The Preacher: His Task and Opportunity

The Preacher: His Task and Opportunity
THE PREACHER, HIS TASK AND OPPORTUNITY.
BY HENRY ELI SPECK.

Every preacher is facing the most commanding situation in human history. Never before was there such need of the clear mind and the flaming soul in the pulpit. Today, as never before, the preacher may come to his throne. But in what spirit is he to come? What is his distinctive message? How is he to prepare and discharge the task? These ques­tions surge to the center of our thoughts. The act of preaching is a complex and difficult matter under the easiest conditions. Many forces enter into it, and they are often difficult to understand. No task today is more difficult than that of the preacher. He must go into the pulpit to instruct men, to rebuke, to inspire, to comfort, and to regenerate them. The preacher must speak oftener than the lawyer, visit more than the doctor, and teach with more patience than the professor. In doing these things he will continually be adjusting himself to new conditions.

There is the truth to be proclaimed. It is God's power to save and this power is set to work through the preached word. The preacher, as I see it, must never lose sight of the power of the message. The argument, the essay, or the descriptive presentation of social situations have intruded upon the message which was originally given with the fire of deep conviction straight from the preacher's flaming soul. The truth must be heralded to the very heart of the genera­tion. The flame of the prophets and missionaries has burned low. The torch of the teacher and educator has taken its place with imperfect success. This is not to disparage the work of Christian educa­tion and the task of the teacher —preacher. But it is to as­sert that nothing has ever taken the place of the ardent message which is "good news" still. There has been much sorrow expressed because the church has seemingly lost some of its worshipers. We hear a great deal said in a lamenting way about the shortage of preachers. Either one of these conditions is to be prayerfully guarded against, but I think a worse condition may prevail. There is something far worse than to lose the crowd; there is something even worse than a preacher shortage. It is loss beyond remedy when the church loses its message. Message is a word often misused, but it is one of the great words nevertheless. The preacher is the messenger and his sermon is the mes­sage. I want to take occasion to voice a prayer worded by Brother Klingman a few days ago.

"God forbid that the day may ever come when our boys may feel that theology, or man's philosophy, or anything else, will make a sermon stronger than the word of God." Young preacher, make it the burning passion of your soul to be filled to the overflow with the words of this great message. Let your speech and your preaching consist, not of the enticing words of men's wisdom, but in the demon­stration of the spirit and of power that man's faith may not be founded on the wisdom of man, but in the power of God.

Remember that the gospel is God's power to save. That is your message. That is my message. Do not be afraid to preach those things peculiar to the Church of Christ. A popularized gospel leads to popular Christianity, and pop­ular Christianity leads to formality and spiritual degeneracy. But the beauty of this message, in all the depth and range of it, can be seen and appreciated only at the cost of intense search and patient, prayerful thinking. And this brings me to the second force or element in the matter of preaching. It is the preacher himself.

It is well for the preacher to realize that he is the medium through which the truth is transmitted in oral form. This is as varied under the most favorable circum­stances, as personality itself is varied. It is altogether neces­sary that this medium should be well prepared. Real prepa­ration for preaching is nothing less than the preparation of the whole man. For the final means by which the truth gets itself expressed is the refined and kindled soul of the man in the pulpit.

It is quite probable that you may, yes, it is likely that some of you will stand in the way of the message —you will lessen its power; you will stifle its influence through a lack of preparation. The continued and growing responsibility of preaching must he met with service that involves all the resources at your command. Today, as in other generations, the preacher must preach his sermons, make his visits, per­form his wedding ceremonies, conduct his funeral services, make his occasional addresses, do his community tasks; and these duties are multiplying. There is only the strength of the average man to be used in the work. But there are better tools at hand —not a better Gospel —but better oppor­tunity for personal preparation. Time must be made for reading, for serious thinking, for painstaking sermon prepa­ration, and for seasons of real prayer. These are dangerous days for the man who is fluent in speech and can easily get away with a public address. Almost anyone can consume the time set apart for the sermon in the order of public wor­ship. Too few men can really preach a clarifying, moving, and convincing sermon that shall set confused minds straight and bring them to great decisions. But this is the kind of preaching we must have if the Church of Christ is to serve the present generation in the place of its supreme need. When a layman is forced to say of your sermon, "I couldn't make head nor tail out of it," in nine cases out of ten the difficulty is not with the head of the layman but with the heads (the firstly, secondly, thirdly) of the discourse. The sermon very probably had neither head nor tail nor body, and what is worse, not even a neck. The preachers of to­morrow must work as they have never worked.

I stand ready to condemn that doctrine as heresy which pleads the eligibility of all men to the public ministry. "Study to show thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth," "and the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou, to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also."

