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The Preacher His Life and Work (Classic Reprint): Yale Lectures
Excerpt from The Preacher His Life and Yale Lectures
In the course of these lectures I am to speak on the general theme of "The his life and work." There is little or no need of introduction. The only prefatory word I wish to offer is this. I have been in the Christian ministry for over twenty years. I love my calling. I have a glowing delight in its services. I am conscious of no distractions in the shape of any competitors for my strength and allegiance.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
In the course of these lectures I am to speak on the general theme of "The his life and work." There is little or no need of introduction. The only prefatory word I wish to offer is this. I have been in the Christian ministry for over twenty years. I love my calling. I have a glowing delight in its services. I am conscious of no distractions in the shape of any competitors for my strength and allegiance.
About the Publisher
Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com
This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
- GenresChristian
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1912
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 16, 2022
I received this book as a gift from a dear friend, and I am even more grateful now that I have read the book than I was when I first received the gift. Jowett addressed these seven lectures on pastoral ministry/theology to seminary students at Yale Divinity School in the early Twentieth Century, and this book entered publication in 1912. The lectures address the following subjects in a topical (rather than strictly exegetical) manner: The Call to be a Preacher, The Perils of the Preacher, The Preacher's Themes, The Preacher in his Study, The Preacher in his Pulpit, The Preacher in the Home, and The Preacher as a Man of Affairs. To clarify some of these, "The Preacher's Themes" could likewise be denominated as "the spiritual mission of pastoral ministry," that is, preachers are to minister the gospel (not sociological, psychological, or political fads) to their people (God's flock). "The Preacher in his Pulpit" touches on preaching, but is more about describing the preacher's liturgical task as a whole, involving public prayer, public reading of Scripture, and leadership of worship more generally. "The Preacher in the Home" is about one-on-one ministry to the flock in his care, and not strictly about the preacher's deportment or conduct in his own home. "The Preacher as a Man of Affairs" treats the preacher's leadership in the administration and business of the church, especially as it relates to his leadership of his ordained colleagues (Elders, Deacons, etc.) in a local church context.
While the book is likely to be most helpful to Presbyterian, Reformed, and Elder-led Independent churches, the lessons gleaned from these lectures are applicable in any ecclesiastical context. Each of the lectures is very useful, insightful, and relevant to ministry in the Twenty-First Century. Jowett's outlook is preeminently spiritual, but not naively dismissive of the unavoidably important concerns of managing time, leading teams, and navigating votes in the polity of the church.
The language is at times a bit dated and flowery, but not at all unreadable. In fact, the writing makes for very pleasant reading. One demerit I would assign to the book is that Jowett does not give any discussion to lectio continua preaching (i.e., preaching sequentially through books of the Bible). Thus, the preacher is left to his own devices for choosing texts week to week. However, his call to give ample time for "marination" of the Word and of the sermon makes clear that however you choose your texts, you must choose well in advance of the date those texts are to be preached. Overall, I strongly recommend this book to new, veteran, and aspiring ministers.
Some great lines:
- "Now I hold with profound conviction that, before a man selects the Christian ministry as his vocation, he must have the assurance that the selection has been imperatively constrained by the eternal God" (6).
- "The singularity of our circumstances, and the awful singularity of our souls provide the medium through which we hear the voice of the Lord" (7).
- "I would affirm my own conviction that, in all genuine callings to the ministry, there is a sense of the divine initiative, a solemn communication of the divine will, a mysterious feeling of commission, which leaves a man no alternative, but which sets him in the road of this vocation bearing the ambassage of a servant and instrument of the eternal God" (13-14).
- "The assurance of being sent is the vital part of our commission.... The absence of the sense of vocation will eviscerate a man's responsibility, and will tend to secularise his ministry from end to end" (14).
- "This sense of great personal surprise in the glory of our vocation, while it will keep us humble, will also make us great. It will save us from becoming small officials in transient enterprises. It will make us truly big, and will, therefore, save us from spending our days in trifling" (18).
- "The mission of the apostle is determined by the mission of the Master, and that mission is declared to be one of wide and inclusive emancipation" (28).
- "But we are not only to preach the good news. We are also to incarnate it in vital service" (30).
- "A garden was the scene of the hardest fighting in the battle of Waterloo. Privilege never confers security: it rather provides the conditions of the fiercest strife" (40-41).
