I am still working my way through Brian Borgman’s excellent ‘My Heart for thy Cause’, on Al Martin’s theology of preaching. A few days ago I found this great exhortation to study, in which he quotes Thomas Murphy:
“The pastor must study, study, study or he will not grow, or even live, as a true workman for Christ. The want of this is the cause of innumerable failures which are seen in the ministry. Here is a young man who enters the office with fine talents, a fair amount of preparation, an encouraging field of labour and every prospect of success. But the promise is not fulfilled. He does not come up to the expectations which were excited, and which he himself entertained. On the contrary, his preaching decreases in interest, his congregation falls away and his whole work declines. The reason is that he has not kept his mind polished up by constant study, or continued to replenish it with the rich stores of thought which he might have gathered from other sources. This process is well described by Vinet in his admirable work: ‘We must study to excite and enrich our own mind by means of other men’s. Those who do not study find their talents enfeebled and their minds become decrepit before the time. In respect to preaching, experience demonstrates this most abundantly. Whence comes it that preachers much admired in the beginning decline so rapidly or remain so much below the hopes to which they had given birth? Most frequently it is because they did not continue their studies.’
(Thomas Murphy 1877 Pastoral Theology Audubon, NJ Old Paths Publications pp37-39 )
A Prayer of George Whitefield:
““Yea…that we shall see the great Head of the Church once more . . . raise up unto Himself certain young men whom He may use in this glorious employ. And what manner of men will they be? Men mighty in the Scriptures, their lives dominated by a sense of the greatness, the majesty and holiness of God, and their minds and hearts aglow with the great truths of the doctrines of grace. They will be men who have learned what it is to die to self, to human aims and personal ambitions; men who are willing to be ‘fools for Christ’s sake’, who will bear reproach and falsehood, who will labor and suffer, and whose supreme desire will be, not to gain earth’s accolades, but to win the Master’s approbation when they appear before His awesome judgment seat. They will be men who will preach with broken hearts and tear-filled eyes, and upon whose ministries God will grant an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit, and who will witness ‘signs and wonders following’ in the transformation of multitudes of human lives.”
