Ours is an age in which creativity is at a premium. At no previous time in history have nations vied with one another in such a competitive race in the areas of science, industry, and to a degree in the arts, although the struggle is less enterprising here than in the other two, and certainly the stakes are not as high. The creation of some novel and ingenious space object or the discovery of a more efficient method of manufacturing steel, for example, is far more likely to capture popular attention than the appearance of a new school of poets or playwrights, or the production of a musical symphony, or indeed a work of love done for love’s sake. Moreover, in the more practical fields it is implied that currently a state of emergency exists in which the ugly race for armaments and the greedy passion for mass production claim priority and demand more and more creativity, and the end is not yet. Indeed there is a sense in which the mood and perspectives of wartime living are still here.

Now this imbalance in creativity, this unevenness in which some areas of man’s endeavor have a consistently growing edge while others are somewhat stagnant, presents one of the most alarming situations in the Western world today. And the problem comes into sharpest focus when we see the impressive strides being taken mechanically and scientifically while morally we haven’t moved very far out of the jungle; and indeed there are times when the jungle shames us by its virtues. Every day the common man handles with precision the most delicate instruments that creative minds have produced, but in the art of living he shows not only a clumsiness but also an absence of enterprise, and is inclined still to carry on according to old maxims that are devoid of any religious sanction: “Business is business”; “Make hay while the sun shines”; “Take care of yourself, for if you don’t who will?” The picture then presents a ticklish situation in which responsible objects are in irresponsible hands.

Few writers have described this contemporary predicament and the serious results of it more plainly than Archibald MacLeish, the distinguished man of letters and author of J. B., in an article on “National Purpose” in the New York Times (May 30, 1960):

We have advanced science to the edges of the inexplicable and hoisted our technology to the sun itself. We are in a state of growth and flux and change in which cities flow out into countryside and countryside moves into cities and new industries are born and old industries vanish and the customs of generations alter and fathers speak different languages from their sons. In brief, we are prosperous, lively, successful, inventive, diligent—but, nevertheless and notwithstanding, something is wrong and we know it. . . . We feel that we’ve lost our way in the woods, that we don’t know where we are going—if anywhere.

In these words Dr. MacLeish lays his finger upon what turns out to be the area of our greatest concern, that level of existence where the sense of moral purpose has been lost and hence the thrust of some redemptive creativity out and into the affairs of men has been stunted. It is disturbing to consider how much excitement there is in the region of the mind today—the ferment of ideas, the thrill of new invention and discovery, the visions of what is yet to be—as compared with so few exploits in the arena of the moral will, the enlightened conscience, and the sober business of living in our workaday world. The brand new world of the mind is not matched or guided by an equally brave new world of the heart. Romano Guardini had this in mind when he wrote, “Man today holds power over things, but we can assert confidently that he does not yet have power over his own power.”^[1]The End of the Modern World (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1956), p. 109. It can mean only bewilderment for men to go on living in a world of unprecedented scientific wonders from which the patterns of meaning have been slowly erased. John Osborne, in his play Look Back in Anger, had Jimmy Porter describe our prevailing mood in this way:

I suppose people of our generation aren’t able to die for good causes any longer: We had all that done for us, in the thirties and forties, when we were still kids. There aren’t any good brave causes left. If the big bang comes, and we all get killed off, it won’t be in aid of the old-fashioned grand design. It’ll be just for the Brave New Nothing-very-much-thank-you. About as pointless and inglorious as stepping in front of a bus.^[2]Quoted by Douglas Webster in What Is Evangelism? (London: Highway Press, 1959), p. 46.

In view of this mood and of the human predicament that creates it, several questions would seem to be appropriate, Can man be directed then to convert the spectacular products of his mind into good, or will he pull them and his world down in ruin around himself? Or, to put it more provocatively, can he be turned to some wisdom outside himself by which he can see what his basic trouble is and through which his sense of motivation will be restored and his twisted standards of values made straight?

