Tags: Between Two Worlds

5 Apr 2010, Comments (1)

The Music of Preaching

Author: Elijah Layfield

“A concert audience does not come to watch the conductor but to listen to the music; a church congregation should not come to watch or hear the preacher, but to listen to God’s Word. The function of the conductor is to draw the music out of the choir or orchestra, in order that the audience may enjoy the music; the function of the preacher is to draw the Word of God out of the Bible, in order that the congregation may receive with joy. The conductor must not come between the music and the audience; the preacher must not come between the Lord and his people. We need the humility to get out of the way. Then the Lord will speak, and the people will hear him; the Lord will manifest himself, and the people will see him; and, hearing his voice and seeing his glory, the people will fall down and worship him” (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 328).

A couple of thoughts about this quote. First, it should make us a little uncomfortable when Stott says, “the preacher is to draw the Word of God out of the Bible.” But, I don’t think he means to say that you have to fish in the Bible to find the Word of God, or that the Bible doesn’t become the Word of God until preached. Instead, what I think he means is that the preacher is to take words in a Bible and and lift them from the page into the ears of the people. They are to hear the music that the preacher hears in the text.

I really like John Piper’s definition for preaching.  He calls it expository exultation. As the preacher explains the text of Scripture, he exults (worships) God. The people join with the preaching in worshiping God over the text of Scripture.

3 Apr 2010, Comments (3)

The Hush that Is Longed for

Author: Elijah Layfield

“The most privileged and moving experience a preacher can ever have is when, in the middle of the sermon, a strange hush descends upon the congregation. The sleepers have woken up, the coughers have stopped coughing, and the fidgeters are sitting still. No eyes or minds are wandering. Everybody is attending, though not to the preacher. For the preacher is forgotten, and the people are face to face with the living God, listening to his still, small voice” (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 326).

2 Apr 2010, Comments Off

Christ and Cleverness

Author: Elijah Layfield

In my preaching class with Pastor John, one of the books that we used was Stott’s Between Two Worlds.  And, the quote that John said that had impacted him incredibly was this one: “No man can give the impression that he himself is clever and that Christ is mighty to save” (qtd. in Between Two Worlds, 325).

24 Mar 2010, Comments Off

The Perils of the Pulpit

Author: Elijah Layfield

“Truth to tell, the pulpit is a perilous place for any child of Adam to occupy. It is ‘high and lifted up’, and thus enjoys a prominence which should be restricted to Yahweh’s throne. (Isa. 6.1) We stand there in solitude, while the eyes of all are upon us. We hold forth in monologue, while all sit still, silent and subdued. Who can endure such public exposure and remain unscathed by vanity? Pride is without doubt the chief occupational hazard of the preacher. It has ruined many, and deprived their ministry of power” (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 320).

13 Mar 2010, Comments Off

A Preacher’s Courage: No Flatterer of Flesh

Author: Elijah Layfield

“No Christian preacher can have shown more courage…than the Scottish reformer, John Knox. His contemporaries described him as little and frail, but he had a fiery disposition and a vehement way of speaking. After his return to Scotland in 1559 from his exile in Geneva, his audacious biblical preaching put new heart into the Scots who longed for deliverance from the Catholic French and for a reformed kirk. As Randolph, the English envoy, said in a dispatch to Queen Elizabeth, ‘the voice of one man is able in one hour to put more life in us than 500 trumpets continually blustering in our ears’ (Elizabeth Whitley, Plain Mr. Knox, 149.). When Mary Queen of Scots was contemplating marriage with Don Carlos, son and heir of King Philip of Spain, which would have brought the Pope’s power (political as well as religious) and the Spanish Inquisition to Scotland, Knox preached publicly against it. Such a union, he cried, would ‘banish Christ Jesus from this realm’. the Queen was deeply offended, sent for him, protested, burst into tears, and vowed that she would get her revenge. Knox replied,

Without [sc. outside]the preaching place, Madam, I think few have occasion to be offended at me; but there, Madam, I am not master of myself, but maun [sc. must] obey him who commands me to speak plain, and to flatter no flesh upon the face of the earth.

Knox died in 1572, and was buried with national mourning in the churchyard behind St. Giles’, Edinburgh. the Regent (the Earl of Morton) said at his grave, ‘Here lies one who never feared the face of man.’ (Whitley, 199, 235).” (John Stott, Between Two World, 304-5).

10 Mar 2010, Comments Off

The Sermon of a Lifetime

Author: Elijah Layfield

“If the process of preparing sermons is so elaborate, I have sometimes been asked by ordination candidates and young preachers, how long does it take to prepare a single sermon? The question has always flummoxed me, because it is impossible to give a simple reply. Probably the best answer is ‘your whole lifetime’, because every sermon is, in a way, a distillation of everything one has learned hitherto; and is a reflection of the kind of person one has become over the years” (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 258).

2 Feb 2010, Comments Off

The Right Word and the Nearly Right

Author: Elijah Layfield

“‘The difference between the right word and the nearly right,’ commented Mark Twain, ‘is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.’” (qtd in Between Two Worlds, John Stott, 234).

29 Jan 2010, Comments Off

Thank God for Absent-Mindedness

Author: Elijah Layfield

“The eccentric digressions of an absent-minded professor constitute one of the chief delights of listening to him; otherwise one might just as well cull his material direct from books” (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 225).

26 Jan 2010, Comments Off

When the Fog Lifts, Pounce!

Author: Elijah Layfield

“I wonder if your experience resembles mine. My mind is usually enveloped in a fairly thick fog, so that I do not see things at all plainly. Occasionally, however, the fog lifts, the light breaks through, and I see with limpid clarity. These fleeting moments of illumination need to be seized. We have to learn to surrender ourselves to them, before the fog descends again. Such times often come at awkward moments, in the middle of the night, when somebody else is preaching or lecturing, while we are reading a book, even during a conversation. However inconvenient the time, we cannot afford to lose it. In order to take fullest advantage of it, we may need to write fast and furiously” (Stott, John, Between Two Worlds, 219).

19 Jan 2010, Comments Off

The Manipulation of the American People

Author: Elijah Layfield

In his famous book The Hidden Persuaders, subtitled ‘an introduction into the techniques of mass-persuasion through the unconscious’, the author and the journalist Vance Packard described Americans as ‘the most manipulated people outside the Iron Curtain’ (Packard, 9) because of their constant exposure to ‘mental-depth advertizers’ or ‘depth persuaders’. Using the findings of ‘motivational research’ (experiments relating to our subconscious reasons for making choices), he argues, merchandizers, industrialists and others are systematically exploiting our hidden frailties (e.g. our vanity, ambition, fears and sexual desires). The book is amusing. But it is also disturbing, because it uncovers the possibilities of persuading people beneath the surface of their conscious mind. ‘Large-scale efforts are being made,’ Vance Packard writes, ‘often with impressive success, to channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences.’ (Packard, 11) Whether we are thought of as ‘consumers’ (Packard, Part 1) or as ‘citizens’, (Packard, Part 2) the hidden persuaders are at work, trying ‘to invade the privacy of our minds’ (Packard, 216),” (John Stott, Between Two Worlds, 174).

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