Preaching and Preachers

Preaching andPreachersdoes, or that happens to him, he finds to be relevant to this great work,and is therefore a part of his preparation.But turning to certain specific matters, the preacher's first, and themost important task is to prepare himself, not his sermon. Any manwho has been any length of time in the ministry will agree wholeheartedlywith me concerning this. It is something that one has tolearn by experience. At first one tends to think that the great thing isto prepare the sermon-and the sermon, as I have been saying, doesneed most careful preparation. But altogether more important is thepreparation of the preacher himself.In a sense the preacher is a man of one thing. There are those whohave said in the past, like John Wesley, that they had become 'a manof one Book'. While that is true, speaking generally, it is even moretrue that the preacher is a man of one thing. This is the thing to whichhe is called, and it is the great passion of his life.So what does he do about this? The first great rule is that he mustbe very careful to maintain a general discipline in his life. There aremany dangers in the life of a minister. Unlike men in professions andin business he is not tied of necessity by officehours and other conventions,or with conditions determined outside himself; he is, ascompared with them, his own master. I mean in reference to men. Heis not his own master, of course, with reference to God. But there isthis obvious distinction between the life of a minister and the life ofmost other men, and because things are in his own hands he mustrealise that there are certain serious dangers and temptations whichconfront him in a very special manner. One of these is the danger ofjust frittering away your time, particularly in the morning. You startwith the newspaper, and it is very easyto spend a great deal of time onthis, quite unconsciously. Then there are weekly magazines andjournals, and interruptions on the telephone and so on. You may wellfind that your morning has gone whether you are working in yourhome or in an office in your church. So I have felt always, and increasinglywith the years, that one of the great rules for a preacher isto safeguard the mornings. Make an absolute rule of this. Try to166