Since early April, the 1,000-member-strong Shouwang church has held services outdoors rain or shine, and eight of its pastors are under house arrest. The government, citing the church's lack of registration, pressured the church's landlord to cancel Shouwang's lease.

At the same time, there has been a surge across China in the availability of popular Christian titles by authors Rick Warren, Gary Chapman, and Beth Moore, as well as classic titles by C. S. Lewis and others. Statistics on Christian book sales are unreliable in China. But figures on Bible publishing provide one reliable snapshot of the phenomenal growth. Amity, the official publisher of Bibles inside China, increased Bible printing each year from 1998 (2.8 million) to 2008 (10 million). Other than Bibles, top sellers are Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life, with more than 100,000 in print, and the Francine Rivers novel Redeeming Love.

A big reason for this growth is the 2008 debut of the online-only retailer Baojiayin (GoodNewsinChina.com). For decades, the government heavily limited the retail sales of Christian literature. But all that changed with Baojiayin.

For instance, Paul Douglas, an Australian medical doctor living in China, uses Baojiayin to send about $140 worth of books to local churches, creating an instant lending library. Douglas can donate sets of theological commentaries, marital advice books, and biographies of Christian leaders.

In addition, Douglas, ordering through another faith-and-values bookseller, ZDL Books, buys titles such as John Stott's The Message of Romans commentary and DVDS such as June Hunt's Hope for the Heart counseling series for individuals, especially graduating seminarians. "I choose the books, plug in the person's address, and they are typically sent out within a day," Douglas says.

Another new reality is driving sales: the government has given its official blessing to direct-to-consumer book sales. While book content is still under stringent review, communist leaders increasingly view religious literature as a positive influence on Chinese citizens.

Baojiayin is unique in selling exclusively Christian titles. Beyond books, Baojiayin sells everything from Cru's Jesus film to the Christian Broadcasting Network's Superbook DVDS. "We're seeing things approved that five years ago no one would have thought would ever be approved," says a Baojiayin employee.

In Beijing, a university professor (who asked not to be named) says he buys hundreds of books each year for students and friends. The professor's wife likewise gives away Sally Clarkson's books on motherhood, Josh McDowell's books on parenting, and Patricia St. John's children's books.

The professor, who moved to China six years ago, frequently gives The Good Life by Charles Colson and The Call by Os Guinness as gifts to those enrolled in his time-management course. "It's important for students to know why they are at university, beyond trying to become financially successful," the professor says.

Fenggang Yang, director of the Center on Religion and Chinese Society at Purdue University in Indiana, says interest in Christianity is a byproduct of economic reforms initiated by then-Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping in 1978. "There has been an increased interest in all religious publications, not just Christian, especially among college-educated, urban young professionals," Yang says.

Paul Peng works for Enoch Publishing, the oldest and one of the largest publishers of books with Christian values. Some 30 percent of Enoch's consumers aren't Christians. "We have several channels to sell books: bookstores opened by Christians, general bookstores, online bookstores, and directly to some churches."

ZDL retails both in brick-and-mortar outlets and online. "When our company started eight years ago, there was basically no distribution of legal Christian products," says David Wright, general manager of ZDL. "Demand has increased significantly year after year."

All books for sale must have a Chinese International Standard Book Number (ISBN). ZDL is engaged in this process, which involves negotiating with government censors. ZDL also employs a theologically trained Christian editorial team to ensure quality translations.

The government sometimes deems works worthy for their social rather than spiritual value, allowing publishers to avoid a more rigorous review process. For example, John Maxwell's books on leadership and James Dobson's volumes are not necessarily considered religious. Liu Dong, a Shanghai-based reporter for the English-language Global Times, notes that books by John Piper and Philip Yancey are available in secular bookstores because they are considered intellectual, not religious.

Paul Hattaway, founder of missions group Asia Harvest, says he has not smuggled anything into China for more than a decade. His organization's materials are printed inside the nation, he says. "China's great need is for God's Word and solid teaching. How it gets into their hands is not important," says Hattaway, author of Operation China. ZDL's Wright says that as persecution has become less of a reality, Christians in China are tempted toward materialism. Nevertheless, he says, a rising number of books are being written by native Chinese theologians and teachers who have persisted through difficult times. Other groups are starting new relationships inside China. David C. Cook, based in Colorado Springs, formed a partnership with the China State Administration of Religious Affairs (SARA) and the China Christian Council (CCC). Following six years of effort, Cook signed a formal publishing agreement in 2009. The company expects to publish, among other works, a new children's Bible storybook and Warren Wiersbe's Bible commentary series.

