By Mark E. Yurs
He encouraged ministers to develop their own homemade courses in preaching following the pattern of this case study method. He outlined the plan in numerous places, including The Protestant Pulpit. The idea was to begin with a minister's biography and then move to that person's treatise on preaching, if the worker in view published such a volume. Thereafter one would analyze the printed sermons of the same person, singling out one in particular that grips the soul. He advised the student to live with this sermon until it becomes a friend for life.3 After spending a year or a sizeable portion thereof with one preacher, the student should move to another and conduct a similar study. Gradually, one would amass a working knowledge of the ways of master preachers.
In all of this, Blackwood was preaching what he practiced, for this was his method of study. In 1917, while still a pastor, he wrote, "During the past year or two I have read the biographies of Luther, McCheyne, Simeon, Spurgeon, Phillips Brooks, John Watson, and Alexander MacLaren."4
II. A Legacy of High Ideals
Blackwood believed each minister should be committed to high ideals from the start and then keep growing year after year under the power of God who alone can make a person more Christlike. To summarize Blackwood's ideals, we can say he was committed to a teaching ministry exercised largely but not exclusively through preaching. He believed the sermons of a teaching minister should be "Biblical in substance, doctrinal in form, and practical in effect."5
Blackwood stressed the teaching ministry as the ideal way of understanding one's role as a parish pastor. He quoted favorably one who noted that many Protestant chaplains during World War II found a great deal of biblical and theological illiteracy among their charges and resolved to do nothing but teach when they returned to parish ministry.6 In terms of preaching, having a teaching ministry meant to Blackwood that there would be some connection between the sermons from week to week so that one's pulpit fare would have a cummulative effect.7
This emphasis on the teaching ministry led Blackwood to write much about preaching in courses as well as in series. He defined both the course and the series as a set of unified sermons delivered consecutively on successive Sundays or Wednesdays at the same hour. The chief differences between the two ways of preaching are two. One, the series is announced beforehand as a unified whole while the course is not. Two, the stress in the series is on the whole, while the stress in the course is on the individual message.8 Blackwood appreciated both ways of working because each one contributes to continuity from the pulpit from week to week.
A teaching ministry of this sort calls for planning at every stage, and this was a theme Blackwood developed at every opportunity. He believed in planning for the pulpit for the sake of the congregation as well as for the preacher. In the ideal plan, the teaching minister would systematically lead the congregation through the Bible, the range of Christian doctrine, and all the while pay attention to the Christian year and church calendar.
