PROGRAM PLANNING AND SERMONS
It is a very strange thing, Oswald, but people who can scarcely read or write their own names will be eager to tell you how to preach. They can tell you what, how, and when to preach, and hand out advice by the chunks. The less they know the more they can tell you. The least successful man in your congregation will tell you loudest and oftenest how to succeed in your work.
You will find that numbers of high school and first-year college boys and girls will drop around to tell you how to run your church and what to preach. They will be very sure and earnest and strong in their convictions. From them you can find out what is wrong with you, your church and the world. Because they know so much, they will be your severest critics. If you want a lively time, Oswald, scrap with them; argue with them; call them flaming youth and preach on “The Wickedness of the Young People in Our Town.”
It is the average preacher’s task, Oswald, to preach perhaps over one hundred sermons each year; men who are called on for addresses before colleges, clubs, conventions, etc., will perhaps find this number doubled. Then there are weekly prayer meeting talks, funeral addresses, and study courses, besides series of sermons for revivals. When you are preached out and the barrel is empty, what then, Oswald?
There are several ways to get material. For instance, there are excellent books on the market containing other men’s sermons. Secure a good supply of these books, and memorize the sermons. Some of them may be recognized but then credit will be given you for having an excellent memory. Your hearers may think that Dr. Topmost got the sermon from you in the beginning; that he appropriated your sermon and put it in a book. This will gain you admiration and sympathy and cause indignation among your friends that the doctor could be so dishonest.
When you run out of “soap,” get some good stories and string them together. Tell a great number of other men’s experiences as your own. Your congregation will never know whether these things happened to you or Dr. Truett or Dr. Boreham or Mussolini. You can get a vast amount of your material this way.
"Make your sermons unusual and interesting."
Current events will supply a sermon or two. Fill in with jokes and wise cracks, and much poetry. You can be indignant over any number of modern novels. This indignation can carry you through a Sunday evening or two. Special days will suggest themes, and all the year there are the various holidays and seasons to work on. Namely: Labor Day; Christmas; Halloween; First day of school; Thanksgiving; New Year’s day; St. Valentine’s day; Ground Hog day; Washington’s birthday; Lincoln’s birthday; Fourth of July; St. Patrick’s day; April Fool’s day; The Ides of March; Be-kind-to-animals week; Fire-prevention week; Safety week; Good English week; Eat-an-apple week; Drink-Sauer-Kraut-Juice week; Community-Chest-Drive week.
Also nature will provide a subject or two. Drouth; earthquake; a Texas storm; a Kansas cyclone. There are expeditions; balloon flights, etc., to fill in with when these others I have mentioned are exhausted. You see, Oswald, in this little paragraph I have given you ideas for sermons for a whole year.
There are preachers who have worked out a very simple and effective system. They make one sermon and preach it on every occasion, just using one or two different stories each time and a new text, but always getting back to the same old sermon. People may well say of the preacher of this type, “He preaches a good sermon!” We read somewhere a story about apple pie that reminds us, Oswald, of some preachers’ sermons. When asked what kinds of pie he had a waiter replied, “Two crust, one crust, and criss-cross; but they’re all apple underneath.”
another God-Wotter!
You may not care to try this, preferring to use something more elaborate and intricate.
It is necessary to give your sermons attractive titles if you expect to interest the people. You might use almost any little “catchy” phrase. It will not have to fit your sermon particularly for as soon as you begin to preach your audience will forget what you called it. Here are a few suggestions that other preachers have used with success. “The Diety of God,” “Poison Eggs and Spider Webs,” “Sweet Sixteen, Never Been Kissed,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Autumn in the Ozarks,” “Mules and Roasting Ears,” “The Old Oaken Bucket,” “The Devil and Tom Walker,” “Baby’s First Tooth.” Others will suggest themselves to you, Oswald, like “All Policemen Have Big Feet,” and “Where Is My Little Dog Gone,” and “Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight.” To make your list more complete you might add these: “There’s a Reason,” “Hell and High Water,” “Esau’s Pa Was No Match for His Ma,” “Bug Hunting,” and “Hog Pen to Heaven.”
