My Dear Shepherds,
For me the high point of Sunday mornings—indeed, the whole week—is the sermon. I’ve written much about this wonderful privilege (in the Preaching Today archives). One of the first things I learned about preaching in seminary was Phillips Brooks’ definition in his 1877 Yale Lectures on Preaching, “Truth through personality is our description of real preaching.”
The truth part of “truth through personality” is our priority, requiring the hard work of studying Scripture thoroughly and thoughtfully till we are its able agents. That’s no small task but I feel as though I know how to go about it. It’s the “through personality” part that is more elusive because there is a danger in just being yourself up there on the platform. God’s truth passing through personality can come out bullied and bruised.
Scripture doesn’t intend to leave my personality well enough alone in its passage through me. It meddles. For example, my God-given sense of humor needed to be reined in. My proud moralizing needed to learn Christ-like grace. Personality can be a loose cannon without the Spirit’s restraint. Ironically, even with our heads buried in Scripture, we are quite able to quench the Spirit if we’re not attentive.
Sometimes the personality people see might not actually be us. Some preachers play-act. Others hide behind their professionalism, books, or amped-up emotion. Truth passing through a costumed or armored personality doesn’t sound entirely authentic. It doesn’t quite ring true or resonate with our listeners as it should.
The people in my church were not generally aware that I was a writer. As I was finishing my first book, I decided to read a passage at a congregational meeting, just to let them hear what I’d been up to. Afterward, while we were getting coffee, one woman said, “That just sounded so much like you!” I replied, “You have no idea how hard it is to sound like me.” By which I meant it is no easy task to find one’s voice as a writer; nor, for that matter, as a preacher. But that’s part of “through personality,” too.
We don’t find our voice by hunting for it. Partly it is simply the patient process of becoming comfortable preaching, the way a musician moves past the rudiments till music comes naturally. But another more important part is learning to genuinely reflect our own hearts in our preaching as we are shaped by the Holy Spirit. We need to reflect, if not speak, what we became as we prayed to embody the Truth. The Spirit is our voice teacher, shaping the timbre, tenderness, and timing of the Truth we preach.
Our people must see our personality because, at the spiritual level, the preacher is a congregation’s Everyman. They see themselves in us. We speak not only to them but for them. What we discover in our heart’s struggles of God’s grace and truth becomes accessible to them not just in our words but in our reshaped character.
George Herbert, the 17th century “country parson” and poet, wrote a remarkable poem, “The Windows,” where he likens preachers to awe-inspiring stained-glass windows in whom the colors of God’s story are annealed—baked into the glass, “making thy life to shine within the holy preachers.” “Doctrine and life” (“truth through personality”) make us beautiful windows but if we depend on “speech alone” consciences will be unmoved.
Doctrine and life, colors and light, in one
When they combine and mingle, bring
A strong regard and awe; but speech alone
Doth vanish like a flaring thing,
And in the ear, not conscience, ring.
Be ye glad!