It is not unusual that people who are caught up in these exigencies turn to the Church. However, not everyone who looks in this direction does so with the built-in conviction or expectation that the Church has the answer. Some are looking in from the outside and with an air of cool detachment are asking, “How fares the Church anyway?” Never do they intend any harm, but at the same time they do not look to the Church with any sense of expectancy and indeed they do not go out of their way to will the Church any good. They would be horrified if they were ever labelled anti-Church, but at best they have not treated it with anything better than mild indifference, and occasionally with even a slant of cynicism.

There is, on the other hand, and indeed fortunately so, a large segment of clear-minded folk who are asking far more probing questions than their indifferent cousins. They are for the Church, but in a very realistic way: they are neither apathetic nor suspicious, but they have to be convinced. And with more than idle curiosity, indeed with a measure of genuine sympathetic interest they inquire, “Is anything really happening in the Church?”

I suppose the most obvious answer to this question is to point out that the Church is a hive of humming activity today. To prove this by statistics would be a simple matter. But somehow mere numbers, totals, and net gains, impressive as they may appear, do not seem to be convincing in these times; in fact they have about them an aura of suspicion that is not without some justification, especially when our favorable situation is referred to as “a religious boom.” It is painfully true that in our effort to operate our churches more effectively and efficiently—and goodness knows, it was needed—we have capitulated in many instances to the disease of the machine and have marred our integrity by seeming to enter into competition with secular schemes and organizations. And so the question must be reframed in order to probe deeper: Is anything happening in the vital areas of the Church’s life? Underlying all this busy-ness is there a stirring that is creative? Is this religious renaissance an indication of some real inner ferment or genuine contagion? Granted that the program of the Church had lagged and limped far behind the progressive methods of the world of business, education, and science, and was in need of revamping, yet in our preoccupation with appropriating these new methods and skills have we compromised unwittingly with our real responsibility? It is true that in certain areas of the Church’s program, particularly in Christian education, much excellent progress is being made and fresh projects undertaken, but we have not always recognized that methods of operation in themselves are not creative; they are the means whereby the fruits of creativity are realized and made fully effective. And whenever there has been any neglect of the deeper resources, the Church has had to battle for its own integrity on its own ground. It is now fighting against the secularization of all life, including its own. Sooner or later this becomes the inevitable struggle when either the means or the by-products of a program become an institution’s sole aim.

This brings us to the place where we begin to see more clearly that the situation inside and outside the Church have a weakness in common. The world can boast of great creativity among the things men can handle and see (that is, in a general sense, the products of the mind), but suffers from a dearth of fresh and determinative departures in the regions of high principles and moral adventure. The Church too is caught up in an intensive program of events, but the relationship of these activities to the one Event of history that gives meaning to all other events has been either weakened or missed entirely. Both the world and the Church are affected by a common ailment that has been variously described as short-sightedness or as a muddled sense of priorities or as the loss of a clear purpose. The grim tragedy, however, is that what the world needs was once given to the Church to be used for the benefit of men but continues now in so many instances as a mere potential that is adored but not permitted generally to operate. There are some who claim that it is essentially a problem of communication, that the bridge of a common language has broken down and therefore the voice of the Church seems to get a poor hearing in the contemporary world. To a limited extent this may be true, but Douglas Webster was getting closer to the real reason when he reminded us that “the Church is called to be Christ’s working Body in today’s working world”-and this appears to be the unfinished business of our program-filled fellowship. P. T. Forsyth disclosed almost a modus operandi for us when he wrote, “You are to preach to the Church from the Gospel so that with the Church you may preach the Gospel to the world.” This is the Church’s purpose in a world that appears to be devoid of a sense of purpose. This is the place where the Church can be most creative, where methods and systems break off and the essential character of its own spiritual substances and raison d,etre becomes clear. It is, however, and necessarily so, an “inside job.” It must begin from within among those who are within and through them emerge as a creative force in the world.

