Blackwood, Andrew W.

English

Asbury Theological Seminary

Preaching To The Man In The PewAndrew W. BlackwoodOn the human level three men enter prominently into many anorthodox sermon today. In the order of accepted importance thesethree stand out: first, the man in the pulpit; second, the man inthe Bible; and third, the man in the pew. "First" here means mostimportant. In some pulpits, and in pastors' studies, the order maydiffer. According to books about preaching, the man in the pulpitstands out first. The Bible character about whom he preaches,whether it be Jacob or Zacchaeus, usually comes next, and thefriend in the pew emerges a poor third. Indeed he may not appearat all, not prominently. The sermon may begin with "I" and dealwith what "I" think about Jacob or Zacchaeus. The hearer maynever come into view until the last few sentences of a conventionalconclusion, which few hearers remember.This account deliberately ignores the divine. The man in thepulpit, the one in the Bible, and the friend in the pew � like thesermon itself � aU exist for the glory of God. By this I mean theGod of the Bible, revealed in Jesiis Christ, under the guidance ofthe Spirit, with the stress falling on our Lord's Incarnation andDeity, Death and Resurrection, Living Presence and Final Return.Even in a pulpit with such a Christian philosophy, the question stiUremains: "Among the three men on the human level, which oneought to stand out first, and which one last?"Whatever the answer,why should every minister take the matter seriously? Why notmerely "preach"?Personally, I have come to believe that the man ui the pewought to come first; the man in the Book, second; the man in thepulpit, third and last. By this I mean last in thinking of the interpreter as he sits in the study and prays about the sermon, and ashe stands in the pulpit to voice the kerygma, which signifies"preaching Christ." According to the Written Word of God, whydid Ezekiel preach (33:30-33), and Paul (I Cor. 2:1-4)? Like ourLord, every true prophet or apostle uttered words of promise andrebuke for the sake of the hearer. Otherwise, there would havebeen no preaching. As James Denny used to say, "no preachercan call attention to Christ and himself at the same time. " Neithercan any minister today preach weU about Jacob or Zacchaeus unless the sermon somehow makes clear the relevance to the needsthe problems, and the interests of the lay hearer. My youngreader, before you adopt a working philosophy for life, search theScriptures and see whether or not these statements ring true. IfPreaching to the Man in the Pew 13they do not, revise your scale of values.Sometimes a reader of my books wonders why I write more orless about liberals, especially Fosdick. Often I wonder myself.One thing I have learned from a careful study of Fosdick' s sermons,and of his practical philosophy. On the human level he alwaysstrives to deal with the problems and Interests of the lay hearer.Strange as the statement may seem to his critics , Fosdick usuallypreaches about the interest and problems of one person, ratherthan of a group. He preaches little about "man," a term not clearto many persons "non-theologically minded." With adifferent theology and a loftier idea of Holy Scripture, I wish I could learn fromFosdick how to make the interests and the problems of the hearerprominent. I do not believe in having any one kind of sermons allthe time. As an evangelical interpreter James S. Stewart makesit a working rule to start a sermon with something about thehearer.Often this preacher addresses the hearer directly. So does BillyGraham. In his book. Peace with God, there follows the openingsentence of the first sermon: "You started on the Great Quest themoment you were born" (Jer. 24:13).In seminaries we professors should quit glorifying the pulpitorator, who calls attention to himself. Where does the Bible eversanction self-centered preaching? To a lesser degree the samenegation holds true about a sermonizer. Where do the Scripturesapprove any man who makes a sermon an end in itself, rather thana means of grace ? Surely the Book holds up as an ideal the interpreter whose voice never is heard, and whose sermon calls nospecial attention to himself. Ideally, both preacher and messageexist for the sake of two persons: the Lord and the listener. Athis best, the man in the pulpit serves as a lens in which rays oflight from above converge so as to set the heart of the lay heareron fire. Afire with what? With a new sense of divine glory and ofpersonal need. For an example of such a "preaching psychology"study Isaiah 6:1-8.What then have the needs and interests of the hearer to do witha minister's sermon today? The answer would call for a book,which until recently no person ever attempted to write. The work'son the subject, books not from my pen, have opened up the field.Here let me answer my question briefly; the reader can fill in thegaps. For one thing, the