PREACHING

'To preach the Word of God well, one must already have cultivated, at a minimum, three sensibilities: the sensibility of the close reading of texts, the sensibility of composed communication, and the sensibility of the significant.'

T David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p.106.

PREACHING

'I believe that as people's confidence in Christ grows, they do, ordinarily and inevitably, bear fruit that accords with faith. Thus, there is no need for some trade-off here, or some alleged dichotomy suggesting that we need to preach morality if we are to have morality. No; preach Christ, and you will have morality. Fill the sails of your hearers' souls with the wind of confidence in the Redeemer, and they will trust in him as their Sanctifier, and long to see his fruit in their lives. Fill their minds and imaginations with a vision of the loveliness and perfection of Christ in his person, and the flock will long to be like him. Impress upon their weak and wavering hearts the utter competence of the mediation of the One who ever lives to make intercession for them, and they will long to serve and comfort others, even as Christ has served and comforted them.'

T David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p.78.

POETRY

'When the poet stares at that which the rest of us merely glance at, he invites us to take a longer look along with him. It is precisely this longer look that is necessary to cultivate a sensibility for the significant.'

T David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p.53.

PREACHING

'Exposition is...virtually a lost art. We don't really read texts to enter the world of the author and perceive reality through his vantage point; we read texts to see how they confirm what we already believe about reality. Texts are mirrors that reflect ourselves; they are not pictures that are appreciated in themselves. This explains, in part, the phenomenon that many Christians will read their Bibles daily for fifty years, and not have one opinion that changes in the entire fifty-year span. Texts do not change or alter or skew their perspective; texts do not move them or shape them; they merely use them as mnemonic devices to recall what they already know. They have no capacity to expound a text, or describe what another has said and how he has said it; and they retain only the capacity to notice when something in the language of another appears to concur with their own opinions. To employ C.S.Lewis's way of stating the matter, they "use" texts but do not "receive" them.'

T David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p.50.

PREACHING

'If the patients of a given hospital's surgeons continue to die, we could, I suppose, abandon the scalpel. We might also consider employing it more skillfully. My challenge to the contemporaneists and emergents is this: Show me a church where the preaching is good, and yet the church is moribund. I've never seen such a church. The moribund churches I've seen have been mispreached to death. But the fact that large segments of the church are abandoning anything like traditional preaching altogether establishes my point: that Johnny can't preach. He preaches so poorly that even believers have come to disbelieve that God has chosen through the folly of preaching to save those who believe (I Cor. I:21).'

T David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p.33.

PREACHING

'...sermon-length is not measured in minutes; it is measured in minutes-beyond-interest, in the amount of time the minister continues to preach after he has lost the interest of his hearers (assuming he ever kindled it in the first place.'

T David Gordon, Johnny Can't Preach, p.31.

PREACHING

'I've really desired something fairly simple for my family: to be able to talk intelligently about the sermon on Sunday afternoon or throughout the week. And to do this, all I really desire is the ability to answer three questions: What was the point or thrust of the sermon? Was this point adequately established in the text that was read? Were the applications legitimate appilcations of the point, from which we can have further fruitful conversation about other possible applications?'

T David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach, p.19.

MINISTERS

'...ministers as a group are more resistant to annual review and constructive criticism than any other profession of my acquaintance...'

T David Gordon, Why Johnny Can't Preach: The Media Have Shaped the Messangers, p.15.