Preaching in an Age of Distraction Quotes

“As he watched his flocks by Mount Horeb, he saw a bush that was blazing without being consumed. He said, “Let me check out this amazing sight and find out why the bush isn’t burning up.” And then, the telling sentence: “When the LORD saw that he was coming to look, God called to him out of the bush” (Ex 3:3-4). I think it”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“But I want to be sure they know the difference between fluff and substance, between cleverness and excellence. Now and again I see a restaurant try to lift itself to success by reinventing its ambiance, introducing a new menu and rearranging its tables when quite clearly what it needs is better food. Often churches and preachers follow the same course. No wonder such efforts end in disappointment.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“It’s easier to gossip than to think, easier to rant than to reason, easier to be confirmed in our prejudices than to listen to another person’s point of view. And”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“But what time do they leave for original thinking? Or for examining one’s own soul? And to what degree do these matters frustrate the brain’s ability to focus, as Paul put it, on the good, the beautiful, and the true, rather than be controlled by the transient, the trivial and the traumatic? And”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“Haggai preached to a people with whom we might secretly sympathize: they were so preoccupied with paneling their own homes that they forgot that the house of the Lord was in ruins. All of which is to say, distraction comes easily, in many forms, and it happens to the nicest people.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction

“In Samuel’s day the people were distracted by the form of government they saw in their neighboring nations and decided that they, too, should have a king. In generation after generation the perceived prosperity of such neighbors distracted Israel from the Lord God, making them wonder if Baal might be better. Thus envy lent its power to distraction.”
― J. Ellsworth Kalas, Preaching in an Age of Distraction