Wednesday, April 08, 2026
Preaching by Frank Boreham
Great preaching has three distinct values.It has entertainment
value; it has educational value; and it has evangelistic value. I need
not say that the first and the second are of value only so far as they
lead to the third; yet, since they may so easily lead to the third, they
have an inherent value of their own.
When I affirm that great preaching must have entertainment
value, I do not, of course, mean that it must be amusing. Humour
has its place in preaching as in everything else, yet there is no more
pitiful spectacle under heaven than a preacher trying to be funny.
Comedy is not the only kind of entertainment. For one actor or
actress who has achieved fame as a comedian, a dozen have covered
themselves with glory as interpreters of romance, adventure, or even
tragedy. Nobody who has witnessed a performance of the Medea
of Euripides, of Shakespeare’s Macbeth, or of Ibsen’s Ghosts will
doubt the entertainment value of tragedy. There come moments in
which every person in the audience, gripped by the tense horror of
the unfolding situation, forgets everybody and everything outside the actual play.
But I am no more suggesting that the preacher should aim
at becoming a tragedian that I am suggesting that he should aim at
becoming a comedian. The thing that I am insisting upon is that, by
every art at his command, he should capture and hold the attention
of his hearers. It is not enough that he should say what it is his duty
to say in the first words that happen to come. He must arrange his
matter so attractively, and present it so effectively, that the most
listless and languid will be compelled to follow him. There is no
earthly reason why actors, barristers, or statesmen should state their
cases more attractively, more convincingly, or, if you like, more
entertainingly, than the preacher.
Somebody has said that of preachers there are three kinds.
There is the preacher that you can’t listen to; there is the preacher
that you can listen to; and there is the preacher that you can’t help
listening to. In reality, the third is the only preacher of the three.
The art of preaching is not so much the art of preaching as the art
of compelling the congregation to listen to your message; and you
can only be sure that they will listen if you make it worth their while
to listen. And if you make it worth their while, it is because, in
the best sense, your preaching has entertainment value. The master
preachers—Jesus, Paul, Wesley, Whitefield, Spurgeon, Moody, and
the rest—knew that they had something to say that was well worth
saying. They then made it their business to say it in such a way that
other people would find it well worth hearing. In the full flood of the
oratory, you could have heard a pin drop. You forgot everything in
your eagerness to catch every syllable.
You will never attract or arrest your hearers by an elaborate
display of theology. The prominence of theology in a sermon
suggests a slipshod preparation. Theology is what the ladies call
a foundation garment: it imparts shapeliness and affords support
to the drapery of your utterance without itself becoming visible.
It is very noticeable that Jesus Himself seldom or never became
theological. As Sir Edwin Arnold sings:
The simplest sights He met—
The Sower flinging seed on loam and rock;
The darnel in the wheat; the mustard tree
That hath its seed so little, and its boughs
Widespreading; and the wandering sheep; and nets
Shot in the wimpled waters,—drawing forth
Great fish and small:—these, and a hundred such,
Seen by us daily, never seen aright,
Were pictures for Him from the page of life,
Teaching by parable.
In his fine chapter on Jesus as a Preacher, Dr. James Stalker
says that if, in the course of a lifetime, we have been fortunate
enough to hear an orator of the first rank, we talk of it all our days;
or if we can remember a preacher who first made religion real to us,
his image is enshrined in our memory in a sacred niche. ‘What then,’
Dr. Stalker asks, ‘must it have been to listen to Him who spake as
never man spake? What must it have been to hear the Sermon on the
Mount or the Parable of the Prodigal Son issuing, for the first time,
fresh from the lips that uttered them?’
Preaching of this sublime quality had a distinct entertainment
value; it forced men to pay attention. It had educational value; it
filled the minds and hearts of people with thoughts and emotions
that were startlingly and sensationally new to them. And, as an
inevitable climax, it had evangelistic value. For, in fulfillment of
the purpose that the preacher has secretly cherished through all his
processes of preparation and delivery, it led his hearers to the feet of
God.
# posted by Groseys messages @ 5:46 PM 
