Saints and Sinners: Breathe new life into sermons
Nothing is wrong with today’s churches that good preaching wouldn’t fix.
In a Dec. 1 article, “For Pastors, Worldly Help With Spiritual Messages,” Washington Post staff writer Caryle Murphy came to the conclusion that humdrum sermons no longer suffice. Many sermons, she said, “leave listeners uninspired, impatient and bored.”
Murphy quoted several passionate pastors on the subject, including Rev. Wallace Charles Smith, who said that many modern preachers take great pains to deliver sermons that are “theologically correct,” forgetting that “for preaching to be effective, … what a good sermon has to do is meet a human need.” Another preacher Murphy interviewed, Rev. John J. Enzler, said that preachers shouldn’t tiptoe around tough issues that may alienate some of the congregation members. “It’s pretty easy to just get up and talk about scripture,” Enzler said. “What is not so easy is to say, ‘I think the war in Iraq is wrong.'”
But what I miss most about modern preaching is that it lacks flair. It lacks the type of flair that was often expressed by the late Rev. Bernard Clausen, a Baptist minister from Pittsburgh and Cleveland.
There have been other great preachers, but at least one thing set Clausen apart from all the rest: His congregation not only looked forward to his sermons, they even looked forward to the collection. Clausen had a special way of sharing stories that would soften people up for the offering. He would tell the story of a church usher who passed the collection plate to a man who said, “I don’t think I’ll contribute today. I don’t believe in missions.”
But the usher — so Clausen’s story went — had the quick wit to reply, “Take some out then, it’s for the heathens.”
It was Clausen’s sermons, though, that people talked about most. It wasn’t only what he said, but the way he said it. There was animation in every word. He could smile and frown at the same time. It was wonderful to watch the mobility of that face.
I recall, in particular, one sermon of Clausen’s. The topic was “I Hope You Fail”:
“I mean you,” he said. “Not your enemies but your closest partners in the human enterprise. I want you to be known as failures because you try too much … because you set your hopes too high … because your reach exceeds your grasp. If you succeed you have attempted too little.”
Clausen was colorful and he was theatrical, but he was no mere performer — no Elmer Gantry. He was a man with a mission — to help “build a world safe for the hopes of motherhood, safe for the dreams of childhood” as he said. He once told the story of the cynic who said, “I could build a better world than this.” Clausen replied, “Why don’t you then? That’s why God put you here.”
There was a time in Clausen’s life when an accident deprived him of the use of his tongue and threatened to leave him speechless. “Out of those anxious days of silence,” he said later, “I took a vow that if ever the precious gift of speech were given back to me, I should try to speak no untrue, unfair, unkind word so long as I lived.”
I was acquainted with Clausen the last 20 years of his life and I never knew him to go back on that vow.
But somewhere along the line, he must also have taken another vow — never to speak a dull word. That is what made him unusual in his own day. It would have made him even more unusual today.
(George Plagenz is a syndicated columnist.)