I've
had the privilege for 38 years of probably doing 60 percent of my preaching
in a white context. I'm a product of white seminaries and white Bible colleges.
One of my African-American Ph.D. students asked me one time why I was doing
a dissertation on a white German theologian. Why not a black person that I could
write about and leave a legacy for our church? I informed him that this person,
Helmut Thielicke, was an individual that for me transcended colors — that he
could be linked to suffering of all people. Intellectually as a churchman he
kept his foot in the church and the academy. I wanted to present someone who
could bless more than the white church but could bless the entire church. That's
why I chose to write on him — and he has informed me ever since. He just happened
to be a preacher who was white. That's all.
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Preaching:
Who are the preachers that have influenced you?
Smith:
My father in the ministry was Elijah Lee Alexander from Little Rock Arkansas.
Crude, rough-hewn, baptized me, made me a junior deacon at seven, ordained me,
all that. He was the kind of individual who shaped the way I think and the way
I preach. When I was probably about 10 years old I had to know the church covenant
word for word. No excuse. I had to know the 24 articles of faith. I had to know
that. My mother and father gave him permission to literally whip me — I know
it sounds mean — for being lazy in thought. I had to know that. I was forced
to teach adult Sunday school at 14. I had home Bible study, correspondence course
for adults in that neighborhood when I was 12, 13. All those kind of things
came as a result of him. So he shaped the way I think.
Once
I was getting ready to preach at his church as a young teenage preacher. I had
50 pages of a manuscript that I was going to preach at Shiloh Baptist church
in Newark, Ohio, and about an hour before the service he said, "Bobby,
is this your's son?" I said, "Yes, sir." I had taken all these
notes on the Pulpit Commentary and all that.
He
tore up every one of those pages and threw it into the trash can. He said, "Now
if you need all of that to preach from, if you can't remember anything you've
read, how do you expect the people to remember? Now," he said, "You
go on and preach."
I
was mad — of course, I wouldn't let him know that — but it shaped me. I'm
for any way of communicating the Word of God but it has to be internalized.
He forced me to internalize my thought, organize it and to present it. So he
informed me.