Chapter 17 Director Brown's sage advice

As the Yale Theology Department celebrates its centennial, Dean Charles Leonard Brown delivered a series of lectures on the art of preaching.These speeches have been compiled into a book by the McMillan Company of New York and published under the title The Art of Preaching.For more than three decades, Dr. Brown has consistently prepared the weekly lectures himself, while also training students in their presentations and their preparation. His work, therefore, enables him to give us sage advice on how to prepare a speech, whether it be a well-dressed man preparing to address the Ninety-first hymn, or a well-dressed man preparing to address a union. Shoe workers, these opinions will be of great help.So, here I take the liberty of quoting Dr. Brown:

Work on the body and text of your speech so that they are seamless and engaging.When you break through the narrow world limited by the article and step into the vast paradise of life, you will have infinite precious thoughts. If this process of refinement continues on a Saturday morning before you make the final preparations for tomorrow's speech, the presentation will often yield satisfactory results.If a pastor has a month, half a year, or even a year to think about some truth before he imparts it—whether it is walking on the road or sitting in the train when he is too tired to read a book, then a flower of thought The flowers will burst into buds until they reveal their most beautiful abundance.

"It is true that pastors may brood late into the night. It is good practice for pastors not to allow work in church and in the sermon to interfere with their sleep - the pulpit is a good place to preach, but not a good place to rest. place. And yet, nonetheless, in order that those unexpected thoughts may not be forgotten, I will still rise in the middle of the night." When you are absorbed in gathering material for a sermon, remember to record everything that comes to your mind about it, everything that you first see, and all thoughts connected with it.Please outline your thoughts in a few words, and use your thinking to make it more colorful, becoming a constantly dynamic system rather than a rigid idea plagiarized from a book.This type of training makes thinking efficient.

If you take this approach, you will make your thought process alive, authentic, and positive—recording your own thoughts, which are a true reflection of your inner world, far more precious than gems and gold.Scraps of paper you have on hand, the back of used letterhead, torn envelopes, scrap paper, etc. should be your best bets when it comes to taking notes, much better than using nice, clean Folios.Of course, we do not say this from an economic point of view. In fact, when you organize these loose fragments into an article according to a certain logic, it is much easier to use the former than the latter.

Insist on recording your ideas and think about them often.In the thinking process, you don't rush for success.It will eventually make a big difference in your spiritual world and allow your mind to grow - and you may find that whatever sermons you love the most, and indeed the most meaningful sermons to people's lives, come primarily from you own inner world.They are connected with your flesh and blood, the fruit of your spiritual labor, and the product of your vitality. On the contrary, those sermons that distort your inner will or are deliberately edited can hardly eliminate the brand of plagiarism and falsehood.Some sermons are full of vitality, they have gone through vicissitudes, praised God, and finally entered the temples; some sermons melt into the hearts of people, making people grow wings like angels, flying higher and higher, and making people brave on the road full of responsibility Go forward and never lose your way.These true sermons are born out of the passions of people's lives.