. Illustrations transform the abstract into the concrete, the ancient into the modern, the unfamiliar into the familiar, the general into the particular, the vague into the precise, the unreal into the real, and the invisible into the visible. According to an oriental proverb quoted by J. C. Ryle, “he is the eloquent man, who turns his hearers’ ears into eyes, and makes them see what he speaks of.”

In order to see, we need light. And the word “illustrate” means to illumine, to throw light or luster upon an otherwise dark object. It is for this reason that sermon illustrations have sometimes been likened to the windows of a house. In the third series of Spurgeon’s Lectures to My Students, which is entitled “The Art of Illustration” and is entirely devoted to this topic, he quotes a saying of “quaint Thomas Fuller,” the seventeenth-century Anglican historian, that “reasons are the pillars of the fabric of a sermon, but similitudes are the windows which give the best lights.” Declaring this comparison “happy and suggestive,” Spurgeon goes on:

The chief reason for the construction of windows in a house is, as Fuller says, to let in light. Parables, similes and metaphors have that effect; and hence we use them to illustrate our subject, or, in other words, to “brighten it with light,” for that is Dr. Johnson’s literal rendering of the word illustrate.

A building without windows would be “a prison rather than a house, . . . and in the same way a discourse without a parable is prosy and dull, and involves a grievous weariness of the flesh.” Why, he continues, “even the little children open their eyes and ears, and a smile brightens up their faces as we tell a story. . . . We dare say they often wish that the sermon were all illustration, even as the boy desired to have a cake made all of plums.” But, of course, a cake cannot be all plums, any more than a house can be all windows. We need to find the happy medium between this and the entire absence of windows and plums. After the publication of my little book Men Made New (1966), an attempted exposition of those crucial chapters Romans 5 to 8, a friend wrote me one of those candid epistles which only friends dare write. “Your book,” he said, “is like a house without windows, and a pudding without plums!” I cannot help wondering if he had been reading Spurgeon.

From the necessity of illustrations I turn to their dangers. These are principally two. The first is that they can be too prominent, thrusting themselves into the light instead of casting light on some obscurity. W. E. Sangster was surely justified, when criticized for using too many illustrations, in retorting “My people need lamp posts, John, to light them on their way.” For this is the severely practical function of illustrations; they are not to be “like pretty drawing-room lamps, calling attention to themselves” but rather “like street lamps, scarcely noticed, but throwing floods of light upon the road.” We all know the kind of illustration which is too obtrusive. So striking is it that it is remembered in isolation from its context, long after the truth has been forgotten which it was intended to illustrate.

The second danger attached to illustrations applies particularly to analogies which are either improperly or inappropriately applied. In every analogy we have to make it plain at what point the likeness is being suggested. For example, when Jesus told us to “become like little children,” he did not mean that we are to be childlike in every respect. He was not recommending the immaturity or naughtiness or irresponsibility or innocence or ignorance of a child, but only its “humility.” That is, we are as dependent on grace as a child on its parents. For there are other biblical passages in which we are forbidden, rather than encouraged, to become like children (e.g. Jer. 1:6; 1 Cor. 3:1, 2; 14:20; Heb. 5:11–14). So it is always dangerous, and often misleading, to “argue from an analogy,” that is to say, to give the false impression that because two objects or events are analogous at one point, they must therefore be analogous in all.

As an example of the inappropriate use of an analogy, I mention another friend of mine who once began a sermon by announcing, with deliberate pauses of immense solemnity: “Almighty God in Holy Scripture likens himself . . . to a hen.” His assertion was received with amused embarrassment. In a sense, of course, he was quite right. The psalmist delighted to find refuge in the shadow of God’s “wings,” and Boaz described Ruth the Moabitess convert as having taken refuge under the “wings” of the God of Israel (Ps. 36:7; Ruth 2:12). Moreover, there is plain dominical authority for the metaphor. In weeping over Jerusalem, Jesus declared that he had often longed to gather its inhabitants together “as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Matt. 23:37). It is a beautiful picture which portrays clearly the loving, tender, protective care of God, and a homely, familiar image to anybody who has visited a farmyard or back garden where chickens are kept. It is vivid too, for one can immediately smell the smell of the farm, hear the cluckings of the mother hen, and see the chicks scurrying toward her.