Now, in these times, the inclination is to put the responsibility upon the laity, and in many respects this is good and necessary for the claim of the Church upon each generation, but the initiative in this matter of creativity lies with the ministry. At the same time this is not intended to downgrade the primary work of the Holy Spirit, but simply to point out that the initiative lies with the minister in the sense that Paul indicated in Ephesians 2:12: God gave the minister to the Church to be its servant. As Charles S. Duthie described it,

He [the minister] does not derive his authority from the Church, but from God; but the Church is the sphere of his service, so that, under Christ, he is the servant of the Church. If the Church is the Body of Christ, then the minister is called to make it the effective Body.^[3]God in His World (London: Independent Press, 1954), p. 88.

And Forsyth declared again and again that the Church will be what the minister makes it. “The ministry,” he wrote, “has not to reform the world, but to create a Church for the world’s reformation.”^[4]P. T. Forsyth, The Church and Sacraments (London: Independent Press, 1947), p. 122.. And this is substantially where the modern ministry has fallen short of its responsibility and where individual ministers have ceased generally to be creative. In many instances they have been taken captive by the mass production line and therefore some of their most urgent assignments are performed on “a catch as catch can” basis. This is one reason why so many preachers are miserable and unhappy most of the time. They are restive and restless. With some, the poetic mood beats its wings against the cage that restricts all their movements to the deadening program of trivialities. With another, the creative artist is eager for a chance to be still and to see his dream evolve, but he never gets it. Minds that are capable of seminal thought become indifferent to its challenge and lose the incentive to follow through. Indeed the Moderator of the United Church of Canada, addressing the graduating class of one of the seminaries, indicated that as he visited presbyteries during 1959 the thing that disturbed him most among the ministers was “a loss of a sense of who and what they are.” And what has happened to the minister has cast its reflection across his worship and preaching. His worship is not an experience, nor is it shaped to accommodate the normal movements of the seeking soul; it lacks meaning. Moreover the capacities that make preaching real preaching-original, dynamic, engaging, contagious, prophetic—are the exception today and therefore the twenty minutes on Sunday morning which should be the event to initiate other events has lost its motivated thrust, not through any fault of the pew but through the preacher himself. He has ceased to be creative.

More than a few preachers, especially those in middle life, acknowledge frankly and with some little despair that “they are licked.” They are beaten by the system. But if a preacher can justify his challenge to John Smith to change his mind, to have done with the thralldom of sin, surely he ought to ask himself: Can I get the best of the system? If not, what right has he to preach the evangel of the changed life? Both the beginning and the death-knell of creativity lie here. And the preacher, for the sake of the Gospel he represents and the world in its desperate need of it, must take fresh and deliberate action or else be himself a castaway.

 

I. To Be Creative the Preacher Must Preserve the Integrity of His Message

Joseph McCulloch, in The Listener (February 19, 1959, p. 333), made this comment, “The problem of the preacher’s life today is supremely a question of integrity.” People make all kinds of silly demands upon a preacher’s energy and time that try to draw him into a dozen directions simultaneously, but more than they will ever acknowledge their unspoken wish is: “Let Christ come down from the Cross.” This is part of that great invasion of the Church by the secular mind. Men and women live six days of the week by the machinery of clever deals, quick compromise, and temporary expedients, and in this atmosphere the pattern of the fabric of their life is woven. The preacher, therefore, encounters a nagging temptation when he faces these people every Sunday morning. It is like a silent protest, but a hidden anxiety is there nonetheless: “Bring Christ down from that Cross. Put him among us as a regular guy and we’ll accept him as one of us.” And more than a few preachers have forfeited their hard won integrity by capitulating before the pressure of this demand.