Cris Doornbos, Cook's chief executive, says the company has influence over the editorial process and is hiring Chinese Christians on a work-for-hire basis in China to do the translation, which is then reviewed by a third party. The books are available to even low-income households because state-owned companies and the Three-Self Patriotic Movement (China's official church system) are the distribution channels.

Doornbos says, "By working with SARA and CCC, all these resources will then be legal in China and have a much broader reach than they do today."

Even after Christian books are printed, much of the reading public is unaware exactly where they can obtain certain volumes. Some titles are available only through the Three-Self channels. A buyer seeking a particular book not sold in bookstores would have to know which Three-Self church carries it—and where that church is located.

Purdue's Yang says the number of legal titles available still only totals 1,300, and numerous publishing restrictions remain, especially on works that broach church-state relations or delve into exploring Christianity in China. Another drawback is that many valuable resources are no longer available because press runs are often under 10,000 copies.

While the number of Chinese storefront booksellers with a Christian worldview has mushroomed from 2 to 250 in the past decade, that total has remained stagnant the past four years. But Yang sees small Christian bookstores serving a niche that online companies cannot: being a physical connection point for new Christians to network with each other. However, bookstores do not exist in China's rural areas. Rural residents are for the most part literate, but they usually are poor and unable to afford materials.

Doornbos, who notes that the Chinese government has not rejected any titles proposed by Cook, says, "Now is our opportunity to make sure we give the church in China all the Christian resources that we can."

John W. Kennedy is a

Christianity Today

Copyright © 2012 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Previous Christianity Today articles about China include:

Interview: Chai Ling on Saving China's Daughters | Each day in China, 35,000 baby girls are aborted and 500 women commit suicide. One freedom fighter won't take it any longer. (October 4, 2011)

Shouwang Showdown, 15 Weeks In | Members of one of China's largest house churches continue to meet amid arrests. (July 20, 2011)

Official Chinese Newspaper Publishes Call to Change Religion Policy | Religious freedom experts are surprised and cautiously optimistic, but disagree on proposal. (December 8, 2009)

China's 'Conscience' Missing in Action | Top Christian lawyer Gao Zhisheng vanishes as government stifles dissent. (October 23, 2009)

Smuggling Debate | Ministries disagree on how best to provide Bibles to Chinese Christians. (January 27, 2009)

The post Discipling the Dragon: Christian Publishing Finds Success in China appeared first on Christianity Today.

The service at the National Cathedral right after the September 11 attacks presented perhaps the greatest pressure of all. The nation was in deep shock; the entire world would be watching on television. Billy’s words and tone, both for Americans and for people of all other nations, had to be just right.

That would be challenge enough for a person at the height of his strength. But it was a frail octogenarian with serious health problems who mounted the platform with steady purpose and told the nation, “God is our refuge and strength; an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea.”

With inner strength, Billy declared, “You may be angry at God. I want to assure you that God understands these feelings you have. But God can be trusted, even when life seems at its darkest. From the cross, God declares, ‘I love you. I know the heartaches and the sorrows and the pains you feel, but I love you.’

“This has been a terrible week with many tears. But also it’s been a week of great faith. … And [remember] the words of that familiar hymn that Andrew Young quoted, ‘Fear not, I am with thee. Oh, be not dismayed, for I am thy God and will still give thee aid.'”

Despite his frailty, Billy’s presence, poise, and message touched the sorrows and fears and brought hope and a deeply Christian response to his nation and to the world. He found the inner resources to rise to that momentous occasion.

Even in the latter years of his eventful ministry, Billy continued in the nitty-gritty of leading his organization; continued to sweat over the funding of three events in Amsterdam that brought together 10,000 itinerant evangelists, 70 percent of them from poor, developing countries; continued to appear on news shows to represent the gospel; continued to minister to every U.S. president of his era. In the phrase voiced by President George W. Bush when Billy was hospitalized and unable to attend the funeral of Ronald Reagan, Billy was “the nation’s pastor”—but he was also the leader of an organization and of a vast movement.

How could he maintain the strength and sense of commitment to do all that for more than sixty years?