Why, then, the immediate sense of anomaly when my friend began his sermon? Partly because he introduced his illustration with somewhat pompous language (“Almighty God” and “Holy Scripture”), and in a pretentious style (the dramatic pauses), so that his hearers were led to expect a noble climax, and instead the word “hen” came as a comic anticlimax. The second reason for the sense of the ludicrous was that he did not specify at what point he was drawing his analogy. The fact is that Scripture does not liken Almighty God to a hen. What it does is to liken his protective care to the wings of a hen, or, more accurately still (since the image is dynamic, not static), it speaks both of God’s grace in terms of his desire to gather us under his wings, and of our responsive faith in terms of taking refuge under them. If, therefore, my friend had kept closer to the Bible, and had said something like “God in his tender love for us wants to bring us under his saving protection, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings,” there would have been immediate understanding and appreciation without any sense of anomaly.

Illustrations are of many kinds. Some may be no more than a word or two, or a phrase, which nevertheless, because they are striking figures of speech, convey a dramatic visual image. We can talk of God “breaking through our defenses” (so that we visualize people barricading themselves against his assaults), or of the Holy Spirit “prizing open” our closed minds to new truth (so that we can hear the creaking of the box lid as it reluctantly yields to the pressure of hammer or claw). Some preachers have great skill in re-telling biblical stories and parables in contemporary language, while others are adept at inventing fresh, modern parables. The most effective illustrations, however, are probably anecdotes, culled from history or biography, from current affairs or our own experience. For these help to set biblical truth in the widest possible context, historical, global, and personal. Every preacher, therefore, is constantly on the look-out for illustrations, his eye observant and his ear cocked. Not that we read books and listen to people only with the ulterior motive of collecting sermon material. Nevertheless, as Sangster put it, “all Nature and all life . . . are rich in illustration. As one sails through life with a trawling eye, what fine things come into the net!” And we shall be wise to jot down, either on cards, or in a loose-leaf folder, ideas which come to us and the few best quotations from every book we read.

In this whole matter of using sermon illustrations, we have to find the balance between too many and too few. Theodore Parker Ferris gave some good advice about this. On the one hand, he said, “one picture is worth ten thousand words. A sermon that is entirely without pictures, without illustrations, is likely to reach only those whose intellectual discipline makes it possible for them to appreciate abstractions.” On the other hand, “a sermon with too many illustrations is like a woman with too many jewels, and the jewels which are originally intended to enhance the figure, hide it.” In so saying, he practiced what he preached.

Having tried to arrange our material (by structure, words, and illustrations) in such a way as to serve our text’s dominant thought, we are ready for the next stage.

(5) Add the Introduction and Conclusion

It seems essential to prepare the body of the sermon first. If we were to begin with a predetermined introduction or conclusion, we would be almost bound to twist the text to fit. So instead, we start with the body. Only then shall we “top and tail” the body, that is, supply it with a head and a tail end, an introduction and a conclusion. The old writers on rhetoric and homiletics used to call these the “exordium” and the “peroration.”

An introduction is essential, and should be neither too long nor too short. The really lengthy introduction detracts from the sermon itself and steals its thunder. The commoner mistake today, however, is to shorten the introduction too drastically, and even to dispense with it altogether, in order to plunge immediately into the subject. This is unwise. “Men have a natural aversion to abruptness, and delight in a somewhat gradual approach. A building is rarely pleasing in appearance without a porch or some sort of inviting entrance. An elaborate piece of music will always have a prelude of at least a few introductory notes.” Is this not God’s way too? “Nature herself teaches us the art of preparations and of gradations” by the gentle arrival of both twilight and dawn.

