Although raised on the farm - my grandfather was an unsuccessful fundamentalist preacher turned farmer - my father and his brother both became professors.
English is the perfect language for preachers because it allows you to talk until you think of what to say.
Your task, O preacher, is to make sure that you are faithful to the text, that you are faithful to the proclamation of that gospel, that you are faithful to set forth the whole counsel of God, and then step back and let it happen.
I'm not a preacher, and I'm certainly not a good example, but I have my own feelings about God. I'm kind of a nature guy. My cathedral is forests, or the prairies, or the beach.
If a preacher is cultured, gentle, earnest, intellectual, and broadly tolerant, the sheep of God run after him. He, of course, speaks beautifully about Christ, and uses the old words redemption, the cross, even sacrifice and atonement-but what is his Gospel? That is the crucial question. Is salvation, perfect, entire, eternal,-justification, sanctification, glory,-the alone work of Christ, and the free gift of God to faith alone?
The inspiration of a single book has made preachers, poets, philosophers, authors, and statesmen. On the other hand, the demoralization of a single book has sometimes made infidels, profligates, and criminals.
By such literalism, fundamentalism, religions betrayed the best intentions of their founders. Reducing thought to formula, replacing choice by obedience, these preachers turned the living word into dead law.
We have preachers and savants who dilate endlessly on the sanctity of family and childhood but who tolerate a system in which a casual observer can correlate a child's social origin with its physical well-being.
I would not have preachers torment their hearers, and detain them with long and tedious preaching.
There are but few talents requisite to become a popular preacher; for the people are easily pleased if they perceive any endeavors in the orator to please them. The meanest qualifications will work this effect if the preacher sincerely sets about it.
Don't take our word for it. Read the Bible itself. Read the statements of preachers. And you will understand that God is the most desperate character, the worst villain in all fiction.
Jesus was a storyteller with amazing messages wrapped around them. What we want to do is get back to that. I'm not a preacher. I'm not the person on Sunday. I am the person that is trying to figure out life and wants to be pushed to be a better person. The first one that we're in production with right now is called Nouvelle Vie.
It is remarkable that among all the preachers there are so few moral teachers. The prophets are employed in excusing the ways of men.
Were I a preacher, I should preach above all other things, the practice of the Presence of God.... Those who have the gale of the Holy Spirit go forward, even in sleep.
A good many preachers say I am lowering the pulpit. I am glad I am. I am trying to get it down to the level of men's hearts. If I wanted to hit Chicago I would not put the cannon on the top of this building and fire into the air. Too many preachers fire into the air.
I once heard a preacher who sorely tempted me to go to church no more.
Bless people when they revile you. Think how much good they are doing by helping to stamp out the false ego. Hold fast to the real Self. Think only pure thoughts, and you will accomplish more than a regiment of mere preachers. Out of purity and silence comes the word of power.
Why should the residence of a preacher be untaxed? Useful citizens must pay taxes on their homes. Yet the Preacher - actually and notoriously the least useful member of the community - lives in a tax-free dwelling.
Preacher is a great frustration because I thought it was done, and then it got put in the press notes for the [Frankenweenie] junket and everyone started asking about it again. Preacher could be filmed, at any point. It's sort of ready to go, but it's lacking a green light. At some point, that green light might come, but it may never come. So, I have to allow for the fact that I've done everything I can, and whatever happens with it, happens with it.
The preachers and lecturers deal with men of straw, as they are men of straw themselves. Why, a free-spoken man, of sound lungs, cannot draw a long breath without causing your rotten institutions to come toppling down by the vacuum he makes. Your church is a baby-house made of blocks, and so of the state....The church, the state, the school, the magazine, think they are liberal and free! It is the freedom of a prison-yard.
You may drive a dog off the King's armchair, and it will climb into the preacher's pulpit; he views the world unmoved, unembarrassed, unabashed.
In church, sacred music would make believers of us all — but preachers can be counted on to restore the balance.
He that has but one word of God before him, and out of that word cannot make a sermon, can never be a preacher.
Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal; The Mayfly is torn by the swallow, the sparrow speared by the shrike, And the whole little wood where I sit is a world of plunder and prey.
I've got a sister who races motorcycles and another sister who's a Holy Roller preacher.
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