Every Christian is a chosen vessel —is called by a heavenly calling. They divide themselves into two main classes, public and private servants. We can not rate too highly these faithful men whose lives are spent largely in quietness and obscurity and who are contented, even happy in their lot, and to whom the Church and the world owe more than can ever be paid. The public servants of God are sent of him under the Great Commission. They come with a message from God, and one of the most precious gifts Heaven bestows on the earth is a man with a message for his fellows. A man sent to deliver tidings of great joy, to acquaint us with God's thoughts and purposes about us, to pour light into our darkness, and to fill the heart with a song of gladness —what greater boon could be ours, or should be more acceptable? And he gave some apostles and some, prophets; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ." All gifts and graces, offices and officebearers flow from Christ. He is the ruler in his own household under whose hand the order of the house proceeds and the servants, great and small come and go. Primarily they are not man-made nor man-appointed. They receive not their commission from priest, not at the hands of the Presbytery. The ministerial call and function are not imparted by any holy Consecrated oil nor by the imposition of human hands, not by education or theological lore. Properly speaking, man has nothing to do with the great office save gladly to recognize what God in His sovereign good pleasure has given, chosen and sent. The man who accepts the commission must be swayed by an impulse, a force that ever impels him to fulfill his mission, to finish his work. Pie must regard it as the voice, the will of God, heard in the central deeps of his being, even insistent, urgent, irresistible. Paul refers to it in language that may well be that of everyone called into the ministry —"necessity is laid upon me; yes, wo is me if I preach not the gospel." That strange impelling necessity drove him a glad and willing servant over much of Asia, over large sections of Europe, amid privation, suffering, victories, and defeat, that he might make men know the love of God which surpasses knowledge. Men properly called can not do otherwise —they must accomplish their mission, fulfill their task, or die. One of them the prophet Jeremiah, actually sought to stifle the voice with in his soul. He said to himself, " I will speak no more." but the mighty words within him became as a burning flame in his bones. He was weary of for-hearing; he could not contain. Ease, comfort, home, wealth, social position, friends are all secondary and are sacrificed without a pang of grief when they would thrust themselves between the man and his mission, when they would arrest his feet. He is God's messenger and he cannot be stayed nor linger.

It is not sufficient for the preacher to acquaint himself in a formal way with the message, with the peculiarities of his fellows and have a burning desire to tell the story. It is not enough that he be endowed with great natural talents and capacities; he must be set down to those lessons which will fit him for his task. John the Baptist was in the wilder­ness until his showing unto Israel. His wilderness sojourn was one of thirty years. God led him there, and there schooled and disciplined him. There in the profound soli­tude afar from the enervating influences of hollow forma­lism and artificial life, with none near but God, his spirit was chastened and tempered for the solemn duties that awaited him. This is characteristic of all men sent of God. When he would fit his servants for some vast work requiring spiritual might and heroic self-sacrifice, He takes them afar from the distracting cares of the world to commune with Himself in the grandeur of solitude. Forty years Moses spent in the desert of Midian, a keeper of sheep —the best years of his life utterly wasted, worldly wisdom would tell us. But that sojourn qualified Moses to become the de­liverer of Israel, the leader of the Exodus, the conqueror of Egypt, and the law giver of his nation. No man is fit to do God's work who has not had some training with the Lord Himself. Nothing can take its place, nothing can make up for its loss.