- "I suppose that one of the deepest characteristics of worldliness is an illicit spirit of compromise.... the worldly spirit of compromise is just the sacrifice of the moral ideal to the popular standard, and the subjection of personal conviction to current opinion.... Worldly compromise takes the medium-line between white and black, and wears an ambiguous grey. It is a partisan of neither midnight nor noon. It prefers the twilight, which is just a mixture of midnight and noon and is equally related to both. It is, therefore, a very specious presence, fraternising with all sorts and conditions of men, nodding acquaintedly to the saint, and intimately recognising the sinner, at home everywhere, mixing with the worshippers int he temple, or with the money-changers in the temple courts. Grey is a very useful colour; it is in keeping with a wedding or a funeral. And yet the word of Holy Writ is clear and decisive, raising the most exalted standard: "Keep thy garments always white" (49-51).
- "Of all pathetic sights on God's earth there is none more pathetic than a preacher of the Gospel who, by the benumbing power of custom, or by the wiles and guiles of the world, has been separated from his God!" (55)
- "I am profoundly convinced that one of the gravest perils which beset the ministry of this country is a restless scattering of energies over an amazing multiplicity of interests, which leaves no margin of time or of strength for receptive and absorbing communion with God" (60).
- "Of all things that need doing this need is supreme, to live in intimate fellowship with God" (61).
- "These sentences lift the veil upon a naked experience, and they expose the solemn fact that prayer is very costly, even at the expense of blood, and that churches which have praying ministers may not realise the travail by which the power is gained" (63). He continues to say that prayer is "a holy and a costly business."
- "Real prayer is the sharing of 'the travail which makes God's kingdom come.'" (66)
- "A calling without difficulty would not be worth our choice" (69).
- "The broader conception of the preacher's mission sometimes tends to lure him away to the circumference and suburbs of life, and to partially efface the vital, tremendous verities of redeeming grace" (80).
- "I believe it is possible for the sociologist to impair the evangelist in the preacher, and that a man can lose his power to unveil and display 'the unsearchable riches of Christ.'" (84).
- quotation from an unnamed source: "Against religious sensationalism, outre sayings, startling advertisements, profane words, irreverent prayers, the younger ministry must make an unflinching stand, for the sake of the Church and the world, for the sake of their profession and themselves" (88).
- "The way of irreverence will never bring us to the holy place. Let us be as familiar as you please, but let it bet he familiarity of simplicity, the simplicity which clothes itself in all things natural, chaste, and refined" (89).
- "Every apparently simple division in the sermon is like the turning of the telescope to some new galaxy of luminous wonders int he unfathomable sky" (93).
- "It is this note of vastitude, this everpresent sense and suggestion of the Infinite which I think we need to recover in our modern preaching" (98).
- "The world is tired of the mere official, and is hungry for the living man" (102).
- "And his peril is our peril, subtle and insistent, the peril of remoteness from central issues, the peril of making substances appear shadows and of making the holy splendours of grace seem like immaterial dreams" (104).
- "There is a world of difference between the authoritative and the dictatorial" (105).
- "If we speak dictatorially we shall be only combatants; if we speak authoritatively we shall be saviours" (106).
- "Preaching that costs nothing accomplishes nothing. If the study is a lounge the pulpit will be an impertinence" (114).
- "If we have no system we shall come to think we were working when we were only thinking about it, and that we were busy when we were only engaged. And, therefore, with all my heart I give this counsel - be as systematic as a business-man" (116).
- "The big outlook makes you lynx-eyed; telescopic range gives you also microscopic discernment" (119).
- "I would, therefore, urge upon all young preachers, amid all their other reading, to be always engaged in the comprehensive study of some one book in the Bible" (120).
- "We do not want mimic greatness, but great simplicity" (130).
- "Let us cultivate the strength of leisureliness, the long, strong processes of meditation, the self-control that refuses to be premature, the discipline that can patiently await maturity" (134).
- "The sermon must be a proclamation of truth as vitally related to living men and women. It must touch life where the touch is significant, both in its crises and its commonplaces" (136).
- "When you have discovered a truth, give it the noblest expression you can find. A fine thought can bear, indeed it demands, a fine expression" (142).
- If the sermon is a lamp, the prayer is the oil (paraphrase from 160-161).