needs of the hearer ought to guide andrestrain the man in the study when he determines what to preach ona given day. To take a controversial subject, from which a timidinterpreter shies away, think of race prejudice. With Negroesmoving into the community, and wishing to be treated as humanbeings, what should a lay church member do? This question nominister can answer for anyone save himself, but he can guide the14 The Asbury Seminarianhearer In seeking the will of God as revealed in the Book. Notbelligerently, dogmatically, or apologetically, but as the localinterpreter of Christian doctrine, no man with courage enov^h tobecome a preacher can ignore this issue today.Again, the right sort of concern about the hearer aids a minister in choosing a passage from the Bible. Especially in dealingwith a delicate issue, about which goodmendiffer widely, he wishesto have a "sure word of prophecy." For example, after Easter hemay be preaching here and there from the Acts, "the most excitingbook in the New Testament. " When he comes to the tenth chapterhe has to choose between preaching about God's way of removingrace prejudice, or else passing by the experience of Peter at Joppaand later in Caesarea.Once more, the needs of the hearer guide a man in determining what materials to use, or not to use. In dealing with "TheBible Cure for Race Prejudice" the main part of the sermon, thewarp, may come from the chosen passage. Since the hearer mayhave a Bible that he has only begun to read, the interpreter maydeal with only this one passage. Here he can find all the biblicalmaterials he can use, more than he can nxake interesting and clear.As for the sermon's woof, part of it may come from South Africa,in a well-known novel by Alan Paton, Cry, the Beloved Country.Negatively, contemporary material need not come from thehome community, or even from our country. Forgetting that he iscalled to preach the Gospel � not to argue, debate, or attack �the man in the ptilpit might collect up-to-date racial materialsfrom the United States News and World Report, which many of usfind invaluable. Or he might attack local churches, including hisown, for practicing "segregation on Sunday," and all through theweek. If wise, he plans to "pass by on the other side" of things soclose at hand that few can appraise them fairly. All the while heshould depend on the truth of God's revealed Book to do its ownoffice work in the heart of every believer, since a believer inChrist wishes to do God's will on earth as it is done in heaven.Yonder there will be no segregation among the redeemed childrenof the Heavenly Father.This kind of hearer-directed sermon may arouse more questions than it answers. If so, thank God! For the answers, thelayman should turn to the Written Word, in the spirit of prayer,with the desire to do the will of God himself, and have it done byothers. He may also come to the pastor for counsel. Accordingto a distinguished exponent of pulpit counseling, the chief test of asermon's effectiveness appears in the number of requests for private interviews, each from a hearer who wishes to know the truthin hand more perfectly, and to do it more fully. Like many anotherPreaching to the Man in the Pew 15issue about which a man preaches, this one of race prejudice andits cure is not so simple and easy as we ministers often make itseem. The solution is not easy, but it is possible. For everyhiunan need, God's Book has a supply, in the form of a Christiandoctrine, which centers at the Cross.Still further, the welfare of the hearer should guide a pastorin making plans for a sermon. Ideally, plans for structure oughtto come late, rather than early. Actually, the way of handling thefacts in a case may come to mind as soon as one decides on a project and chooses a text. Even so, one ought to leave the matteropen until the facts are all in hand. Then if the first idea stillseems to be best, let it prevail, but not otherwise. For example,in preparing to address a college group who need to know part ofwhat the Book says about fear, one may turn to Mark 4:35-41, withstress on this verse: "Why are ye so fearful? How is it that yehave no faith?" Here our Lord speaks to a group of young men whoas human beings have many reasons to feel afraid. After a prayerful study of the passage, and a careful consideration of the reasonswhy college young folk today yield to ungodly fears, one may decidethat the best way to deal with the passage is to follow the originalimpulse, which called for a textual sermon.With Frederick W. Robertson in any of his Sunday morningsermons, let the two-fold form of the text lead to a message with"two contrasting truths," and only two. In keepii^ with the text,let the first main part deal with "The Meaning of Faith as Victoryover Fear." Obviously, faith means far more, but in any one sermon a minister can not tell all he knows about faith, or anythingelse. According to experts in secular