Be
the personification of what you preach. When I say that, I don't mean in the
old sense of model holiness. I'm talking about the kind of vulnerability and
honesty that you appreciate in others C
be that in the pulpit. The pulpit grants us a place to pontificate, to play
games, and to look down arrogant noses at the poor peasants in the pew.
In
the church that I served, I came from the congregation to preach. I had a petition
put on my desk by a number of people in the church who wanted me to sit up front
behind the pulpit the way one always did. I tore it up because I realized the
reason they wanted me to sit there said something really bad about them and
about preachers. So I would sit in the congregation and when it was my time
to teach the Bible, I walked up to the pulpit C well, we didn't have a pulpit.
I usually sat on a bar stool and taught. It was a statement: "Guys, as
I teach you this stuff, you need to know that I'm placing myself under the authority
of God's Word, too. I've worked through some of this, I'll be honest when I'm
not living it. I'll tell you where I am living it. I'll tell you what's helped
me and made the difference. But above all, this is revealed propositional truth
and we don't have the freedom to change it."
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That's
the kind of modelling that I think is good for a pastor. I think there were
days in the past when pastors and preachers could pontificate C Beecher was one of those,
I think Harold John Ockenga was one of those, Fosdick was one. I think our day
and age has forced us to take the armor off, and the preacher who doesn't will
die.
__________________________
Steve
Brown is Professor of Preaching at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando,
FL, and speaker for the Key Life radio ministry.
I
think my change was born in my own inability to remember my sermons. I was putting
a grid over the biblical material and sermonic material that was not normal.
I was preaching it and I’d look down at my material and I was in the wrong place.
What’s wrong with this? So on occasion, when I was asked to speak at a civic
club or a Sunday School class, I would abandon my homiletical plan and talk
to them. As I examined those speeches, they had as much content as the other,
but they started at a different point. So one week I just said to my wife, “I
think I’m going to try to preach Sunday morning like I talk to these other groups.”
She
was kind of aghast at what happened. People would say, “Well, that was interesting
but was it a sermon?” It was a real struggle for me because I’d been doing it
the other way, and I could have moved right along. So it was, first of all,
running into myself in the pulpit. I had the feeling that good communications
would flow normally and naturally enough that I could remember it and follow
my own sermons without looking down and saying, “Oh, I’ve forgotten that.”