- "Let us magnify the reading of the Word. Let us defend it with suitable conditions. Let us deliver it from all distractions. Let us keep the doors closed. Let no late-comes be loitering about the aisles while its message is being given. Let it be received in quietness, and it shall become manifest that God's word is still a lamp unto men's feet and a light unto their paths" (165).
- "A congregation is not supposed to be a crowd of isolated units, each one intent upon a personal and private quest. The ideal is not that each individual should hustle and bustle for himself, stretching out his hand to touch the hem of Christ's garment, but that each should be tenderly solicitous of every other, and particularly mindful of those with "lame hands," who are timid and despondent even in the very presence of the great Physician" (168).
- "Let the music be redeemed from being a human entertainment, and let it become a divine revelation. Let it never be an end in itself, but a means of grace, something to be forgotten in the dawning of something grander.... never a terminus, but always a thorough-fare" (170).
- "In all our preaching we must preach for verdicts" (175).
- "It is a blessed calling, frowning with difficulty, beset with disappointments, but its real rewards are 'sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.'" (176).
- "Now the difficulty of delivering a message is in inverse proportion to the size of the audience. The greater the audience the easier the task: with a diminished audience our difficulties are increased" (180).
- "The fear of a man is a much more subtle thing than the fear of men" (181).
- "But when we go to the individual, to minister in the things of the higher life, we go not merely as a voice but as an incarnation" (186).
- "There is a false modesty which makes us disloyal; there is a true humility which constrains us to make our boast in the Lord" (187).
- "Ever and everywhere, in the pulpit and out of it, amid a crowd, with a few, or holding fellowship with the individual, the true minister will guide himself with the self-arresting challenge, 'What am I after?' and he will continually refresh his vision and ambition by the contemplation of the apostolic aim: 'To present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.'" (189).
- "He was a child of lift, luminously human in the service of the divine - all the more human because he increasingly sought the glory of God" (190).
- "Through this variety and multiplicity of human needs we shall more gloriously apprehend the fulness and glory of our resources in grace" (202).
- "We need an experimental knowledge of God.... And to an experimental knowledge of God must be added an experimental knowledge of the King's highway" (203).
- "There is nothing more pernicious for a minister and for his people than for him to assume knowledge and certainties which he does not possess" (204).
- "Concerning the things we know not it is a minister's wisdom and piety to confess his ignorance, and to calmly and hopefully await the further unveiling" (205).
- "Our Master commands, and appropriates, and sanctifies business instincts and aptitudes int he ministry of the kingdom" (214).
- "I have one further word to say respecting our relations with those with whom we have to co-operate in managing the business of the church. See to it that you exalt the great and noble dignity of their office Hedge it about with reverence and prayerful regard. Let every man feel that no greater honour will ever come his way than his appointment to service in the Church of the Lord" (227).
- "Never move with small majorities. Never take an important step in church life is a large minority is opposed to your proposals" (220).
- "Avoid the notoriety and the impotence of always something something new" (233).
- "Never mistake the multiplication of organisation for the enlargement and enrichment of service" (237).
- "We have piles of organisation, but they lie prone upon the earth, incorporated death" (239).
- "Never become a victim to the standard of numbers" (240).
- "You never help the business by advertising yourself" (242).
- "Of one thing we can be perfectly sure: when we display ourselves we hide our Lord; when we blow our own trumpet men will not hear 'the still small voice of God.'" (243-244).
While the book is likely to be most helpful to Presbyterian, Reformed, and Elder-led Independent churches, the lessons gleaned from these lectures are applicable in any ecclesiastical context. Each of the lectures is very useful, insightful, and relevant to ministry in the Twenty-First Century. Jowett's outlook is preeminently spiritual, but not naively dismissive of the unavoidably important concerns of managing time, leading teams, and navigating votes in the polity of the church.
The language is at times a bit dated and flowery, but not at all unreadable. In fact, the writing makes for very pleasant reading. One demerit I would assign to the book is that Jowett does not give any discussion to lectio continua preaching (i.e., preaching sequentially through books of the Bible). Thus, the preacher is left to his own devices for choosing texts week to week. However, his call to give ample time for "marination" of the Word and of the sermon makes clear that however you choose your texts, you must choose well in advance of the date those texts are to be preached. Overall, I strongly recommend this book to new, veteran, and aspiring ministers.