Billy has not been impervious to the pressures; his body and psyche have paid a steep price. But he has taken his own advice, so often expressed in his newspaper columns, books, and articles. He has continually plugged himself into the spiritual and psychological voltage that has made this half-century saga possible.

From the beginning, his spiritual power has come from prayer and the Bible. His colleague, T. W. Wilson, called him “the most completely disciplined person I have ever known.” The discipline started around 7:00 a.m. each day, when he would read five psalms and one chapter of Proverbs. He started there because, as he often said, the psalms showed him how to relate to God, while Proverbs taught him how to relate to people. After breakfast he would pray and study more Scripture. Even under the pressure of travel schedules moving him from city to city, often through many time zones, he strove to study and pray each morning.

Some close to Billy describe him as more adaptive to circumstances in fitting in study and prayer, but all emphasize his spending large amounts of time connecting with his source of wisdom, cleansing, and power.

As Billy said, “Unless the soul is fed and exercised daily, it becomes weak and shriveled. It remains discontented, confused, restless.”

Even in his early days of youthful vigor, he was intensely aware of his need for that power.

We talked about that with Billy’s younger brother, Melvin Graham, shortly before Melvin passed away.

When Billy left the family farm at age 20, Melvin had stayed on—back when plowing was done with mules. At nearly 80 years old, Melvin was still active in land development.

We asked, “Where do you think Billy’s spiritual growth came from?”

“Billy Frank would interact with just about anybody,” he said. “It didn’t matter who they were, kings or paupers. He studied a lot. He prayed a lot. He’d get on his knees and flatten out on the ground and call on the Lord. I’ve seen him.”

Melvin suddenly pulled up his chin and said, “Tell you what—there was a fella named Bill Henderson, had a little grocery store in the black section of Charlotte—just a run-down little dump of a place. He was a tiny guy. He had long sleeves that came way down, and he wore a tie that hung down below his waist. But I tell you, that little old man, he knew the Bible!

“This was probably the late forties,” Melvin explained, “and Billy had been around a lot of places.”

We nodded, remembering this was when Billy was United Airlines’ top traveler and had preached in many European cities.

Melvin wagged his head in wonder. “Henderson barely made a living. It was a place people would come to get chewing tobacco and stuff like that. Most people loved him, but that little man got beat up many times, got his store robbed time and time again, but he just loved the Lord. Billy loved to hear Bill Henderson tell him about the Scriptures, because he lived them; it wasn’t weekend Christianity. And Henderson could pray. He’d pray for Billy and his young ministry. And he witnessed all the time.”

“Did this influence Billy’s focus on evangelism?”

“Absolutely,” replied Melvin. “In the afternoons Billy would go there and sit on an old crate—I don’t think they had a chair in the place—and let Bill teach him.”

Melvin’s word picture is instructive: young Billy Graham, while traveling widely to address large audiences, taking time to sit on a crate to learn from Bill Henderson. This image was consistent as we interviewed those who knew Billy: he was constantly learning, from self-taught store owners to executives, professors, pastors, presidents—and his candid, well-read wife. We heard over and over again, “He was always learning, always teachable.”

When strength fades

When Billy’s 1957 New York campaign was so effective that the pastors asked him to stay for another month of meetings, he told his associate Grady Wilson he didn’t think he could make it even one more day. “All of my strength has departed from me,” he said. “I’ve preached all the material I can lay my hands on. Yet God wants me here.”

In all, he wound up preaching virtually every night for over three months in Madison Square Garden and making additional public appearances and speaking other times during the day. Grady believed it was “the prayers of people all over the world” that gave Billy the needed stamina for the task. Yet he also believed that the grueling time in New York drew down his reserves. “Since that time, I don’t believe he’s ever regained all his strength.”

Cliff Barrows agrees. “Bill was so weary in the latter few weeks, he felt he just couldn’t go another day, but the Lord kept giving him strength. But at the end of the meetings, something left him, something came out of him physically that has never been replaced.” Until then a highly energetic preacher, afterward the active and rapid-fire delivery began to be replaced by a quieter strength.

Graham cut back on the number of crusades he held. Billy’s autobiography lists 19 crusades he held in 1961. For 1962, it lists six.