writing, "exposition meansthe simplifying of experience. " Skill in exposition means "abilityto select and omit, in order to make the facts in hand clear andluminous." As Plutarch once wrote, "a (hearer's) soul is not avessel to be filled, but a fire to be kindled." The fire has to dowith faith in the Christ of Today.In the hands of an amateur the first part of the sermon wouldbe himian and negative. Forgetting that the words of the text comefrom Christ, and that they all point to belief in Him as the way toescape from understandable fears amid a storm, a man who"preaches from the Bible" may waste precious time telling younghearers what they already know about the occasions of their fears ,and the folly of fears that make them unhappy and may cause stomach ulcers. Why not follow the text, in its setting? It showsthat the wrong sort of fear means lack of faith in Christ as present� as concerned � and as able. Able to do what? Everything! Inother words , deal with the truth first of all as it relates to Christ."Ah, yes, but what about the hearer?" The introduction has to do16 The Asbury Seminarianwith him, briefly. The latter part of the sermon, the climacticportion, may bring out the truth more fully, as it relates to himand his fears.Faith means victory over fear. This relates to the practicalresult. As for faith itself, which leads to trivimph over fear, faithm< IS trust in the Living Christ. Here an amateur would go overmuch the same ground as in the first main part: faith in Christ ashere � as concerned � and as able. All true, thank God! Amasterpreacher could say it the second time, and more than twice,without anticlimax. Many another would do well, in the secondmain part, to deal with the needs of the hearer. Faith means trusting the Present Christ for victory over fears relating to Self, toMoney, to Marriage, and to the Unknown Future. Since the sky isthe limit here, a minister has to select and omit, being careful allthe while to keep Christ in the center of the picture, with the lightfull on His blessed face.In a recent review of a book about preaching, a distinguishedNewYork pastor objected to any such use of the case method, eitherin class or in print. He said, correctly, that it might encourage astudent, or yotmg pastor, to borrow another man's outline insteadof making one to fit the needs of the home listeners, especially theman one is most anxious to help. All of us teachers recognize thepossibility of "spoon-feeding, " and deplore it. We see no harm inborrowing another man's outline, occasionally, unless the borrowing is surreptitious. As a rule every man should plan his own way.But we wonder why the reviewer objects to another writer's"spoon-feeding" by using cases, and then sends out from New YorkCity a book of sermons to be scooped up with a shovel, beingpilfered without credit and preached without change? Is a spoonworse than a shovel? It is as hard to write about preaching withoutreference to sermons as to discuss the art of Michelangelo andRaphael without reference to the statue of Moses and the paintingof the Transfiguration.Last of all, for the present, the needs of the hearer guide aminister in delivering his message. If only for the sake of boysand girls, and older folk with childlike minds, he plans to makeevery sermon clear and simple, interesting and appealing, frombeginning to end. He starts with something sure to interest thenormal hearer now, something about the subject, preferably as itconcerns a layman's interests now. The pastor speaks as a friend,a friend of the Lord Jesus, and a friend of the listener, who oughtsoon to become a sharer in the sermon, "as a co-operative enterprise, " a friendly conversation about one of "the things that mattermost. "All through the discourse a skillful interpreter engages inPreaching to the Man in the Pew 17"animated conversation." Like Spurgeon, he never speaks at thesame rate in any two quarters of a discourse. Even a horse wouldtire if he had to proceed for a mile at the same speed. In preparingto speak from the pulpit the minister plans carefully. He aims tolet the spirit of what he is saying control the tone color of hisutterance. In other words , the popular effectiveness of the spokenword, under God, depends more on how a man speaks than on anyother human factor. Like his Lord, the interpreter should feelable to say, humbly: "The Lord God hath given me the tongue ofthe learned, that I should know how to speak" (Isaiah 50:4 - not aclose rendering of the original).Once in class at Princeton a senior asked me to name a manthen living who seemed to embody all these ideals. Thinking onlyof ministers whom I had heard a number of times, I mentionedGeorge W. Truett. Like Billy Graham, and other men on abidinginfluence, Truett spoke better than he wrote; he preached to beheard by living beings, one by one, not to be admired as a masterof the King's English. The facts about Truett appear in a biography by his son-in-law, Powhatan W. James; in printed volumes ofsermons; and best of all, in the lives of an untold host whom heblessed through mastery of the spoken word. No matter whereTruett preached, or how vast the throng, he always made me feelthat he was conceined about me personally, and that he wanted meto live close to his Lord and Savior. Not as a pulpit orator callingattention chiefly to himself, not as a sermonizer calling attentionalmost exclusively to my Savior and my sins , Truett showed mehow to put God first, the hearer second, and the speaker last. Sodid Spurgeon, and Brooks, neither of whom I ever heard.In two respects the young minister today needs to rememberconditions that differ from those when Truett or Spurgeon beganhis life work. Today there is in many a layman's hands a newcopy of the Bible. To the average purchaser it will remain aclosed book, unless someone like Philip comes along to tell a layman like the eunuch how to read this Written Word of God. Torender such a service the young pastor may not have had the proper sort of training. In many a seminary of yesterday an earneststudent did not gain a working knowledge of the Bible. He did notlearn to look on every sermon as an opportunity to help the heareruse a chosen part of God's Book. In all these matters I am notthinking about a seminary course or two on methodology, but of thefact that a training school forministers ought to send forth a graduate who has learned how from the pulpit to guide a layman in reading Isaiah 53, or any other important passage in the Bible. Aseminary graduate should go into the pulpit thinking first of all,under God, about the needs of the hearer, not about the merits of18 The Asbury Seminarianthe sermon, or the prowess of the preacher. In short, his idealsought to be Christian, his methods practical, and his spirit contagious. Like the Apostle of old he should have a practical philosophy of preaching. Writing to laymen, fuU of needs arising fromsin, thinking of himself as an earthen vessel flooded with heavenlylight (the Gospel), the Apostle declares: "We preach not ourselves ,but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus'sake" (n Cor. 4:5).Another factor enters into the picture today, more than at anyearlier time in our century. Almost everywhere our country haswitnessed a "theological renaissance," if not yet a doctrinal Reformation. Among the fifty per cent of American adults who readbooks, many have been buying and vainly trying to understand allsorts of works about religion. Feeling confused, some of theselaymen come to church hoping to find a minister who has wisdomand training enough to preach doctrine, making it interesting to aman who has no biblical background and no theological acumen.Except in a few fortunate communities here and there, a laymanhas to look far to find a pastor who can make the Bible live andspeak in the best language of today. Perhaps not in the same sermons as above, many a layman wants his minister to preachChristian doctrine so that any businessman or housemother, withany lad or lass ready for junior high school, can utter the Lord'sPrayer intelligently, and even the Apostles' Creed. "Thy King-dom come," for instance. To a mature layman, who has attendedchurch regularly all his life, and has done everything the ministerhas encouraged him to do, how much do these familiar termsmean? In other words, a minister can scarcely preach to laymenin 1956 imless he knows how to preach from the Bible, and how topreach one at a time the doctrines of our holy faith. In order tomeet such needs in any community now, a man ought to have morethan one service every Lord's Day. He ought to excel both as awinner of souls and as a feeder of the sheep already in the fold.With some exceptions, the seminaries of yesterday did notsend out a typical graduate with a Christian philosophy of preaching, with an adequate introduction to the Bible, and with ability toshow the present-day values of a Christian doctrine. Of course adivinity school can not "give" any future graduate such information,or any such mastery of "what to preach. " After three years underpious men, some of them erudite, I had to learn in the next threeyears, and all through my later years as a pastor, what I mighthave learned while in the divinity school. I refer to setting uplofty ideals, working out a method of my own, and learning how towork in preparing to meet the needs of the hearer by preachingfrom the Bible, and by explaining Christian doctrine.Preaching to the Man in the Pew 19Today the Holy Spirit stands ready to guide any young ministers, or any one more mature, in getting his bearings, and inmeeting the needs of any layman who comes to church for a livingmessage from the heart of God, (Isa. 55:10, 11).

Preaching to the Man in the Pew

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Preaching to the Man in the Pew

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