The Preaching Life

by Robert E. Coleman

"The Preaching Life" is a regular feature of Preacher's Magazine where readers are privileged to sit in the classroom and read insights on current preaching models from some of North America's finest preachers. This workshop is presented by Dr. Robert E. Coleman, director of the School of World Mission and Evangelism at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois.

During morning prayer at a camp meeting, I remember one zealous lady imploring the Lord to help the evangelist "get the cookies down to the bottom shelf." Apparently she felt that the preacher was preaching over the heads of the congregation.

It is unlikely that anyone needed to pray like that for the first Methodist preachers. That early breed of proclaimers may not have exemplified all the art of elocution, but they knew how to get the message down to where people lived. Simplicity of content and plainness of delivery was their stock-in-trade.

The injunction of John Wesley was familiar to every circuit rider. "I design plain truth for plain people," he said. "Therefore, of set purpose, I abstain from all nice and philosophical speculations; from all perplexed and intricate reasonings; and, as far as possible, from even the show of learning."1

That Francis Asbury took this admonition to heart can be seen in his Journal, with such recurring notations as:

"I preached . . . with great plainness."
"I spoke . . . and was awfully severe; perhaps too much so."
"I was led to be very plain."
"I preached at Burlington: it was what is called 'close cutting.'"
"My words pierced the hearts of some like a sword. I neither spared myself nor my hearers."2

A well-known incident in the ministry of Peter Cartwright serves as a dramatic illustration of this plainness in speaking. Once, while this fearless Methodist preacher was opening a church service in Nashville, Gen. Andrew Jackson entered the building. Another preacher, awed by the presence of this distinguished man, pulled Cartwright's coat and whispered, "General Jackson has come in." In indignation Cartwright responded so audibly that Jackson and the rest of the congregation could hear him: "Who is General Jackson? If he don't get his soul converted, God will damn him." It does not appear that the general objected to such preaching, for the next day he told Cartwright that he was a man after his own heart.3

One reason Methodist preaching was plain was because it used the vernacular of the people. Also, the issues addressed were applicable to their daily chores. Little in those sermons could have been called abstract or academic. The preachers sincerely tried to follow the "advices" relative to preaching printed in the first Methodist Discipline:
"Always suit your subject to your audience. Choose the plainest texts you can. Take care not to ramble, but keep to the text, and make out what you take in hand."4
Judging from the tremendous growth of early American Methodism, this kind of preaching was attractive to the kind of people who characterized the frontier in the early 19th century. But I doubt if there is that much difference in the basic disposition of those pioneers and the masses of people in our age. It is not so much the temperament of the multitudes that has changed with passing years, as the manner of discourse in the pulpit. With regard to "plain preaching," it might well be that our forebears could teach much more than we care to admit about effective preaching today.
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1. John Wesley, Preface, Works, 5:2.

2. Francis Asbury, Journal, 3:299, 297, 286, 291, 298.

3. Peter Cartwright, Autobiography, 192-93.

4. Discipline, 1784, 18-19.