W.A.
Criswell served for half a century as Senior Pastor of First Baptist Church
in Dallas, TX. He died in 2002.
Being
a media minister helps you to say more with few words because it’s usually only
the first two or three sentences, the sound bite as they call it, that the public
is accustomed to capture. You will have others who will get it all, you will
have many who will get a good bit of it, but most only get the sound bites.
So it is important that your first paragraph is attention getting. It is important
that at various points of the message where you want to drive home a truth,
that something that will recapture their attention. It is important that the
way you end is a memorable ending because two weeks from now they won’t be able
to remember the topic they have heard so much since then.
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I
try very hard to think of what I am doing at the pulpit as though I were on
Face the Nation or one of the talk shows when you are across from an
opponent. You don’t get the chance to go into all of your rationale. You will
be shouted down or talked over. You’ve got to have two or three sentences that
go right through.
__________________________
Jerry
Falwell is Senior Pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, VA, where
he also serves as Chancellor of Liberty University.
Preaching
must come out of the life of the preacher, the authenticity of the preacher’s
life and the character we build. There is no effective preaching without credibility
in the pulpit — we’ve seen that many times. What I have tried to do is to build
within my life the consistency of character that produces a consistency of message.
The standard of biblical preaching and the call is a high call. We all fall
short, yet we should aspire to preach a message that is consistent with our
character and that our character will be consistent with our message.
__________________________
Jack
Graham is Senior Pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Dallas, TX.
This
is an ecotonic world in which we're living. An ecotone is that place where two
ecosystems come together. I pastored down in Fort Lauderdale where that salt
water from the ocean comes into the intercoastal waterway and meets the fresh
water from the river. Where they blend together and merge together is called
an ecotone and it's a place of tremendous possibility. Fish lay their eggs there.
It's also a place of tremendous danger because certain things happen environmentally
there.