A good introduction serves two purposes. First, it arouses interest, stimulates curiosity, and whets the appetite for more. Secondly, it genuinely “introduces” the theme by leading the hearers into it. It is comparatively easy to construct an introduction which fulfills one or other of these two functions. Interest can readily be aroused by telling a joke or an arresting story, but, if these do not lead naturally into the subject, the interest gained will be as quickly lost. On the other hand, anyone can introduce a subject in such a way as to lose people’s attention before even winning it. The right but hard way is to introduce the topic and arouse interest simultaneously, and so dispose people’s minds and hearts toward our message.

The traditional way of introducing a sermon is to announce one’s text. The value of this beginning is obvious. It declares from the start that we accept the Christian preacher’s responsibility to expound God’s Word, rather than ventilate our own opinions. Nevertheless, this opening turns many people off; they find it too traditional, too ecclesiastical, too dull. So at least sometimes we shall be wise to begin situationally instead of biblically, with our topic instead of our text, for then we start where people are, rather than where we hope to take them. I remember, for example, conducting a pastors’ seminar on preaching in Guatemala City, soon after the terrible earthquake of 1976 had devastated the country, killed 23,000 people, and rendered more than a million homeless. I enquired how many of them had preached about the earthquake the following Sunday, and was glad to discover that some had. Would we have encouraged them to start their sermon on that occasion with “My text this morning is . . .”? Would it not have been more natural to begin somewhat as follows: “We have met this morning in great sorrow. Many of us have lost a relative or friend. Others have lost their home and possessions. Why does God allow such disasters? That is the question in all our hearts and minds. How can we still believe in a God of love?” If the text were only now to be announced and read, and if it were to relate directly to the problem of divine providence and/or the assurance of divine love, people’s attention would not be lost.

Conclusions are more difficult than introductions. Some preachers seem to be constitutionally incapable of concluding anything, let alone their sermons. They circle round and round, like a plane on a foggy day without instruments, unable to land. Their sermons “are nothing less than a tragedy of aimlessness.” Others stop too abruptly. Their sermons are like a play without a finale, like music that has neither crescendo nor climax.

The conclusion should not be merely a recapitulation. Recapitulation is valuable. People’s memories need to be stimulated. The apostles were not afraid of judicious repetition. “To write the same things to you is not irksome to me,” said Paul, “and is safe for you” (Phil. 4:1). Peter was of the same opinion: “I intend always to remind you of these things, though you know them. . . I think it right, as long as I am in this body, to arouse you by way of reminder” (2 Pet. 1:12, 13 cf. 3:1, 2). A more recent preacher has described his sermon method in these terms, “First I tell them what I am going to tell them. Next, I tell them what I have to tell them. Thirdly, I tell them what I have told them.” Thus, his people get told the same message three times, which is fine, especially if he is able to disguise his repetitions a little bit by saying identical things in different words. For how can we lodge a truth in people’s minds except (as Luther often put it) by “dinning it into their heads continually”? Some deft carpenters can drive a nail home with one mighty blow; most find it safer to hammer it in with a series. Just so, truth needs to be driven home by the hammer-blows of repetition.

A true conclusion, however, goes beyond recapitulation to personal application. Not that all application should be left to the end, for our text needs to be applied as we go along. Nevertheless, it is a mistake to disclose too soon the conclusion to which we are going to come. If we do, we lose people’s sense of expectation. It is better to keep something up our sleeve. Then we can leave to the end that persuading which, by the Holy Spirit’s power, will prevail on people to take action.

This was an essential element in the classical understanding of public speaking. Cicero had said in The Orator that “an eloquent man must so speak as to teach (docere), to please (delectare) and to persuade (flectere or movere).” Augustine quoted Cicero’s dictum and applied it to the responsibility of Christian preachers to teach the mind, delight or inspire the affections, and move the will. “For,” he went on, “to teach is a necessity, to please is a sweetness, to persuade is a victory.” Modern communication theory agrees. “When we learn to phrase our purposes in terms of specific responses from those attending to our messages, we have taken the first step towards efficient and effective communication.” Our expectation, then, as the sermon comes to an end, is not merely that people will understand or remember or enjoy our teaching, but that they will do something about it. “If there is no summons, there is no sermon.”

