The Minister’s Workshop: The Joy of Preaching

‘Do I actually believe God will use this sermon to turn men to Christ?’ this preacher asks himself

Although the pastoral office has many facets and each enhances the brightness of the jewel, there is no facet more challenging, more demanding of thought and skill, than preaching. In a day when preaching is being downgraded and when ritual and counseling are in the spotlight, I still maintain that a church is strong and great to the degree to which its pulpit has a message for the times, given with all the authority of God’s Word.

So the question I try to ask myself each Sunday is this: “Do you actually believe, as you enter this pulpit, that God will use you and your sermon in this very hour to convict men and women and turn their faces toward Christ and toward heaven?” I do not consider this an attempt to be pious. It is a bit of self-examination that keeps me from a common pitfall of ministers: preaching without great expectancy.

Of course there are times when, though I think I am well prepared and though I make use of the various tricks and techniques of preaching, still the effort falls flatter than a flounder. But there are other times when my preparation has been shoddy, because of the stress of other duties, and yet the congregational response far exceeds the response to some of my more laborious efforts. However, it is dangerous to base a rule on this phenomenon. I have learned that there is really no substitute for thorough preparation.

I map out the sermons for the entire year, so that I can get a good view of where I am going, what I am covering and missing, and what I am overemphasizing. Sometimes this scheme is interrupted, of course, because of some special problem that needs to be faced. In general, though, I try to keep the sermons “nailed down” this way. It keeps me from that frustrating scramble of starting to write a sermon and, after several interruptions, being unable to decide what I really saw in that text in the first place. I have too often spent much of the week trying to decide what would be the most effective message, with a growing dissatisfaction with what I had already prepared. Committing myself to a certain theme or a series of sermons is a good and helpful discipline.

Like many other ministers, I carry a lot of books with me on vacations, books I have not been able to read through the year. Our summer home is on a lake in Canada, and while there I come in contact with books from Great Britain. British preachers say things in a charming manner that I find quite captivating. My habit in reading a book is to underline and make copious marginal notes and then identify the topics by marking them down in the blank pages at the back of the book. When I reexamine the book, I can quickly get at what I considered of value on the first reading.

Invariably, in a place where the pressures are few, seeds for sermons multiply. I am always on the lookout for brief series of sermons. I have found to my dismay that long series are wearisome to the flesh, and I mean the flesh of my audience. Any series in which the sermons do not stand as independent units loses the interest of all except the assistant pastor—who has to be there each Sunday anyway.

I have told myself that a minister should read at least one sermon every day, because this has been the habit of some of the truly great pulpiteers and perhaps some of this greatness might therefore appear behind my pulpit someday. I lay no claim to success in this undertaking, but I am sure of two things. I have learned the ways of many of the great masters and have profited from them, and I have learned the difference between a lecture aimed at the brain and a sermon aimed at the heart.

After I determine the topic and text, I analyze the topic and give it a structure that I think will have enough charm and simplicity to catch the imagination of the simplest person. I have often met people who say: “I heard you ten years ago, and I can still remember the outline”—when even I had long forgotten it. When I was writing a book on the life of Paul, I was advised to make it simple because the average intellectual age in the United States is about thirteen years. When a man like Churchill is able to do magic with words of one syllable, who am I to try to improve on this system.

Then I build on this basic structure by drawing on what I have experienced and what I have read and filed away in cabinets over the years. The great problem, I find, is to illustrate points effectively. I try to do this by calling on some story in the Scriptures, some incident in current news, or some personal experience.

No doubt there are tricks in every trade, and surely God can use some of these when they are employed to his glory. I use my most telling illustrations at the close, so that the message ends on a high note. A sermon should challenge the mind in the first two or three minutes; otherwise the attention is lost, and one might as well pronounce the benediction. But the final thrust of the message should be direct and personal, the kind of thing that produces that awed silence which is sometimes frightening.

After writing the sermon, I rewrite it in briefer form. I carry these notes around with me for a couple of days and in quiet moments preach the sermon to myself and to my patient wife (who, by the way, is my most humbling critic). Then, after underlining the major points in red, I take the notes into the pulpit and preach in the confidence that if I should stray from the point or fog up in presentation, I can instantly get back on the beam again with a quick glance at the red markings.

I am not bound by the notes and at times go off on excursions into virgin territory for which I have not made preparation. The humbling thing is that, according to the remarks after the service, many seem to enjoy the excursions more and remember them better than they do the planned message itself!

I thoroughly enjoy my half hour in the pulpit and find no greater thrill in life than to be on the giving end of a a message that is used of God to bring light and comfort and conviction. There are broken-hearted, tempted, and discouraged people in every congregation. There are self-satisfied intellectuals who worship only at the shrine of scholarship. All are in need of help. It is a high privilege to comfort those in sorrow and help to tone up the jaded faith of others. But to think that some may be persuaded to open their hearts to Christ, receive him as their Lord and Saviour, and enter into newness of life—this is the greatest joy of preaching.—Dr. CHARLES FERGUSON BALL, First Presbyterian Church, River Forest, Illinois.

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