“Zaccheus was trying to see who Jesus was … so he … climbed up into a sycamore tree”
(Luke 19:3,4).
A certain homiletics professor was always trying to get his seminary students to demonstrate instant success as a preacher. In the words of one of his former students…
He had the practice, without any advance announcement, of giving us a slip of paper with a brief Scripture text on it. We were allowed five minutes to prepare a sermon on that text, and then we had to go into our practice pulpit and preach it. Talk about panic! And we weren’t preaching to ordinary folks. We were preaching to a room full of seminary students who were like piranhas rising up to tear every word apart.
On one occasion, the professor asked me to go up in the pulpit, open a piece of paper with just one word on it, and immediately begin to preach a sermon on it. When I opened the paper,…
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