By Austin B. Tucker
When he became pastor in the small agricultural community on New Zealand’s plain, he was still speaking in a high-pitched, rapid and monotonous voice. He shut himself in his study regularly to practice vocal exercises to improve range and pitch. He rehearsed delivery of his sermons, including gestures. His only critic, his young bride, helped him. “You still speak too fast, dear.”
He took pains to hear and analyze every notable lawyer, politician, lecturer or preacher who came within range. Before he left that pastorate, he had developed a pleasing and distinctive delivery. He had clear enunciation, flexible, well-modulated tones with the long-drawn out vowels that came to distinguish his delivery.
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After six years at Mosgiel, he accepted the call of Baptist Tabernacle in Hobart, Tasmania, an island state two hundred miles south of the Australian mainland. There he attracted more attention as a speaker and writer. The newspaper editorialized right away about his “oratorical flight” at a temperance rally and described him as “a pleasing and effective speaker” who would have “both ears” of the Tasmanians.”2
In the middle of this pastorate, he made a decision to prepare only one new sermon a week so that he might continue to research and write. He continued his reading of biography. While working on his marathon series on Texts That Made History, at age forty, he found in a used bookstore dozens of biographical studies. He bargained with the shopkeeper for the whole lot at a shilling each and read them every one.
He would eventually produce more than fifty significant books, plus 2,500 articles and many more editorials for newspapers. He also wrote hundreds of carefully composed personal letters. Many of these were part of a regular evangelistic outreach to those in his community who were yet uncommitted to Christ. During World War I he kept up also a faithful pastoral correspondence with every service man away from his church.
But supremely F. W. Boreham was a preacher. He has been criticized for depending too much on storytelling for the content of his sermons. It is true that he is not an expositor if that means one must take an extended passage of Scripture and explain it in all its detail. But few preachers could take a key verse of the Bible and make it live for the congregation as Boreham could.
Consider this sample typical of his interpretation of the life of a great person in history, always through the lens of a life-shaping Scripture text. Such sermons usually bore a simple title such as “Michael Faraday’s Text.” In it Boreham interprets the character through the living text and at the same time sheds light on the text through the life of the historical character.
Let’s slip into a sermon already in progress. The preacher has introduced his subject, the great scientist Michael Faraday. Now the preacher wishes to introduce his text. The scene is Faraday’s deathbed, a scene preachers of his generation were not reluctant to describe. The preacher is saying:
