In my thirty years as a preacher I often had the feeling, when confronted by the fact that even the most committted churchmen in my congregation had scant knowledge of the Bible, that I had just missed some golden age when the pews were chockablock with folks who read their Bible daily. But listen to this from P.T. Forsyth's Yale Beecher Lectures from 1907, published as
Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind:
“The Bible may be his (the preacher's) text book, but it has ceased to be the text book of his audience. The Bible is not read by the Christian, or even by the churchgoing public, as a means of grace greater even than churchgoing. Our people, as a rule, do not read the Bible, in any sense which makes its language more familiar and dear to them than the language of the novel or the press. And I will go so far as to confess that one of the chief miscalculations I have made in the course of my own ministerial career has been to speak to congregations as if they did know and use the Bible. I was bred where it was well known and loved, and I have spent my ministerial life where it is less so. And it has taken me so long to realize the fact that I still find it difficult to adjust myself to it. I am long accustomed to being called obscure by many whose mental habits and interests are only literary, who have felt but a languid interest in the final questions of the soul as the New Testament stirs them, who treat sin as but lapse, God’s grace as if it were but love, and His love as if it were but paternal kindness.”
Does that strike a chord with any of you preachers?
In my thirty years as a preacher I often had the feeling, when confronted by the fact that even the most committted churchmen in my congregation had scant knowledge of the Bible, that I had just missed some golden age when the pews were chockablock with folks who read their Bible daily. But listen to this from P.T. Forsyth's Yale Beecher Lectures from 1907, published as Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind:
No comments:
Post a Comment