The biblical authors were quite clear that this was the purpose of their teaching. Ezekiel was appointed “a watchman for the house of Israel” in order to warn them of God’s judgment and call them to repentance. The great pain of his prophetic ministry was that the people refused to respond to his words. God said to him, “You are to them like one who sings love songs with a beautiful voice and plays well on an instrument, for they hear what you say, but they will not do it” (Ezek. 33:30–33). Listening to sermons and listening to concerts, however, should be two very different experiences, for music is to be enjoyed, while Scripture is to be obeyed. The New Testament apostles make it plain that “truth” brings with it moral demands: it is to be “done” not merely heard, to be obeyed not merely believed (e.g. John 3:18–21; Rom. 1:18–23; 2 Thess. 2:10–12; 1 John 1:6, 8; 2 John 4; 3 John 3, 4). For Jesus had said to them, “if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (John 13:17). James expressed the same necessity when he urged his readers to be “doers of the word, and not hearers only” (Jas. 1:22–25).

The great preachers in the history of the church have shared this conviction. The Puritans were a notable example. “The final characteristic of godly preaching was that every sermon had to have its ‘use’ or application,” relating particularly to “the conversion of souls and their training in holiness.” I have been told (although I cannot find this expression anywhere in their writings) that they used to speak of the need to “preach through to the heart.” They certainly cannot be accused of by-passing the head, for they preached heavily doctrinal sermons. But they wanted their message to penetrate through the head to the heart, that is, to the decision-making center of the human personality. Similarly, John Wesley supplies us in his Journal with plenty of evidence that he distinguished between “head-work” and “heart-work,” and that he expected his preaching to get through to the heart. “I observed none wounded, nor anything more than a calm, dull attention.” “I cannot find my way to the hearts of the people of Perth.” Again, “I made a pointed application to the hearts of all that were present.”

Campbell Morgan preferred to speak of the will: “The preacher is not merely asking a congregation to discuss a situation, and consider a proposition, or give attention to a theory. We are out to storm the citadel of the will, and capture it for Jesus Christ. . . . Whether evangelizing or teaching does not matter. The appeal is the final thing.”

Now citadels cannot be stormed without the use of violence. Nor can human hearts and wills. “If a hardened heart is to be broken, it is not stroking but striking that must do it.” In the same vein, Dr. Paul White, the famous Australian who worked as a jungle doctor in Tanzania, tells us in his autobiography what he conceives to be an author’s or preacher’s secrets of success: “Hook ‘em, hold ‘em, hang on to ‘em, humour ‘em and hit ‘em! This last is known as the punch line.”

It is just here that many of us are weak. We would not be comfortable in using these metaphors of “storming,” “striking,” and “hitting.” They are altogether too violent, too bellicose, for our mood. We have neither the right nor the wish, we say, to intrude into other people’s religious privacy. Besides, we are scared of emotionalism. In consequence, we use the pulpit for the reading of harmless little essays and seldom if ever press home a point which demands decision. R. W. Dale had a section in the first of his Yale lectures called “Aimless Sermons.” He described how during a summer holiday he had listened to a preacher whose exegesis was sound and scholarly, whose thought was ingenious and fresh, and whose illustrations were admirable. “But it did not seem to occur to the preacher that there was anybody listening to him. . . . I could not make out what truth he wanted to make clearer to us or what neglected duty he wished us to discharge.” Dale told him afterwards that it would do him a world of good “to make twenty or thirty speeches at ward meetings”—political speeches on hotly debated issues.

To carry the vote and fire the zeal” of our congregations (Dale continued), this, gentlemen, is our true business. If we are to be successful, there must be vigorous intellectual activity, but it must be directed by a definite intention to produce a definite result. . . . We shall preach to no purpose unless we have a purpose in preaching. Archbishop Whately said of some preacher that “he aimed at nothing, and hit it.”

