PREACHING AS TORMENTING
In his masterpiece, Barchester Towers, Anthony Trollope discussed preaching from a layperson’s viewpoint back in the 1850s. He wrote: “There is, perhaps, no greater hardship at present inflicted on mankind in civilized and free countries, than the necessity of listening to sermons. No one but a clergyman has, in these realms, the power of compelling an audience to sit silent, and be tormented.” He concludes his famous critique of boring preaching: “We desire not to be forced to stay away.” Perhaps the Methodist bishop William Quayle at last found the remedy for the tyranny of boring preaching: “Preaching is the art of making a sermon and delivering it? Why no, that is not preaching. In the final analysis, the art of preaching is to make a preacher and deliver that. Nothing else will suffice.” My own mentor, the late Dr. Wallace Fisher of Trinity Lutheran Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, used to say of a good sermon, “You can hear Christ’s heartbeat in…
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