Significantly, in 1962, while Graham conducted a crusade in Chicago, his media adviser, Walter Bennett, offered advice to some senior aides of Martin Luther King Jr., whom Billy had met and invited to give a prayer at the watershed New York City meetings.

Bennett analyzed the King team’s approach to event organization and media relations. He warned that King would burn out if the minister continued his break-neck pace of speaking at small churches before modest audiences. Bennett suggested that King should aim for fewer events but more large-scale.

Perhaps that advice influenced the King team. One year later, King exhibited exceptional media savvy and organizational acumen during his defining moment, the March on Washington, where he made his historic “I have a dream” speech.

Billy had learned that not only is it important to connect to continuous voltage, it’s also vital to monitor the way the energy is expended.

Despite a recurring sense of being drained, Billy didn’t quit. Pastor Warren Wiersbe said: “When Billy stood up to speak one night, I thought, This guy is not going to make it. You could tell he was not at his best physically; he just didn’t look like he was up to it. And then something happened, like you plugged in a computer—that power was there. The minute he stepped into that pulpit and opened his Bible, something happened. I’ve heard him say that when he gets up to preach, he feels like electricity is going through him.”

This is the picture so often described by his colleagues: weakness drawing on the Spirit.

Prayer’s quiet intensity

One of Billy’s crusade organizers, Rick Marshall, in his first meeting with Billy, was amazed by his being so open about his weakness and by his humble prayers. “I remember thinking to myself, This is Billy Graham? It was such a contrast to the persona I had watched filling the stadium with his booming voice and authority. But when I was actually with the man, I was overwhelmed by the humility, the raw honesty before God about his own inability and physical limitations.”

Rick quoted Paul’s statement, “When I am weak, then I am strong,” as the basis for this strange mixture of strength through weakness. Like Paul, Billy leaned into his weaknesses.

“Now think about it,” Rick said. “If anyone could have been confident, it would have been Billy. But I never saw that. I saw only humility and a bowed head. In fact, I made a point for the last twenty campaigns to bring a team of pastors to pray with him every night before he went into the pulpit. That, I think, became for him one of the most important moments. It was his way, too, of saying, ‘I don’t do this in my own strength.'”

Billy described it this way: “When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God.”

“Every time I give an invitation, I am in an attitude of prayer,” he says. “I feel emotionally, physically, and spiritually drained. It becomes a spiritual battle of such proportions that sometimes I feel faint. There is an inward groaning and agonizing in prayer that I cannot possibly put into words.”

This intensity in prayer was even at the humble beginnings of his ministry. Biographer William Martin recounts the story from Roy Gustafson, one of Billy’s groomsmen and a close colleague. Roy, Billy, and two other men were walking out in the hills, talking about an important decision. They agreed to pray. Billy said, “Let’s get down on our knees.”

Roy was wearing his only good suit, so he got his handkerchief out, laid it down carefully, and knelt on it. As they prayed, Billy’s voice sounded muffled to him. Roy opened his eyes and saw that while three of them were gingerly kneeling, Billy was flung out prostrate on the ground, praying fervently, oblivious to the dirt.

Billy’s prayer connection was not only unusually fervent, it was also as natural to him as breathing. Perhaps most of the time his prayer life was not overt and conscious but more like a computer application that runs in the background—fully functioning but not seen on the screen.

A. Larry Ross, who served as Billy’s director of media and public relations for more than 23 years, told us about his initial discovery of this side of Billy’s prayer connection.

“The very first time I set up a network interview for Mr. Graham was with NBC’s Today show in 1982. I went in the day before to meet with the producers and ensure everything was set. I assumed Mr. Graham would want to have a time of prayer before he went on national television, so I secured a private room. After we arrived at the studio the following morning, I pulled T. W. Wilson aside and said, ‘Just so you know, I have a room down the hall where we can go to have a word of prayer before he goes on TV.’

“T.W. smiled at me and said, ‘You know, Larry, Mr. Graham started praying when he got up this morning, he prayed while he was eating his breakfast, he prayed on the way over here in the car they sent for us, and he’ll probably be praying all through the interview. Let’s just say that Mr. Graham likes to stay “prayed up” all the time.’

“We didn’t need to use that room,” Ross added. “That was a great lesson for me to learn as a young man.”

Trust the power given

Because Billy realized the power didn’t come from him but came through him, he didn’t feel obligated to overreach with his methods.

