A Quote by Marilynne Robinson
The attention of the congregation is a major part of the attention that the pastor gives to his or her utterance. It's very exceptional. I don't know anyone who doesn't enjoy a good sermon. People who are completely nonreligious know a good sermon when they hear one.
Related Quotes
No one should pay attention to a man delivering a lecture or a sermon on his "philosophy of life" until we know exactly how he treats his wife, his children, his neighbors, his friends, his subordinates and his enemies.
An old minister explained the smudges on his sermon outlines by saying they were caused by sweat and tears. And without those two marks, a sermon is not a sermon.
I know just as well what to teach this people and just what to say to them and what to do in order to bring them into the celestial kingdom...I have never yet preached a sermon and sent it out to the children of men, that they may not call Scripture. Let me have the privilege of correcting a sermon, and it is as good Scripture as they deserve. The people have the oracles of God continually.
A good novelist pays attention to his characters. A good biographer pays attention to the documents before her. A good critic pays close attention to the thing she's brought to evaluate.
A sermon is no sermon in which I cannot hear the heartbeat.
A sermon is a valuable thing now and so impressive when you do hear a good one - and there is a lot of failure in the attempt; it's a difficult form - is because it's so seldom true now that you hear people speak under circumstances where they assume they are obliged to speak seriously and in good faith, and the people who hear them are assumed to be listening seriously and in good faith.
The sermon which I write inquisitive of truth is good a year after, but that which is written because a sermon must be writ is musty the next day.
I went to a Presbyterian college, you know, I was in... all the way, and so I remember doing my first sermon when I was 17, I was in high school. It wasn't a full twenty-five minute sermon, but for like ten minutes I got up and they let me do that, and it was on faith.
What's interesting to me is the fact that creatively, I can do anything now and people will pay attention, and if I suck, hopefully they will stop paying attention very quickly, but if I'm good, then I have my foot in the door, and people have paid attention, and I did a good job, and people are like, 'Oh, wow!'
The test of a preacher is that his congregation goes away saying, not "What a lovely sermon!" but "I will do something."
The best sermon is preached by the minister who has a sermon to preach and not by the man who has to preach a sermon.
Sometimes during the day, I consciously focus on some ordinary object and allow myself a momentary "paying-attention." This paying-attention gives meaning to my life. I don't know who it was, but someone said that careful attention paid to anything is a window into the universe. Pausing to think this way, even for a brief moment, is very important. It gives quality to my day.
While the difference between a bad sermon and a good sermon is mainly the responsibility of the preacher, the difference between good preaching and great preaching lies mainly in the work of the Holy Spirit. . . . We should do the work it takes to make our communication good and leave it up to God how and how often he makes it great for the listener.
Sometimes I go back and listen to the very first day I went to church. I listen to that sermon all the time, because that was the sermon that was life changing for me.
At the time, I didn't know what forgiveness meant. I wouldn't really know what forgiveness meant for another year, until my pastor, Rick McKinley, happened to spell it out in a sermon. He said that when you forgive, you bear the burden somebody has given you without holding them accountable.
The Sermon on the Mount is not a set of principles to be obeyed apart from identification with Jesus Christ. The Sermon on the Mount is a statement of the life we will live when the Holy Spirit is getting his way with us.
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