The outward features of this secular invasion are obvious: option, compromise, activism, and expediency—to name just a few. Every congregation has members who come with the optional approach to matters of belief; they “pick and choose” as their fancy moves them. Augustine exposed their secret fault when he said, “If you believe what you like in the Gospel and reject what you don’t like, it is not the Gospel you believe, but yourselves.” Or those who compromise: James S. Stewart refers to people who “patch up some sort of working arrangement by which a less strenuous line of conduct is accepted without offending the conscience unduly.”^[5]A Man in Christ (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1954), p. 94. And then he goes on to remark that “the snare of compromise has always been religion’s most serious enemy, and the higher the religion the greater the danger.” Or the activists: the organization man of society brings his “know-how” into the area of religious devotion and very soon the Church ceases to be “the place where one would naturally look for spiritual happenings” (A. J. Gossip). Or those who are slaves to expediency: they have the notion that Christianity is somewhat of a stimulant that can be administered in order to buttress our sagging democracy or activate our liberty and therefore it is most expedient to be on its side. They are wholly unaware of the primary axiom that “morality consists in doing what is right for its own sake,”^[6]James S. Stewart, A Faith to Proclaim (New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1953), p. 40. and if done for any other reason, so that it becomes a means to an end, the net result is immorality.

These are some of the popular modes and philosophies of living that are present to a greater or lesser degree in every worshipping congregation today. And those who hold to these points of view will continue as just so many pious barnacles upon the Church unless and until they experience an arresting encounter with the essence of Christianity through a preacher who knows what his real business is. It is his job to declare, without apology or qualification, that the center of his message is the fact of Christ, the most creative reality in all history. For, as R. W. Dale expressed it, “Christ came not primarily to preach the Gospel, but that there might be a Gospel to preach.” And this Gospel was Good News, not about men, but about God. And its authenticity was endorsed by Jesus’ life who was “the image of the invisible God.” Preachers, therefore, who dilute their pulpit message to become little essays about being good and about the need for dropping bits of kindness here and there, have forfeited the opportunity to be creative and have identified themselves with the common predicament of the men and women in the pew. Since they say what people want to hear, they deviate from the integrity of that message which once startled scribes and Pharisees out of their comfortable patterns and turned a world upside down.

But the preacher who presents the fact of Christ as “a desperately serious thing” (W. R. Inge) begins a creative work among his people. From Christ they learn that their life is not their own selfish possession to be guarded within the framework and safety of the status quo, but is a gift of God; and although they are estranged morally from God, the claim of his love follows them and by his own choosing their destiny is involved in him. And the measure of this concern of God was demonstrated once and for all by the dimension of the Cross. As the old gospel hymn goes,

The highest response man can make to the fact of Christ is an act of worship. For when men worship rightly they open themselves fully to the reinvigorating energies of the grace of God. And with each recurring response they grow morally strong and spiritually mature, and the world and its machines become purposeful instruments in their hands. In the crucible of inner human experiences things will begin to happen again, and they will happen for God’s glory and the salvation of men. Somerset Maugham once said that “the best stories do not end; they go on forever in our minds.” So does the message of the creative preacher.

 

II. To Be Creative the Preacher Must Give Meaning to Worship

Earlier, following the leading of Forsyth, we saw that the minister must preach from the Gospel to the Church and with the Church take the new life out into the world. The fact of Christ is at the center of the Good News, and it is a creative thing because those who claim it are totally transformed by it and they enlist as transformers of others in his name. But what about this congregation of people, this collection of miscellaneous persons who meet in a common sanctuary on Sunday morning? In what way do they become the context in which the message is proclaimed? What can weld them into a unified creative group that can move out into society as good leaven in the sordid lump? Worship is the answer. Only worship, marked by wholeness, that is, worship with over-all meaning, can create this body whose mission it is to bring the Risen Lord to all of life. What then are some of the basic needs that must be kept in mind?

The Act of Worship Must Be Directed God-ward

Subjective worship has been the bane of the devotional side of the majority of Protestant churches. And reality in worship has increased only in the proportion that what we do and say in church are directed toward God rather than man. In some services of worship the hymns and prayers are man-centered and little indication is given of that farther horizon where the things of earth are touched by the things of heaven. Moreover, the only discernible goal of this kind of service is to create a vague sense of good fellowship which differs from the secular only in a certain piousness that is attached to it and of which the by-products are generally negligible. The order of service is formless in liturgical shape and uneven in devotional quality. Indeed some of—the “items” on the program are not very much above the level of “sacred vaudeville.” Everything is selected with the hope of making people feel better and of demonstrating that worship is divinely intended to be primarily a therapeutic experience. Such worship may tickle the emotions or stir human fancy superficially, but it cannot challenge the mind or will.