If Dale likened the preacher to a politician in a debating chamber seeking votes, others have likened him to an advocate in a law court, pleading a case before judge and jury and confidently expecting a favorable verdict. Yet another picture is that of the fisherman who by his preaching is determined to “catch men” (Luke 5:10). He refuses to be like the angler who, responding to an enquiry, confessed that he had not caught any fish, though he thought he had “influenced” a good many. John Wilkins, the seventeenth-century bishop of Chester, expressed this point admirably:

The cheif [sic] end of an Orator is to perswade. . . . And therefore that Preacher, who in his discourses does only flourish in generall notions, and does not drive at some particular argument, endeavouring to presse upon his auditory the beleife or practise of some truth or duty, is like an unwise Fisher, who spreads his net to the empty aire, were he cannot expect any successe of his labours.

Perhaps the most striking metaphor, however, which has been used by a number of authors to illustrate the serious purpose we should have in our sermon applications, is that of gunfire, particularly in hunting or shooting. Bishop J. C. Ryle’s comment on the sermons of George Whitefield was that they were “not like the morning and evening gun at Portsmouth, a kind of formal discharge . . . that disturbs nobody.” On the contrary, “they were all life and fire. There was no getting away from them. . . . There was a holy violence about him which firmly took your attention by storm.”

The person who developed this analogy most graphically was Henry Ward Beecher, in the very first Yale Lectures (1872). He likened his early attempts at preaching to his boyhood shooting escapades:

I used to go out hunting by myself, and I had great success in firing off my gun; and the game enjoyed it as much as I did, for I never hit them or hurt them. I fired off my gun as I see hundreds of men firing off their sermons. I loaded it, and bang!—there was a smoke, a report, but nothing fell; and so it was again and again.

But as he said in a later lecture, “A sermon is not like a Chinese firecracker, to be fired off for the noise it makes. It is the hunter’s gun, and at every discharge he should look to see his game fall. The power (?a misprint for “powder”) is wasted if nothing be hit.”

Six years later the Yale Lectures were delivered by R. W. Dale of Birmingham (1829–95) and included this:

Mr Beecher said that in the elaborate doctrinal part of Jonathan Edwards’ sermons the great preacher was only getting his guns into position; but that in his “applications” he opened fire on the enemy. There are too many of us, I am afraid (commented Dale), who take so much time getting our guns “into position” that we have to finish without firing a shot.

As James Black summed it up, “your business is serious gunfire with a target,” and added, “gentlemen, plenty of fire, but no fireworks!”

Perhaps some of my readers find this gunfire metaphor inappropriate, even offensive, because the imagery is violent and destructive. Yet the analogy is intended to illustrate the preacher’s goal (hitting a target), not his means of attaining it (causing a violent death). Jesus’ fishing metaphor had a similar purpose. Whether we liken our ministry to fishing or shooting, the same basic point is in mind: we should confidently expect results, namely the catching or capturing of people for Christ.

Spurgeon, as one might expect, embellished the metaphor further, and enlivened it by his wit and wisdom.

It is of no use to fire your rifle into the sky (he said), when your object is to pierce men’s hearts. To flourish your sabre finely is a thing which has been done so often that you need not repeat it. Your work is to charge home at the heart and conscience. Fire into the very centre of the foe. Aim at effect . . . effect upon the conscience and upon the heart. Some preachers remind me of the famous Chinese jugglers, who not long ago were everywhere advertized. One of these stood against a wall, and the other threw knives at him. One knife would be driven into the board just above his head, and another close by his ear, while under his armpit and between his fingers quite a number of deadly weapons were bristling. Wonderful art to be able to throw to a hair’s breadth and never strike! How many among us have a marvellous skill in missing!