Some great lines:
- "Now I hold with profound conviction that, before a man selects the Christian ministry as his vocation, he must have the assurance that the selection has been imperatively constrained by the eternal God" (6).
- "The singularity of our circumstances, and the awful singularity of our souls provide the medium through which we hear the voice of the Lord" (7).
- "I would affirm my own conviction that, in all genuine callings to the ministry, there is a sense of the divine initiative, a solemn communication of the divine will, a mysterious feeling of commission, which leaves a man no alternative, but which sets him in the road of this vocation bearing the ambassage of a servant and instrument of the eternal God" (13-14).
- "The assurance of being sent is the vital part of our commission.... The absence of the sense of vocation will eviscerate a man's responsibility, and will tend to secularise his ministry from end to end" (14).
- "This sense of great personal surprise in the glory of our vocation, while it will keep us humble, will also make us great. It will save us from becoming small officials in transient enterprises. It will make us truly big, and will, therefore, save us from spending our days in trifling" (18).
- "The mission of the apostle is determined by the mission of the Master, and that mission is declared to be one of wide and inclusive emancipation" (28).
- "But we are not only to preach the good news. We are also to incarnate it in vital service" (30).
- "A garden was the scene of the hardest fighting in the battle of Waterloo. Privilege never confers security: it rather provides the conditions of the fiercest strife" (40-41).
- "I suppose that one of the deepest characteristics of worldliness is an illicit spirit of compromise.... the worldly spirit of compromise is just the sacrifice of the moral ideal to the popular standard, and the subjection of personal conviction to current opinion.... Worldly compromise takes the medium-line between white and black, and wears an ambiguous grey. It is a partisan of neither midnight nor noon. It prefers the twilight, which is just a mixture of midnight and noon and is equally related to both. It is, therefore, a very specious presence, fraternising with all sorts and conditions of men, nodding acquaintedly to the saint, and intimately recognising the sinner, at home everywhere, mixing with the worshippers int he temple, or with the money-changers in the temple courts. Grey is a very useful colour; it is in keeping with a wedding or a funeral. And yet the word of Holy Writ is clear and decisive, raising the most exalted standard: "Keep thy garments always white" (49-51).
- "Of all pathetic sights on God's earth there is none more pathetic than a preacher of the Gospel who, by the benumbing power of custom, or by the wiles and guiles of the world, has been separated from his God!" (55)
- "I am profoundly convinced that one of the gravest perils which beset the ministry of this country is a restless scattering of energies over an amazing multiplicity of interests, which leaves no margin of time or of strength for receptive and absorbing communion with God" (60).
- "Of all things that need doing this need is supreme, to live in intimate fellowship with God" (61).
- "These sentences lift the veil upon a naked experience, and they expose the solemn fact that prayer is very costly, even at the expense of blood, and that churches which have praying ministers may not realise the travail by which the power is gained" (63). He continues to say that prayer is "a holy and a costly business."
- "Real prayer is the sharing of 'the travail which makes God's kingdom come.'" (66)
- "A calling without difficulty would not be worth our choice" (69).
- "The broader conception of the preacher's mission sometimes tends to lure him away to the circumference and suburbs of life, and to partially efface the vital, tremendous verities of redeeming grace" (80).
- "I believe it is possible for the sociologist to impair the evangelist in the preacher, and that a man can lose his power to unveil and display 'the unsearchable riches of Christ.'" (84).
- quotation from an unnamed source: "Against religious sensationalism, outre sayings, startling advertisements, profane words, irreverent prayers, the younger ministry must make an unflinching stand, for the sake of the Church and the world, for the sake of their profession and themselves" (88).
- "The way of irreverence will never bring us to the holy place. Let us be as familiar as you please, but let it bet he familiarity of simplicity, the simplicity which clothes itself in all things natural, chaste, and refined" (89).
- "Every apparently simple division in the sermon is like the turning of the telescope to some new galaxy of luminous wonders int he unfathomable sky" (93).
- "It is this note of vastitude, this everpresent sense and suggestion of the Infinite which I think we need to recover in our modern preaching" (98).
- "The world is tired of the mere official, and is hungry for the living man" (102).
- "And his peril is our peril, subtle and insistent, the peril of remoteness from central issues, the peril of making substances appear shadows and of making the holy splendours of grace seem like immaterial dreams" (104).