Thomas Morrow wrote recently that “the goal of worship is the glory of God and the result of worship must be the expression of that glory in transformed and transfigured lives.”^[7]Worship and Preaching (London: Epworth Press, 1956), p. 15. Worship then is not a matter of majoring in minors or of making by-products into primary objectives. “Worship is the all-pervading recognition of the absolute worth of God.” To be worthy and sincere it must be “Godward and God-honoring.” In other words, belief is at the basis of worship. And worship is what we do in response to our awareness of the revelation of the love of God that came to us in Jesus Christ. It is what we believe that excites our worship. It is what we believe about God that determines the quality of our worship and of the life that results from it. Modern people have lost the “God-dimension” and exist therefore in merely a two-dimensional world. And this accounts for so much of the flatness and meaninglessness and “way-out-less­ness” in our everyday life. But when God becomes the one object of our thought and adoration in worship we become creative through our nature sharing his redemptive nature. We are in touch with reality, an experience beyond which we can never be the same again. As the hymnwriter worded it:

John Calvin said, “[Man] is capable of receiving God and of union with him.” Only as our worship embraces him will something creative result in us. Or as F. H. Brabant said, “God must come first, or man’s edification will not follow.”

The Act of Worship Must Be Christ-centered

Every congregation, whether it be suburban, downtown, or frontier, is made up of individual persons. In manners, moods, and complexes they resemble any other audience. Ted Willis, the distinguished English television writer, describes the peculiar character of the TV audience as a scattered multitude of people who pass through “an unshared experience.” The worshipping congregation, however, ought to be a gathered company who share a common experience in the same place. But on more occasions than we dare to estimate this is the exception rather than the general rule. How frequently it does happen that several hundred people come from the outside world and after an hour in the sanctuary they go out exactly as they came in. The blame can be placed variously; there are always those who refuse to be made whole. But more often than not, it is due to the lack of their involvement not only in things that are done but in that integrative factor without which any service is merely a poor imitation.

In every service of worship there ought to be “something in which we all take part,” whereby we bring to God “the whole individual man in the whole Christian community.”^[8]A. R. Shands, The Liturgical Movement and the Local Church (London: SCM Press, 1959), p. 22. But the matter of a prayer or two in unison or a few vocal responses does not convert a collection of individuals into a Christian community. The early Christians were able to be “with one accord in one place” because they were “in Christ.” Their worship was “an experience of togetherness with one another and with Christ.”^[9]A. G. Reynolds, “The Church: It’s Worship,” The Living Church, ed. H. W. Vaughan (Toronto: The United Church Publishing House, 1949), p. 78. He was the Head of the Body. They were involved in him. They were one in him. And therefore as a contagious, corporate personality (if such a term can be used) they were able to move out with creative force into the secular world.

The Act of Worship Must Emerge in a Way of Life

If a new way of life is to be created it must take place in the Church, in the fellowship of that community of persons where praise, prayer, and dedication are sincerely made. The preacher’s role is crucial because through his leadership and inspiration the intentions of the group are raised and directed. The outcome of worship can never be emotional anarchy. Moreover, if commitment to Christ is to be desired and aimed for above everything, it cannot take place in isolation. The worshiping group must become an organic living body that will move out into life to redeem it from the inside. If the preacher presents God to the people—through the proclamation of the Word, the testimony of his own life, and the high experience of an act of worship that unveils reality—then they will carry the obedience they have pledged in the sanctuary into the activities of daily living. The prayer of St. Richard of Chichester sums up this matter: “…that we may know thee more clearly, love thee more dearly, and follow thee more nearly day by day.” Worship and life belong together. Separation spells the impoverishment of both of them. As George MacLeod has said, “The ultimate worship of God is what we do in the realm of service or obedience in the market place.” Here then the work of the creative preacher finds its highest expression. As Alfred R. Shands put it so well,

He [the minister] has been given the privilege of forming and assembling the Body of Christ. And the price which he must pay in order to receive this gift is the total gift of himself to them. “For their sakes I sanctify myself.” … The existence of a holy people, a militant laity, is within his hands.^[10]p. 47.

