The Company of Preachers: Section 3

Section III: Proclaiming the Word is due August 3rd, so I'll post this review early. I'm sorry, but I don't warrent the reliability of the information contained in this review! This section of Lischer's book treats us to seven great minds and their attempts to distill what the message of the preacher should be. Each is, of course, conditioned by the nature of the culture in which they wrote.

• Martin Luther (1483-1546)
  
• Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
  
• John Wesley (1703-1791)
  
• Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875)
  
• H.H Farmer (1892-1981)
  
• Henry H. Mitchell (still with us)
  
• Walter Brueggemann (still with us)
  

It is difficult to distill such a broad selection of thinking; thinking that spans 500 years, no less. It helps to know the nature of the devil-of-the-age in which each writer lived. In reading this section it is impossible to miss the fact that, like it or not, the enemy-in-mind determines much of our tack.

I came away with three main themes:

1. Remember that preaching matters--even if sometimes it feels ineffective;
2. Don't just be nice in the pulpit--most of these guys weren't afraid to drop the gun barrel on the listener;
   
3. Inspire from the pulpt--Brueggemann, especially, reminds me of the importance of labeling the powers and then providing an alternative vision based in the goodness and power of God.

One of the more interesting parts of this reading was the letter from John Wesley to a critic who was dismayed that Wesley preached so much "law." Law, for Wesley, was the body of teaching of Christ that I would describe as hard words on discipleship (take up the cross, turn the cheek . . .). Wesley was fearful that Methodist preaching was becoming soft in the hands of a man named James Wheatly (I love it when names are named!). Wheatly was focusing only on the comforting "gospel" words of Christ, a Wesley-era Joel Osteen.

Wesley writes: "The gospel preachers, so called, corrupt their hearers; they vitiate their taste, so that they cannot relish sound doctrine; and spoil their appetite, so that they cannot turn it into nourishment; they, as it were, feed them with sweetmeats, till the genuine wine of the kingdom seems quite insipid to them."