- "There is a world of difference between the authoritative and the dictatorial" (105).
- "If we speak dictatorially we shall be only combatants; if we speak authoritatively we shall be saviours" (106).
- "Preaching that costs nothing accomplishes nothing. If the study is a lounge the pulpit will be an impertinence" (114).
- "If we have no system we shall come to think we were working when we were only thinking about it, and that we were busy when we were only engaged. And, therefore, with all my heart I give this counsel - be as systematic as a business-man" (116).
- "The big outlook makes you lynx-eyed; telescopic range gives you also microscopic discernment" (119).
- "I would, therefore, urge upon all young preachers, amid all their other reading, to be always engaged in the comprehensive study of some one book in the Bible" (120).
- "We do not want mimic greatness, but great simplicity" (130).
- "Let us cultivate the strength of leisureliness, the long, strong processes of meditation, the self-control that refuses to be premature, the discipline that can patiently await maturity" (134).
- "The sermon must be a proclamation of truth as vitally related to living men and women. It must touch life where the touch is significant, both in its crises and its commonplaces" (136).
- "When you have discovered a truth, give it the noblest expression you can find. A fine thought can bear, indeed it demands, a fine expression" (142).
- If the sermon is a lamp, the prayer is the oil (paraphrase from 160-161).
- "Let us magnify the reading of the Word. Let us defend it with suitable conditions. Let us deliver it from all distractions. Let us keep the doors closed. Let no late-comes be loitering about the aisles while its message is being given. Let it be received in quietness, and it shall become manifest that God's word is still a lamp unto men's feet and a light unto their paths" (165).
- "A congregation is not supposed to be a crowd of isolated units, each one intent upon a personal and private quest. The ideal is not that each individual should hustle and bustle for himself, stretching out his hand to touch the hem of Christ's garment, but that each should be tenderly solicitous of every other, and particularly mindful of those with "lame hands," who are timid and despondent even in the very presence of the great Physician" (168).
- "Let the music be redeemed from being a human entertainment, and let it become a divine revelation. Let it never be an end in itself, but a means of grace, something to be forgotten in the dawning of something grander.... never a terminus, but always a thorough-fare" (170).
- "In all our preaching we must preach for verdicts" (175).
- "It is a blessed calling, frowning with difficulty, beset with disappointments, but its real rewards are 'sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.'" (176).
- "Now the difficulty of delivering a message is in inverse proportion to the size of the audience. The greater the audience the easier the task: with a diminished audience our difficulties are increased" (180).
- "The fear of a man is a much more subtle thing than the fear of men" (181).
- "But when we go to the individual, to minister in the things of the higher life, we go not merely as a voice but as an incarnation" (186).
- "There is a false modesty which makes us disloyal; there is a true humility which constrains us to make our boast in the Lord" (187).
- "Ever and everywhere, in the pulpit and out of it, amid a crowd, with a few, or holding fellowship with the individual, the true minister will guide himself with the self-arresting challenge, 'What am I after?' and he will continually refresh his vision and ambition by the contemplation of the apostolic aim: 'To present every man perfect in Christ Jesus.'" (189).
- "He was a child of lift, luminously human in the service of the divine - all the more human because he increasingly sought the glory of God" (190).
- "Through this variety and multiplicity of human needs we shall more gloriously apprehend the fulness and glory of our resources in grace" (202).
- "We need an experimental knowledge of God.... And to an experimental knowledge of God must be added an experimental knowledge of the King's highway" (203).
- "There is nothing more pernicious for a minister and for his people than for him to assume knowledge and certainties which he does not possess" (204).
- "Concerning the things we know not it is a minister's wisdom and piety to confess his ignorance, and to calmly and hopefully await the further unveiling" (205).
- "Our Master commands, and appropriates, and sanctifies business instincts and aptitudes int he ministry of the kingdom" (214).
- "I have one further word to say respecting our relations with those with whom we have to co-operate in managing the business of the church. See to it that you exalt the great and noble dignity of their office Hedge it about with reverence and prayerful regard. Let every man feel that no greater honour will ever come his way than his appointment to service in the Church of the Lord" (227).
- "Never move with small majorities. Never take an important step in church life is a large minority is opposed to your proposals" (220).
- "Avoid the notoriety and the impotence of always something something new" (233).
