Jul
20
2010
Simplicity and directness
“I have several times heard Dr. Billy Graham say, and justly, that the trouble with us ministers is that we tend to preach to one another. We little realize how unintelligible we often are. ‘How much of what is customary to the man in the pulpit . . . is gibberish to the man in the pew?’ I was told of a patient in the chapel of a mental hospital who, after listening for a time to the Chaplain, was heard to remark, ‘There but for the grace of God go I!’ The simplicity and directness of Dr. Graham’s own preaching are a model for us all. . . . Dr. Graham has taught us all to begin again at the beginning in our evangelism and speak by the power of the Holy Spirit of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.”
John R. W. Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait (Grand Rapids, 1961), pages 92-93.