THE PREACHER'S TECHNIQUE
age to the letter, why not carry that immense gain across into your pulpit work in church? Let no man, in this hour when the Church is being challenged to come out from behind its own walls and barriers, reject that opportunity with the disclaimer "It is not in my line." Christ has issued His marching-orders: what else matters? Make up your mind to take a full share of this vital work in the wider field and to meet men on their own ground. Not the least of the results will be a new sense of freedom in your ministry. Having once cast off subservience to your own written words, you will not readily submit to a reimposition of the yoke. Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ has made you free!
Second, it is worth emphasizing that freedom of delivery in the pulpit depends upon carefulness of construction in the study. It is surprising how often this point has been missed in the debate between read and spoken sermons. To the question "Ought I to risk oral delivery of my sermon?" the right answer surely is that it all depends on the sermon. Some sermons it would be almost impossible, even for the man who wrote them, to carry in the mind at all. They meander with mazy motion; they return upon their tracks; ideas overlap; single paragraphs trail on and on for pages; there is not one illustration like a beacon to light the way. For such sermons, oral delivery would involve prodigious feats of memory—and that is no true preaching. On the other hand, it should be quite possible for the preacher, without the stiltedness of
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