Jack Hayford, himself a powerful preacher, observed, “Billy Graham reveals a remarkable absence of the superficial, of hype, or of pandering to the crowd. His communication consistently avoids exaggeration or ‘slick’ remarks. There’s never been anything cutesy or clever about his style. There are no grandiose claims or stunts employed to attract attention. Graham merely bows in prayer while seekers come forward—moved by God, not a manipulative appeal.”

That confidence in the power of the message frees the leader from having to work over-hard on presentation techniques to convince the hearers. When a basketball player is not in a position to take a shot but puts it up anyway, coaches call it “forcing the shot.”

Forced shots are usually ineffective. Coaches will tell players to wait until they’re in a good position, then the shot has a better chance of success. Likewise, people can sense that efforts are forced when a leader isn’t convinced his message has spiritual power.

Because Billy was well connected to his continuous voltage, he knew where the power came from. He simply made himself available to receive it.

Harold Myra is CEO of Christianity Today International.

Marshall Shelley is editor of Leadership and a vice president of Christianity Today International.

Reprinted from Leadership, Summer 2005, Vol. XXVI, No. 3, Page 96

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The post Continuous Voltage appeared first on Christianity Today.

I AM GROWING accustomed to the grace of gradual illumination, so it is a delight and no real surprise when I see God's messages to me in the scattered rainbows on my wall at sunrise. Luci Shaw in Weavings

GOD'S WORD is designed to make us Christians, not scientists, and to lead us to eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ. It was not God's intention to reveal in Scripture what human beings could discover by their own investigations and experiments. John R. W. Stott, Christian Basics

SILENCE is one of the deepest disciplines of the Spirit simply because it puts the stopper on all self-justification. One of the fruits of silence is the freedom to let God be our justifier. We don't need to straighten others out. Richard J. Foster, Seeking the Kingdom

A REALIST is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned. Warren W. Wiersbe in Leadership

JESUS CHRIST is God's missionary par excellence, and he involves his followers in his mission. C. Rene Padilla in Missiology

YOU COULD SPEAK of Jesus' rising as the most hopeful (hope-full) thing that has ever happened—and you would be right! J. I. Packer, Your Father Loves You

PEOPLE DO NOT drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated. D. A. Carson, For the Love of God

I DON'T WANT to see religious bigotry in any form. It would disturb me if there was a wedding between the religious fundamentalists and the political Right. The hard Right has no interest in religion except to manipulate it. Billy Graham in Parade (1981)

ALTHOUGH the threads of my life have often seemed knotted, I know, by faith, that on the other side of the embroidery there is a crown. Corrie ten Boom, My Heart Sings

Copyright © 2006 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Past Reflections columns include:

Spiritual Classics (Sept. 18, 2006)

Proverbs (Aug. 15, 2006)

Summer (June 27, 2006)

Philosophers' Potpourri (June 9, 2006)

Ponder These Things (May 17, 2006)

Holy Week (April 4, 2006)

Evening Prayer (March 10, 2006)

Morning Prayers (Feb. 6, 2006)

Hope (Jan. 16, 2006)

Christmas (Dec. 19, 2005)

Poetry (Dec. 12, 2005)

Grace that Surprises (Oct. 3, 2005)

Friendship (August 31, 2005)

Wisdom That Sticks (August 8, 2005)

His Body, His Blood (June 08, 2005)

On Baptism (April 25, 2005)

Discovering God (April 07, 2005)

Welcoming the Stranger (Feb. 22, 2005)

The Church and Mission (Feb. 02, 2005)

The Church (Jan. 11, 2005)

The post CT Classics appeared first on Christianity Today.

The service at the National Cathedral right after the September 11 attacks presented perhaps the greatest pressure of all. The nation was in deep shock; the entire world would be watching on television. Billy's words and tone, both for Americans and for people of all other nations, had to be just right.

That would be challenge enough for a person at the height of his strength. But it was a frail octogenarian with serious health problems who mounted the platform with steady purpose and told the nation, "God is our refuge and strength; an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way, and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea."

With inner strength, Billy declared, "You may be angry at God. I want to assure you that God understands these feelings you have. But God can be trusted, even when life seems at its darkest. From the cross, God declares, 'I love you. I know the heartaches and the sorrows and the pains you feel, but I love you.'