All of God's servants have been taught in this stern school, Elijah, at Chareth, Ezekiel at Chebar, David in Exile, Paul in Arabis are eminent examples. The divine Servant, the Lord Jesus, spent by far the largest part of his earthly sojourn in the privacy and obscurity of Nazareth. Then in his public ministry, He often retreated from the gaze of man to enjoy the sweet and sacred retirement of the Father's presence. None can teach like the Lord. The man whom He educates is educated and none other—(May you never measure any man's education by his degrees), it lies not within the range of man's ability to prepare an in­strument for the service of God. Man's hand can never mould "a vessel meet for the Master's use." Ordinarily great truths are not revealed to man in an instant of time, they are not fired into his mind instantaneously as if they were fired from a catapult. The truths a man can live and die by, are wrought in the fires of the heart, in bitterest soul-agonies, in plash of tears and sobs of secret longing. In silence and loneliness generally the true world-workers are trained for their mission. Men who have learned to nurse their souls on truth in solitary meditation and com­munion with the Invisible speak at length words that men must hear and heed. A firm persuasion of the absolute truth of their messages is another characteristic of the preacher. Indeed it is im­perative. It is conviction of its truth and more than con­viction, it is assurance of faith, profound, immovable, un­alterable that the preacher must have. God has spoken to him and in the central deeps of his being God's word is unshrined. More certain than life or death, more stable than the everlasting hills, firm as God's Throne itself, he knows the message to be. Standing in the midst of a world full of uncertainty, of doubt, and skepticism, the preacher knows in whom he has believed. This faith stays with him through all his vicissitudes and discouragements, his victories and defeats. He has received the message of God, has felt the power of the world to come, the Spirit of God has borne witness with his spirit. He can not be flattered nor persecuted out of his faith and his testimony. The world wants such assurance. The preacher must be confident of the infallible certainty of the message. Multi­tudes are weary and sick of speculations, of barren idealities and hollow formalism. They want realities, not hypotheses; food, not husks nor stones. The preacher should have pre­cisely such a message, and his faith in his message must be unwavering. Tie must know that he knows —God forbid that he should think more highly of himself than he ought to think, but God help him to love the message and know it. With passionate love for the truth let him go to his field, eager to bear the glad tidings without addition or subtraction without fear or favor, without apology or ride — cule. Let his faith be strong enough to lead him to know that the things for which he stands are fundamental, and that nothing else however honestly it may be contended for. will not take the place of the gospel —or any part of it. Let him go, too, knowing that the world is hungering for the living bread. But let him not go looking for an opportunity to build on another man's foundation. Let him learn now and forever that the rural districts as well as the urban are calling him Let him know that his opportunities lie out in the field. Wherever man lies, in whatever activity he may be found, the preacher's call is heard. The time has gone forever when the preacher can sit in his study and dream dreams, and see visions, while the pilgrim host is out in the darkness and the storm, plunder­ing and stumbling, sinning and cursing, repenting and dying, without a physician, without a shepherd, without a leader. The preacher's place and opportunity is at the head of the host. The sage may feed his lamp in solitude, but when the blaze begins to burn brightly he must carry it out into the night, to lead his little band of pilgrims through the storm to the district home.

Young men, stay in college or in your closet with your Bible and your God as long as you can, for they are your treasury house of learning, your storehouse of information, your armory full of weapons for tomorrow's battles; but remember that your, service is to be performed out in the world. When your desire to hold up before your people the spirit of Christ and to permeate their social fabric with His gospel can no longer be controlled, then go —go know­ing that medicine must be taken to sick, and that leaven must be east into the meal. Go and with the gospel of the Son of God leaven the whole Community, whether the matter be social, civil or religious. The service of the preacher as a creator of public opin­ion can not be over estimated in this present age. In the churches gather the people who represent the highest ideals and the noblest living. The preacher has time after time the privilege of speaking to them on the most supreme sub­ject that can engage the mind and stir the emotions. It may seem at first glance as if he had scant opportunity to do any creative work in the precious "thirty minutes to raise the dead;" but the value of these times of quickening, if they are rightly used, are beyond our present realization.

If ever there was a call for ministers who are enlightened on matters of international moment, it is now. Here is our civilization faced with most searching questions and exigent problems of history; here is the Church, even in the smallest community, charged with the sacred and solemn responsi­bility of creating the ideals that will guide the nation in this great day of reconstruction, and now and again we meet a preacher who seems to interpret this task as that of watch­ing the denominational preachers on the other street corners, and saying over and over like a wearisome parrot the old phrases that the fathers wore out. The very spirit of the times call for a renewal of intellectual energy and deter­mined utterances that will help create in the minds of the people the ideals which will bear the country through this time of suffering and renewal. I do not mean to intimate that this work is to have, first place —the preaching of the gospel is to come first. The opportunities are too numer­ous for this work to hinder the preaching of the gospel. But the work of creating public opinion is a part of his task and opportunity. It will take hard work to measure up to the trust; no minister who is inclined to insolence or arrogance can last long these days. The contention has been made, largely by these who feared the influence of the preacher, that it was not his place to take part in community activities; but it is highly desirable that the warp and woof of the social fabric be Christian. We will all admit that present day conditions might be improved upon.

There are principles and tendencies at work in modern society which if left unchecked will ere long result in dis­aster and ruin. A lawless drift is already on us. The rest­lessness under restraint, the revolt against authority and even law, the growth of agnosticism, Bolshevism, the as­saults on the Bible, the prevalence of materialism, fostered as tin's is by the present day philosophy and the commercial­ism of the time, the enormous greed of those who have and want still more; the deep ominous growl of those who have not but who want and will have —all these and many more are facing the preacher today.

There never was an age, perhaps, when there was a greater need for men sent from God —men who know the message, believe the message, love the message with their whole mind and heart, soul and strength; believe, and en­dure as seeing Him who is invisible.