The Preaching Ministry of A. W. Tozer
By James L. Snyder
Tozer, whatever else he may have been, was a thinker. He would mull an idea over in his mind for weeks, sometimes months. He was fond of saying, "I refuse to allow any man to put his glasses on me and force me to see everything in his light."
A voracious reader, he would read a bit, then think and meditated on what he had read. He often said, "You should think ten times more than you read." Consequently, his sermons were not shallow emotional appeals. There was hard thinking behind them and Tozer forced hearers to think. He had the ability to make you face yourself in the light of what God was saying.
In preaching, Tozer held his Bible in his left hand and with his right hand would follow his notes. He always preached from an outline, usually a piece of 8x10" paper folded in half, with notes carefully written on both of the inside halves clipped to the page of his Bible. All the time he preached, Tozer rocked back and forth on his toes.
Advertisement
Especially in his own pulpit, the first few minutes appeared as though he was slowly, deliberately reading from a manuscript, which, of course, did not exist. He never ran up and down, he rarely moved, he never made any demonstrations. Instead of shouting, he used crisp, precise, climactic sentences. He spoke in a quiet voice and learned how to emphasize things by snapping the sentence with a word. His idea of sermon craft was, "Get the idea down and the words will take care of themselves at delivery."
Tozer's illustrations were sometimes grotesque, but he always communicated his point. Always he spoke in figures, even in private conversation. This was due, no doubt, to his training and reading and meditation. In Tozer's published works his illustrations, and for the most part his humor, are edited out.
A lively imagination and eloquent descriptive powers gave force and vividness to his presentations. His special love for poetry and the hymns of the church gave wings to his preaching and writing. Psalm 104, which the King James Version says is a meditation upon the majesty and providence of God, is full of allusions to nature that thrilled Tozer's heart and he often preached from it. At the close of one such sermon an auditor exclaimed, "He out-Davided David!"
Toward the end of his ministry Tozer enlisted his church's prayer for a personal struggle. "Pray for me," he requested, "in the light of the pressures of our times that I will not just come to a wearied end -- an exhausted, tired old preacher, interested only in hunting a place to roost. Pray that I will be willing to let my Christian experience and Christian standards cost me something right down to the last gasp!"
On May 12, 1963, A. W. Tozer's earthly labors ended. His faith in God's majesty became sight as he entered into the presence of God. Even though his physical presence is far removed from us, Tozer continues to minister to those who are thirsty for the things of God.