In other words, the creative preacher will bring the heart of worship through the community of believers to the heart of the world.

 

III. To Be Creative the Preacher Must Excel as an Interpreter

Few will deny that we are now in a period of transition in preaching. The old topical sermon with its emphasis upon moral panaceas of the self-help variety has had its day. Indeed it had already over-stayed its time. Other movements had gotten well under way—the rise of biblical theology, the new evangelism, the liturgical renaissance—while the pulpit was still amiably discussing contemporary events within a contemporary context. Also during this time there has been a dearth of pivotal preachers, those prophetic voices who carve out a new approach to preaching and mark those creative turning points we associate with such names as Henry Ward Beecher and Harry Emerson Fosdick.

In a sense, therefore, we are now in a period of wandering as far as the pulpit is concerned and the basic reason for it is that the preacher has lost his identification. In a recent issue of The Christian Century (June 22, 1960) Edward V. Stein of the San Francisco Theological Seminary was discussing modern man, but his description applies with equal fitness to the ministry: “Willie Loman in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman ‘lives in the past and the future but loses the present.’ Because he sees himself in external terms, essentially in the light of his market value, his own son remarks after his death, ‘He never knew who he was'” (p. 746). Similarly with the ministry today; we are in a search for a name. And this search is not purely an academic exercise; it is the most absorbing necessity of the hour. Some study groups have come up with various designations: pastor-director, for example. But the best word has been suggested by W. B. J. Martin when he said,

The image which has given cohesion to my task is the image I have entertained of myself as interpreter. . . Prophet, pastor, teacher, evangelist—none of these terms is fully adequate because none of them is complete in itself. They each need a setting which includes them all and enriches them all. The image of the Interpreter, I submit, is comprehensive enough to include every aspect of a minister’s life, and will give another dimension to every function he is called upon to perform.^[11]”The Minister as Interpreter,” The Chaplain, XVII (June, 1960), 2.

Few of us will disagree with Dr. Martin’s conclusions, but all would want to go on to ask: How does the role of the interpreter affect preaching: In what way does it provide a key to creativity?

The Interpreter Makes the Message of the Christian
Gospel Clear to His People

Among the members of every congregation there is an appalling ignorance of what actually the gospel is. Whenever the preacher takes seriously his responsibility as an interpreter, however, his is an informed congregation. They know not only “in whom” they believe, which is a basic matter, but they are schooled also in “what” to believe, which is highly important because it is upon this very thing they will act. It is upon what they believe about God, Jesus Christ, redemption, salvation, and future blessedness that determines their moral conduct and their conception of their destiny. And how will they know these things, and the implications of them, unless a clear-thinking, well-informed preacher makes them plain?

The Interpreter Will Create a Consciousness of God
in the Midst of Common Life

Here the interpreter becomes prophet. Now the prophetic office is not to foretell but to declare how God acts. In all the malfunctioning of national and social relationships the prophet declares what is the will and character of God. His presentation is not in any systematic form, but in every human crisis, at every sign of a slump in national morality, he speaks from such an overwhelming conviction of God’s presence and character that his hearers discern the validity of that higher note, “Thus saith the Lord.” The interpreter is concerned with justifying the ways of God to men and whether he be an eighth century prophet or a twentieth century preacher, the integrity of his message must be endorsed, and indeed matched, by the integrity of his own spiritual character. It is his God-consciousness that will gain for him a hearing among people for whom even religion itself has become a casual option.