"This has been a terrible week with many tears. But also it's been a week of great faith. … And [remember] the words of that familiar hymn that Andrew Young quoted, 'Fear not, I am with thee. Oh, be not dismayed, for I am thy God and will still give thee aid.'"

Despite his frailty, Billy's presence, poise, and message touched the sorrows and fears and brought hope and a deeply Christian response to his nation and to the world. He found the inner resources to rise to that momentous occasion.

Even in the latter years of his eventful ministry, Billy continued in the nitty-gritty of leading his organization; continued to sweat over the funding of three events in Amsterdam that brought together 10,000 itinerant evangelists, 70 percent of them from poor, developing countries; continued to appear on news shows to represent the gospel; continued to minister to every U.S. president of his era. In the phrase voiced by President George W. Bush when Billy was hospitalized and unable to attend the funeral of Ronald Reagan, Billy was "the nation's pastor"—but he was also the leader of an organization and of a vast movement.

How could he maintain the strength and sense of commitment to do all that for more than sixty years?

Billy has not been impervious to the pressures; his body and psyche have paid a steep price. But he has taken his own advice, so often expressed in his newspaper columns, books, and articles. He has continually plugged himself into the spiritual and psychological voltage that has made this half-century saga possible.

From the beginning, his spiritual power has come from prayer and the Bible. His colleague, T. W. Wilson, called him "the most completely disciplined person I have ever known." The discipline started around 7:00 a.m. each day, when he would read five psalms and one chapter of Proverbs. He started there because, as he often said, the psalms showed him how to relate to God, while Proverbs taught him how to relate to people. After breakfast he would pray and study more Scripture. Even under the pressure of travel schedules moving him from city to city, often through many time zones, he strove to study and pray each morning.

Some close to Billy describe him as more adaptive to circumstances in fitting in study and prayer, but all emphasize his spending large amounts of time connecting with his source of wisdom, cleansing, and power.

As Billy said, "Unless the soul is fed and exercised daily, it becomes weak and shriveled. It remains discontented, confused, restless."

Even in his early days of youthful vigor, he was intensely aware of his need for that power.

We talked about that with Billy's younger brother, Melvin Graham, shortly before Melvin passed away.

When Billy left the family farm at age 20, Melvin had stayed on—back when plowing was done with mules. At nearly 80 years old, Melvin was still active in land development.

We asked, "Where do you think Billy's spiritual growth came from?"

"Billy Frank would interact with just about anybody," he said. "It didn't matter who they were, kings or paupers. He studied a lot. He prayed a lot. He'd get on his knees and flatten out on the ground and call on the Lord. I've seen him."

Melvin suddenly pulled up his chin and said, "Tell you what—there was a fella named Bill Henderson, had a little grocery store in the black section of Charlotte—just a run-down little dump of a place. He was a tiny guy. He had long sleeves that came way down, and he wore a tie that hung down below his waist. But I tell you, that little old man, he knew the Bible!

"This was probably the late forties," Melvin explained, "and Billy had been around a lot of places."

We nodded, remembering this was when Billy was United Airlines' top traveler and had preached in many European cities.

Melvin wagged his head in wonder. "Henderson barely made a living. It was a place people would come to get chewing tobacco and stuff like that. Most people loved him, but that little man got beat up many times, got his store robbed time and time again, but he just loved the Lord. Billy loved to hear Bill Henderson tell him about the Scriptures, because he lived them; it wasn't weekend Christianity. And Henderson could pray. He'd pray for Billy and his young ministry. And he witnessed all the time."

"Did this influence Billy's focus on evangelism?"

"Absolutely," replied Melvin. "In the afternoons Billy would go there and sit on an old crate—I don't think they had a chair in the place—and let Bill teach him."

Melvin's word picture is instructive: young Billy Graham, while traveling widely to address large audiences, taking time to sit on a crate to learn from Bill Henderson. This image was consistent as we interviewed those who knew Billy: he was constantly learning, from self-taught store owners to executives, professors, pastors, presidents—and his candid, well-read wife. We heard over and over again, "He was always learning, always teachable."

When strength fades

When Billy's 1957 New York campaign was so effective that the pastors asked him to stay for another month of meetings, he told his associate Grady Wilson he didn't think he could make it even one more day. "All of my strength has departed from me," he said. "I've preached all the material I can lay my hands on. Yet God wants me here."

