Preaching and Preachers

Preaching andPreachersBut I must add something to that. While it is the duty and thebusiness of the preacher to make an assessment of his congregation,he must be careful that this is a true assessment and an accurate one.This surely needs no emphasis. The danger arises both from thestandpoint of the pulpit and of the pew. The pulpit may make a wrongassessment of the pew; and the pew may make a wrong assessment ofitself. I have a feeling that both errors are much in evidence, and thatthis is one of the chief causes and explanations of our present position.The main danger confronting the pulpit in this matter is to assumethat all who claimto be Christians, and who think they are Christians,and who are members of the Church, are therefore of necessityChristians. This, to me, is the most fatal blunder of all; and certainlythe commonest. It is assumed that because people are members of theChurch that they are Christian. This is dangerous and wrong for thisreason, that if you assume that, you will tend therefore, in all yourservices, to preach in a manner suited to Christian believers. Yourmessages will alwaysbe instructional, and theevangelistic element andnote will be neglected, perhaps, almost entirely.This is a very great and grievous fallacy. Let me give you reasonsfor saying that. I would start with my own personal experience. Formany years I thought I was a Christian when in fact I was not. It wasonly later that I came to see that I had never been a Christian andbecame one. But I was a member of a church and attended mychurch and its services regularly. So anybody assuming, as mostpreachers did, that I was a Christian was making a false assumption.It was not a true assessment of my condition. What I needed waspreaching that would convict me of sin andmake me see my need, andbringme to truerepentance and tell me something about regeneration.But I never heard that. The preachingwe had was always based on theassumption that we were all Christians, that we would not have beenthere in the congregation unless we were Christians. This, I think,has been one of the cardinal errors of the Church especially in thispresent century.But this has been reinforced many times in my experience as a146