I love going to black churches, and I love some of these black preachers. The best preacher I ever saw in my life was a 93-year-old in a black church in Hamilton, Virginia. What a preacher!
A young preacher, a new hell.
Most churches are run by preachers who went to seminaries, who decided to be preachers when they were 18, 19, 20 years old. These preachers never met a payroll. They don't know how the world works.
All criminals turn preachers under the gallows.
There are three things that can destroy a preacher, the glory, the gold, and the girls.
Preaching is effective as long as the preacher expects something to happen-not because of the sermon, not even because of the preacher, but because of God.
The challenge was that it was harder to be subtle than strident.
Preacher: See here, you can't turn all these people out into the night. It is inhuman, brother. Inhuman! The Stranger: I'm not your brother. Preacher: We are all brothers in the eyes of God. The Stranger: All these people, are they your sisters and b...
The worst behaved students turn out to be the most pious preachers.
The preacher must be like a chicken who always has an egg in reserve.
The character as well as the fortunes of the gospel is committed to the preacher. He makes or mars the message from God to man. The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows.
People are drawn to preaching that is passionate and offered with conviction. Passion comes when the preacher has spent significant time with the text, and when God has spoken through the text in a way that addresses the preacher's life first.
(Billy) Graham went through passages of hypochondria and his closest friends had to assure him that he was not about to die.
One thing that helps to stretch me is to listen to other preacher's sermons. Every year, I will listen to at least ten other preachers, both to hear God speak to me, and also to evaluate their preaching to see what I can learn and how I can improve m...
Casy: Tom, you gotta learn like I'm learnin'. I don't know it right yet myself. That's why I can't ever be a preacher again. Preachers gotta know. I don't know. I gotta ask.
Faith is a cop-out. If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits. It is intellectual bankruptcy.
Paul Edgecomb: [about Coffey's upcoming execution] Now how about a preacher? Someone to say a little prayer with? John Coffey: Don't want no preacher. You can say a prayer if you like. Paul Edgecomb: Me? I suppose I could if it came to that.
You can cite a hundred references to show that the biblical God is a bloodthirsty tyrant, but if they can dig up two or three verses that say 'God is love,' they will claim that are taking things out of context!
Some Christians worried about a faith that was so embracing as to be meaningless, that exalted not the Almighty so much as the American way of life. When civil religion bleached the challenge from faith and left behind a watery patriotism, there was ...
Just as people can watch spellbound a circus artist tumbling through the air in a phosphorized costume, so they can listen to a preacher who uses the Word of God to draw attention to himself. But a sensational preacher stimulates the senses and leave...
I was born in the summer of 1970, the last of five boys stretched over eight years. My parents were a struggling young couple who had been married one afternoon under a shade tree by a preacher without a church. No guests or fancy dress, just the two...