You will want to make your sermons so unusual and interesting, Oswald, that they will stand out as something very unique and daring. I will suggest a few ways by which this may be accomplished. Preach in a soldier’s uniform, boots and all, one night; another night, in regulation navy attire; again, don what the well-dressed golfer would wear and at a critical point in your sermon have a golf ball tossed to you by an accomplice in the gallery.
Then, too, you could preach on Balaam and the ass and impersonate the ass with very little trouble since nature has provided you with the ears and Emma Alice, the bray.
In planning the program of your services, Oswald, be very careful that everything is appropriate and harmonious. It is surprising the music that some organists and choir leaders consider suitable for church worship. I, with my own ears, have heard in a Sunday evening service, a young woman blandly play on a Hawaiian steel guitar, to the horror of the minister and the congregation, that little masterpiece, “One, two, three, four!”
One pianist will conceive the idea that the “Kerry Barn Dance” is just the thing to play for an offertory. Another will launch into “Stars and Stripes Forever,” and the sentimental soul will wistfully and softly wring from the keys the haunting melody, “Gypsy Love Song.”
When in doubt as to a recessional, I would suggest “To the Regions Beyond I Must Go, I Must Go.” Also this is very good for a funeral march, Oswald, as is “I Dreamed I Searched Heaven for You.” If you preach on “What Have You Learned From the Depression?” an effective solo to follow will be, “O God, Search Me.”
Talking of solos, Oswald, it will not matter how burning your sermon on repentance, salvation, the cross, or hell, your soloist probably will warble a little thing that has to do with gardens and birds and brooks and trees and flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la. Church soloists so often wish they were apple blossoms or extol the beauty of sunrises, or sing of God and you and a star, that long before they have finished the song the audience is so weak and numb, what with trying to understand the words and all, that they never revive enough to pay any attention to the preacher or the sermon.
There may be in your audience a sin-sick soul. One perhaps on the verge of committing suicide, weary, disillusioned, groping, in agony of spirit, who comes to the house of the Lord to seek Him. Your reedy tenor or filtered soprano woulding to be an apple blossom or God-wotting about gardens will be of great help to such a one, I’m sure. His thought of committing suicide will only be hardened into decision under the spell of these nice little songs.
Many times, my dear Oswald, seated in a quiet and lovely church trying to draw my wandering and divided interests into a still place, preparing my soul to look to God in true worship, and with my spirit kneeling, I have been rent asunder at the first words of the soloist and have said to the scattered fragments of my composure, “Oh, my Uncle Abner! Another God Wotter!”
We need more and better songs in our churches to show forth not babbling brooks, but the Living Water; not apple blossoms, but the Lily of the Vlley and the Rose of Sharon; not little lambs at play but the Lamb of God; not the birds that build their little nests, but the Shadow of His Wing; not beautiful little hills, but the City of Refuge; not trees, but One Tree,—the Cross of Calvary.
Of course, Oswald, being Emma Alice’s son, you may like the birds and the bees, the brooks and the trees. I remember that she always had a weakness for the little rhymes concerning daisies and birds and shy little violets beside a mossy stone. In case, Ozzy, that you prefer this type of music, and the proper little sermon-lectures that go with it, there are many churches where people may go who really need help and guidance and food for the spirit.
In many of our churches, Oswald, Logic and Reason and Intellect have put on long tailed coats and occupy the pulpit, while Repentance and Faith and Love, beggars all, twiddle their thumbs on the back seat. Art, in glittering and alluring robes, presents to all who enter a silver cup called Beauty which, being quite empty of the Living Water, offers no alleviation of the crying thirst of the multitude.
Without doubt, Oswald, the multitude is thirsty and hungry for that which Christ has to offer. Will you send them away empty?
Posted in CHAPTER EIGHT
You may try to persuade yourself that this is an ordinary book — in order that you may find comfort in the persuasion - but you cannot do so and be fair to facts.