- "Never mistake the multiplication of organisation for the enlargement and enrichment of service" (237).
- "We have piles of organisation, but they lie prone upon the earth, incorporated death" (239).
- "Never become a victim to the standard of numbers" (240).
- "You never help the business by advertising yourself" (242).
- "Of one thing we can be perfectly sure: when we display ourselves we hide our Lord; when we blow our own trumpet men will not hear 'the still small voice of God.'" (243-244).
June 27, 2013
owett was an incredible preacher and this volume made up one of the famous Yale Lectures On Preaching (1911). When I first read this over 10 years ago, the realization came to me just how truly the ministry was work. Particularly, he laid bare the vital truth that preaching is work. Sermon preparation should be intense work. Anything less is unbecoming our great task.
His opening chapter puts the importance of our calling in its proper place. Next, he tackles the perils of the preacher. Listen carefully as he speaks of “deadening familiarity with the sublime.” I personally believe this is one of our greatest dangers. In the next chapter on “The Preacher’s Themes” with its emphasis on “feed my sheep”, he points out that we are both responsible and accountable for this very thing. How honest and careful we must be in this task.
When he discusses “The Preacher In His Study” he said things like: “We must make the businessman in our congregation feel that we are his peer in labor.” He in no way meant that in show, but in reality. When he gets done you want to roll up your sleeves and run into your study and get going.
He goes on to cover our work in the pulpit itself as well as in the homes of our people. When you read these classic volumes on the ministry, you will find an emphasis on being in the homes and lives of the people you pastor. The idea that all visiting should be about getting new people in the church would horrify the old masters who took seriously their role as shepherd.
This is a must-have volume!
His opening chapter puts the importance of our calling in its proper place. Next, he tackles the perils of the preacher. Listen carefully as he speaks of “deadening familiarity with the sublime.” I personally believe this is one of our greatest dangers. In the next chapter on “The Preacher’s Themes” with its emphasis on “feed my sheep”, he points out that we are both responsible and accountable for this very thing. How honest and careful we must be in this task.
When he discusses “The Preacher In His Study” he said things like: “We must make the businessman in our congregation feel that we are his peer in labor.” He in no way meant that in show, but in reality. When he gets done you want to roll up your sleeves and run into your study and get going.
He goes on to cover our work in the pulpit itself as well as in the homes of our people. When you read these classic volumes on the ministry, you will find an emphasis on being in the homes and lives of the people you pastor. The idea that all visiting should be about getting new people in the church would horrify the old masters who took seriously their role as shepherd.
This is a must-have volume!
November 27, 2019
I bought this book in 1981 and read it then. I have read bits and pieces of it again, but this is the first time that I read through the whole thing again. I did this looking for a quote that I thought came from Jowett, but turns out Jowett was quoting Joseph Parker, at least in part. The quote I’m looking for was, “Preach to the brokenhearted, there is one on every pew. You will never lack for a congregation.” Maybe some day I will find the correct attribution.
This book was a reprint of the Yale Lectures on Preaching for 1911. It is interesting because Jowett is something of a bridge from the Victorian era into the 20th century. He mentions for instance being struck by how Spurgeon read scripture and how Dale or Parker approached things. It was well worth reading if only for those asides, but there is much practical wisdom here as well. He doesn’t say anything new, though maybe it was new in his day. Still, there is solid advice here for any novice pastor. I think the chapter that I found the best was “The Preacher as a Man of Affairs.” It was about properly relating to the men both of the church and the community. I could have done better in that area.
This is the sort of book that is called a “classic.” I think it was Mark Twain who said, “A classic is a book everyone talks about that no one has read.” Well, I can say that I have now read and digested this book twice. I am sure it would bear a further reading again at some point next year.
May 21, 2016
A must read for any preacher. Written 100 years ago, but just as applicable and challenging today. Jowett's experience and heartbeat for the craft and art of preaching come through on every page.
May 18, 2023
Despite the fact that this is an old work, it is surprisingly relevant to ministry today. Times change and some of what is here needs to be adapted to our world, but some of the character of ministry to people remains the same. Jowett lads his readers with the skill of an experienced pastor. This work can be found for Kindle at a very good price.
May 17, 2016
Absolutely 5 stars, great all around. Life changing.
March 1, 2012
Also read 5/11/04
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews