Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 82:328 (Oct 1925)
Article: The Place Of Preaching In The Church Of Today
Author: William Crowe

BSac 81:328 (Oct 1925) p. 378

The Place Of Preaching In The Church Of Today

William Crowe

IF you undertake to survey the area covered by the activities of the modern pastor you will be astonished at what he is trying to do. You will find it quite impossible to give a satisfactory dictionary definition of his office. Upon investigation you will discover that it is expected of him to be a pastor in the historic sense; also to be preacher, a speaker for many interests beyond the door of his church; a church engineer, a secretary, a counselor, a community leader, a general functionary.

If you follow him a little way, you will find him ministering to strangers, outcasts and prisoners: advising with business men, professional men, teachers and housekeepers: erecting programs for the instruction of young people, missionary societies, and kindred organizations. You will find him in the forum, in the street, in the home, in the quiet of his own workshop; in places of sickness and health; in places of poverty and wealth; where goodness prevails and where badness reigns; where joy is unconfined and where sorrow creates its solemn stillness; where the newborn infant enters upon his great adventure, and where death places his timeless seal: everywhere a partner in all the experiences of human life.

The life of the minister, viewed from some distant point, is drenched with romance. It is a life of contrasts; within one hour he moves from the marriage altar to the bier; from the banquet hall to the house of mourning; from the stately palaces of the rich to the lowly huts of the poor; from the hallowed oracle to the pits where the foregleams of hell are cast in lurid hues.

Such is the life of your preacher. Upon such an arena, young men, you are ever preparing to enter. May none

BSac 81:328 (Oct 1925) p. 379

ever fail in that rendezvous with need and injustice and sin.

You may interrupt me here with the inquiry: Where are men to equip themselves for such a ministry as you have described? Surely our Seminaries have failed to prepare men for the big responsibilities that are ahead. Shall they go lame all their days or shall they seek elsewhere for girding for the coming events? My reply to your expressed anxieties would be, No, your Seminary has not failed, it has performed the necessary office for you. You may not at this time be able to see how the curriculum that you have completed is to relate itself to the work you are to do; but I can declare to you that your labors have not been amiss.

You have burned the lamp into the small hours of many a night in the eager pursuit of classical lore. You have given your time and energy without stint to the study of Latin and Greek and He...