It is time to turn from the metaphors to the reality. What exactly do we hope to achieve by our sermons? “I know what I want to say to my people,” an Episcopal clergyman once said to me in Florida, “but I don’t know what I want to do with it.” Yet we must define our object; otherwise the conclusion of every sermon will be an embarrassing anticlimax. One way of summarizing the options is given in the four uses of Scripture, namely that it is profitable “for teaching the truth and refuting error, or for reformation of manners and discipline in right living” (2 Tim. 3:16 NEB). But this is too general. More particular was Charles Simeon’s aim, by which he wanted his own Horae Homileticae (2,536 sermon outlines in twenty-one volumes) to be judged: do they “uniformly tend to humble the sinner, to exalt the Savior, and to promote holiness?”

The precise application of our sermon depends, however, on two variables, namely the character of our text and the composition of our congregation. As for our text, we meditated on it until it yielded its dominant thought or theme. It is this, then, which now needs to be enforced in such a way that the people feel its impact and go away determined to act upon it. Does the text call to repentance or stimulate faith? Does it evoke worship, demand obedience, summon to witness, or challenge to service? The text itself determines the particular response we desire.

As for our congregation, we have already emphasized the need to know them and their spiritual condition. Richard Bernard in The Faithfull Shepheard (1607), noting that “no plaster cures when we do but only know it . . . but the particular application to the sore doth good,” listed some of the applications the preacher should have in mind:

Inform the ignorant, confirm such as have understanding, reclaim the vicious, encourage the virtuous, convince the erroneous, strengthen the weak, recover again the backslider, resolve those that doubt, feed with milk and strong meat continually, in season and out of season.

The only way to do this is to use our God-given imagination. We have been studying our text. Now we try to picture our congregation and relate the one to the other. There is dear old Lucy, who has recently lost her husband and is experiencing the shock of bereavement and loneliness: what has my text to say to her? Or to Florence, the elderly spinster, who has never come to terms with her singleness? Or to Alan, who is feeling the weight of new responsibilities following his promotion? Or to John and Mary, who have just got married and are setting up their home? Or to those students facing finals and wondering about their career? Or to that Thomas who is full of doubts, that Agrippa who is “almost persuaded,” or that Paul who is newly committed to Christ? It is good to let our mind wander over the church family and ask prayerfully what message God might have for each from our text.

Here is the conclusion of George Whitefield’s evangelistic address on The Kingdom of God:

I know that many of you come here out of curiosity: though you come only to see the congregation, yet if you come to Jesus Christ, Christ will accept of you. Are there any cursing, swearing soldiers here? Will you come to Christ, and list yourselves under the banner of the dear Redeemer? You are all welcome to Christ. Are there any little boys or little girls here? Come to Christ, and he will erect his kingdom in you . . . you that are old and grayheaded, come to Jesus Christ, and you shall be kings and priests to your God. . . . If there be any of you ambitious of honour, do you want a crown, a sceptre? Come to Christ, and the Lord Jesus Christ will give you a kingdom that no man shall take from you.

To give a modern example, this time ethical rather than evangelistic, a young man was invited to preach on the seventh commandment, “you shall not commit adultery.” His sermon was biblical, brave, direct, and practical, and he ended with the following four applications: to single young people (keep yourself pure for your future partner, and learn to be ruthless with the approaches to sin); to people in an adulterous relationship (make up your mind to break it, despite the pain); to married people (work at your marriage, and set an example to the many young people who come from broken homes and have no model); and to the local church (have the courage to confront and discipline offenders, in obedience to Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18:15–17).

We need also to be aware that people hear sermons through different “filters.” Some will be receptive to our message. Others will be resistant to it because they perceive it as a threat to their world view, or culture, or family unity, or personal self-esteem, or sinful way of life, or economic lifestyle. Sensitive to these blocks, we may well need in the conclusion to resort to “persuasion,” a common description of the preaching of the apostles. We may seek to persuade by argument (anticipating and answering people’s objections), or by admonition (warning them of the consequences of disobedience), or by indirect conviction (first arousing a moral judgment in them and then turning it upon themselves, as Nathan did with David), or by pleading (applying the gentle pressure of God’s love).