The Interpreter Will Seek to Demonstrate
The Relevance of the Bible to Life

Henry Sloan Coffin once said that “the preacher is not so much an interpreter of the Bible as he is an interpreter of life by the Bible.” One can talk about the Bible, tell all that is in it, and even bolster every argument with “The Bible says,” but it does not become a creative factor until life as it exists now encounters what the Bible declares life ought to be. The interpreter cannot have a remote or Olympian relationship to life. Indeed the anxious claim of his people will not permit it. He must put himself into the medley of life, come to grips with all its foibles and failures, and at the same time not lose sight of how it appeared once and for all in the face of Jesus Christ. In the Bible God’s revelation of himself comes to its finest and final expression in the life of Christ. Here we see truth alive in a person. In the interpreter’s hands, therefore, “the Bible becomes not a problem book to be explained and defended but a book that illumines the problems of man’s actual existence.” Otherwise any moral treatise might just as well be the preacher’s text- book. But in the Bible, as nowhere else, men find that life takes on meaning. And the key to this meaning is the living Lord from whom and unto whom are all things.

At this stage we can see how necessary to creative preaching is the art of interpretation and to the wholeness and relevance of the gospel the preacher brings to the Church. It remains now to say a few words about those special characteristics that prevent the message from falling upon unresponsive ears. Without attempting to be exhaustive, let us consider three features or marks which the creative preacher must keep in mind:

Engagement.—Some few years ago the key word in the art of communication was empathy. Empathy was the ability or facility to think or feel one’s way into the secret citadel of another man’s person so that one is able to speak to his moral or spiritual need. The preacher who could achieve this art had made a forward step in the process of learning to communicate effectively. But there is a further side to this action which is frequently overlooked: communication is a two-way proceeding. It involves words, but basically it is a relationship. The preacher therefore must secure also the involvement of the congregation with him. This means to have the people “with him” as he speaks. George A. Buttrick has taught us that no preacher should get beyond the first paragraph or two without impressing upon his hearers that his subject is a matter for their concern. And when they sense this relevance of the subject to their own life they become engaged in it with the speaker and are led by his thinking and witness to the verdict he desires.

Realism.—Once a famous actor was asked, “What is the difference between actors and preachers?” He replied, “Actors deal with unrealities as if they were real, while preachers deal with realities as if they were unreal.” Abstractions are not the language of preaching, especially in an age when images are the stock in trade of mass communication. Yet the old slogan that “one picture is worth 1,000 words” does not solve the entire problem. There is a realism of association as well as the realism of concreteness. And this applies particularly to the matter of illustrations. Illustrations that come out of the fabric of life as men know it with all the realism they can see and the contemporaneity they can feel are more likely to fascinate the mind and stir the will than an incident, for example, from the Napoleonic Wars. Someone said about Alexander Whyte of St. George’s, Edinburgh, “Vividly dramatic at times, he makes you see things that are invisible.” Principles clothed in the homely garb of today are likely to be more clearly visible than in the cut of the styles of yesterday.

Dynamic.—The dictionary meaning for “dynamic” is “the ability to produce activity in others.” It is not a matter solely of enthusiasm, although enthusiasm is part of it. It is not a matter of emotion, although emotion is involved in it. Too much preaching, however, is addressed exclusively to the intellect and too little to the conscience. But it is in the region of the conscience that decisions are made. Leonard Hodgson complained about modern preaching that “fails to catch fire and kindle answering sparks in the congregation because its utterance gives the impression of being the performance of a routine duty.”^[12]The Doctrine of the Trinity (London: Nisbet and Company, 1946), p. 181. And Douglas Webster called for a preacher who would “be an instrument releasing the power of the Holy Ghost.”^[13]p. 107. These words indicate the need for a dynamic quality in preaching, which comes not from the fact of our experience but from the fact which we experience. And as this fact possesses the preacher the contagion of it in his life and witness starts things moving in others and the congregation becomes a center of moral influence and spiritual power in the land. Christ founded a community. It was a contagious fellowship. It is this group the creative preacher forms and with it he goes out to remake the world.