Preaching and Preachers

T1ie Preatherthe pews listening to him. But he is there to preach to them, and tohelp them, and not to try to solve his own individual problems andperplexities. The way to safeguard against that is that this man shouldhave a modicum of general knowledge and experience of life, and themore the better. There are those who say, and I tend to agree withthem, that it would be good for all men who enter the ministry to havesome preliminary experience of living life in the world, in a businessor profession. They query the wisdom of Ii system whereby a youngman goes from school and collegedirectly to a seminary and then intothe ministry without having any experience outside that. There is thedanger, putting it at its lowest, of an over-theoretical and intellectualapproach; so that the man in the pulpit is really divorced from the lifeof the people who are sitting in the pews and listening to him. Sogeneral knowledge and experience are of inestimable value.Then I would greatly emphasise the importance of a general trainingof the mind. We all need to have our minds trained. We mayhave a good intellect but it needs to be disciplined. And so a goodgeneral training in any arts or science course is good because itteaches one how to think and to reason systematically and logically. Istress this because, as we have seen, in the sermon there must be thiselement of reason and progression of thought. To secure that endnecessitates a certain amount of training. To throw out a number ofthoughts at random without setting them in order does not help thecongregation, so the preacher needs to have his mind trained in thatgeneral sense. The particular form of training is immaterial as long asit produces a trained mind; this trained mind can then apply itself tothe particular task of the preacher.In the same way general knowledge and information will be ofgreat value to the preacher and his preaching. It will help him toillustrate and clothe the message which he is giving to the people andmake it easier for them to follow and to assimilate it.But leaving general training we come to the more special training.What is needed here? I shall only give abroad general outline. Firstand foremost there must be given a knowledge of the Bible and itsuS