Then, as the sermon ends, it is good to invite the people to pray. Although the Anglican tradition is for the congregation to stand while an ascription of praise to God is said, yet after many sermons this is inappropriate, and it is better to pray. Sometimes we will pray aloud and extempore, seeking to express the congregation’s response to God’s Word. At other times it may be wiser to call the people to silent prayer. For the Holy Spirit may be prompting different responses in different hearts, which a single prayer could never encompass. So why not leave them alone in the silence before God, so that the Holy Spirit may lead each person to crystallize his or her personal response and resolve?

Having added to the sermon its introduction and conclusion, we come to the final stage of our preparation.

The question now arises whether to write the sermon out. Since God has made us all differently, and given us distinct personalities and talents, there can be no fixed rule for everybody. Nevertheless, there seems to be a consensus that we should avoid the two extremes of complete improvisation on the one hand and slavery to a script on the other. Good extempore preaching is very rare. Few people are such clear thinkers and concise talkers that they can express themselves lucidly on their feet without prior written preparation. The great majority would degenerate, as Hensley Henson feared he would have done if he had tried it, “into the type, so familiar in the religious world, and so deeply repugnant to my conscience and abhorrent to my feelings, which is not unfairly described as a Windbag” One who did try, and failed lamentably, was George Eliot’s character the Rev. Amos Barton, the new and evangelical vicar of Shepperton village. A local farmer called Mr. Hackit was extremely uncomplimentary about his attempts:

Our parson . . . can preach as good a sermon as need be heard when he writes it down. But when he tries to preach wi’out book, he rambles about, and doesn’t stick to his text; and every now and then he flounders about like a sheep as has cast itself, and can’t get on its legs again.

Doubtless he would have done better if he had heeded Charles Simeon’s advice to students not to preach extemporaneously until they have first preached 300–400 written sermons or been three to four years preaching.

The opposite extreme is to read a manuscript word for word. Although this does not at all appeal to our age, we need to recognize that God’s signal blessing has rested on some who have done it, notably Jonathan Edwards. His health was poor, his voice languid, and his gestures scanty. As for his preaching, “He wrote his sermons; and in so fine and so illegible a hand, that they could be read only be being brought near to the eye. ‘He carried his notes with him into the desk, and read most that he wrote: still, he was not confined to them.’”

To us today, however, if extempore preaching lacks precision, script-reading lacks immediacy. Our generation demands a relationship between preacher and congregation which is face to face and eyeball to eyeball. They approve of preachers like Dick Sheppard, the pacifist vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields 1914–26, who “always talked to a person” and “never merely sprayed the solar system with words.”

There seems to be only one way to combine precision of language with immediacy of delivery, and that is for us to write the sermon in our study but decline to read it from the pulpit. Writing is a most salutary discipline. First, it obliges us to think straight. Garrulous preachers can conceal slovenly thinking with clever speech; it is much more difficult to get away with a cover-up on paper. In fact, it is impossible to do so if we want to retain our integrity. Secondly, writing helps us to avoid slipping into the same old cliches; it provokes us to develop new ways of expressing old truths.

So we shall be wise to write the sermon out. But what shall we do with the manuscript? Not recommended is the practice of memorizing it and then leaving it behind, so that, when we are in the pulpit, we can read it off the back of our mind. The labor of such a task is enormous, the risk of forgetting our lines considerable, and the necessary mental energy so great that the preacher has to concentrate on the memorized script instead of on his message and congregation.

A second way is to take the manuscript into the pulpit, but use it for other purposes than reading. One who did this was Joseph Pilmore (1734–1825), who was first commissioned as an itinerant lay preacher by John Wesley and then ordained into the American Episcopal Church by Bishop Seabury, and who retained his evangelical fervor when rector of Christ Church New York and St Paul’s Church Philadelphia. A member of his congregation wrote of him:

He wrote his sermons, and . . . his manuscript was always before him. He began not only by reading, but by reading very deliberately, and with little animation; but he would gradually wax warm, and you would see his eyes begin to kindle, and the muscles of his face to move and expand, until at length his soul would be all on fire, and he would be rushing onward extemporaneously almost with the fury of a cataract. And the only use he would make of his manuscript in such cases would be to roll it up in his hand, and literally shake it at his audience.

The third and best alternative is to reduce the manuscript to notes, and take these into the pulpit with us. It is certainly extraordinary how, if we have prepared carefully and written out the sermon and prayed over it, much of it comes back readily to our minds when we are preaching, while at the same time we have a certain freedom to depart from our notes or elaborate them. Professor James Stewart, himself a wonderfully fluent preacher, has told me that this was his method. “I did try always to write the morning sermon at least out in full,” he has written, and “on the Saturday morning I would reduce this to a one- or two-page summary, which then accompanied me to Church on the Sunday.”

After the writing comes the praying. Of course we prayed before we began to prepare, and we have tried to continue throughout our preparation in an attitude of prayer. But now that the sermon is finished and written, we need to pray over it. The best time for this is the half hour before we leave for church on Sunday.

It is on our knees before the Lord that we can make the message our own, possess or re-possess it until it possesses us. Then when we preach it, it will come neither from our notes, nor from our memory, but out of the depths of our personal conviction as an authentic utterance of our heart. So, wrote Baxter, “a minister should take some special pains with his heart before he is to go to the congregation.” “Get your sermon by heart,” pleaded Cotton Mather, meaning not “learn it by heart” but “get your heart suitably touched with what you have prepared.” Every preacher knows the difference between a heavy sermon which trundles along the runway like an overloaded jumbo jet and never gets airborne, and a sermon which has “what a bird has, a sense of direction and wings.” Which kind any sermon will be is usually settled as we pray over it beforehand. We need to pray until our text comes freshly alive to us, the glory shines forth from it, the fire burns in our heart, and we begin to experience the explosive power of God’s Word within us.

Prophets and wise men spoke of this in olden days, “If I say, ‘I will not mention him, or speak any more in his name,’” said Jeremiah, “there is in my heart as it were a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I am weary with holding it in, and I cannot”(Jer. 20:9). Job’s younger “comforter” Elihu, angry because the first three speakers had found no answer to Job’s predicament, had a similar experience: “I am full of words, the spirit within me constrains me. Behold, my heart is like wine that has no vent; like new wineskins, it is ready to burst. I must speak, that I may find relief” (Job 32:18–20). Then there was the psalmist, who was oppressed by the wicked around him, “My heart became hot within me. As I mused, the fire burned” (Ps. 39:3). God’s message within us should also be like burning fire or fermenting wine. The pressure begins to build up inside us until we feel we can contain it no longer. It is then that we are ready to preach. The whole process of sermon preparation, from beginning to end, was admirably summed up by the American Black preacher who said, “First, I reads myself full, next I thinks myself clear, next I prays myself hot, and then I lets go.”

If the process of preparing sermons is so elaborate, I have sometimes been asked by ordination candidates and young preachers, how long does it take to prepare a single sermon? The question has always flummoxed me, because it is impossible to give a simple reply. Probably the best answer is “your whole lifetime,” because every sermon is, in a way, a distillation of everything one has learned hitherto, and is a reflection of the kind of person one has become over the years. The reason it is difficult to calculate the actual hours is that one cannot say precisely when the process began. Shall we include the time spent in background reading? Also, after one has been studying and preparing for a few years, one never comes to a verse or passage which one has not read or pondered before; one comes to it rather with an accumulated fund of ideas. If pressed, however, to say how long it takes from the moment the text is chosen to the moment the sermon is written out, I think that beginners will need ten to twelve hours (“twelve hours’ work on a sermon is a good general rule,” said Bonhoeffer), and that experienced preachers are not likely to reduce this to less than a half. A useful rule of thumb is that one needs at least one hour’s preparation for every five minutes preached.

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