In all, he wound up preaching virtually every night for over three months in Madison Square Garden and making additional public appearances and speaking other times during the day. Grady believed it was "the prayers of people all over the world" that gave Billy the needed stamina for the task. Yet he also believed that the grueling time in New York drew down his reserves. "Since that time, I don't believe he's ever regained all his strength."

Cliff Barrows agrees. "Bill was so weary in the latter few weeks, he felt he just couldn't go another day, but the Lord kept giving him strength. But at the end of the meetings, something left him, something came out of him physically that has never been replaced." Until then a highly energetic preacher, afterward the active and rapid-fire delivery began to be replaced by a quieter strength.

Graham cut back on the number of crusades he held. Billy's autobiography lists 19 crusades he held in 1961. For 1962, it lists six.

Significantly, in 1962, while Graham conducted a crusade in Chicago, his media adviser, Walter Bennett, offered advice to some senior aides of Martin Luther King Jr., whom Billy had met and invited to give a prayer at the watershed New York City meetings.

Bennett analyzed the King team's approach to event organization and media relations. He warned that King would burn out if the minister continued his break-neck pace of speaking at small churches before modest audiences. Bennett suggested that King should aim for fewer events but more large-scale.

Perhaps that advice influenced the King team. One year later, King exhibited exceptional media savvy and organizational acumen during his defining moment, the March on Washington, where he made his historic "I have a dream" speech.

Billy had learned that not only is it important to connect to continuous voltage, it's also vital to monitor the way the energy is expended.

Despite a recurring sense of being drained, Billy didn't quit. Pastor Warren Wiersbe said: "When Billy stood up to speak one night, I thought, This guy is not going to make it. You could tell he was not at his best physically; he just didn't look like he was up to it. And then something happened, like you plugged in a computer—that power was there. The minute he stepped into that pulpit and opened his Bible, something happened. I've heard him say that when he gets up to preach, he feels like electricity is going through him."

This is the picture so often described by his colleagues: weakness drawing on the Spirit.

Prayer's quiet intensity

One of Billy's crusade organizers, Rick Marshall, in his first meeting with Billy, was amazed by his being so open about his weakness and by his humble prayers. "I remember thinking to myself, This is Billy Graham? It was such a contrast to the persona I had watched filling the stadium with his booming voice and authority. But when I was actually with the man, I was overwhelmed by the humility, the raw honesty before God about his own inability and physical limitations."

Rick quoted Paul's statement, "When I am weak, then I am strong," as the basis for this strange mixture of strength through weakness. Like Paul, Billy leaned into his weaknesses.

"Now think about it," Rick said. "If anyone could have been confident, it would have been Billy. But I never saw that. I saw only humility and a bowed head. In fact, I made a point for the last twenty campaigns to bring a team of pastors to pray with him every night before he went into the pulpit. That, I think, became for him one of the most important moments. It was his way, too, of saying, 'I don't do this in my own strength.'"

Billy described it this way: "When we come to the end of ourselves, we come to the beginning of God."

"Every time I give an invitation, I am in an attitude of prayer," he says. "I feel emotionally, physically, and spiritually drained. It becomes a spiritual battle of such proportions that sometimes I feel faint. There is an inward groaning and agonizing in prayer that I cannot possibly put into words."

This intensity in prayer was even at the humble beginnings of his ministry. Biographer William Martin recounts the story from Roy Gustafson, one of Billy's groomsmen and a close colleague. Roy, Billy, and two other men were walking out in the hills, talking about an important decision. They agreed to pray. Billy said, "Let's get down on our knees."

Roy was wearing his only good suit, so he got his handkerchief out, laid it down carefully, and knelt on it. As they prayed, Billy's voice sounded muffled to him. Roy opened his eyes and saw that while three of them were gingerly kneeling, Billy was flung out prostrate on the ground, praying fervently, oblivious to the dirt.

Billy's prayer connection was not only unusually fervent, it was also as natural to him as breathing. Perhaps most of the time his prayer life was not overt and conscious but more like a computer application that runs in the background—fully functioning but not seen on the screen.

A. Larry Ross, who served as Billy's director of media and public relations for more than 23 years, told us about his initial discovery of this side of Billy's prayer connection.

"The very first time I set up a network interview for Mr. Graham was with NBC's Today show in 1982. I went in the day before to meet with the producers and ensure everything was set. I assumed Mr. Graham would want to have a time of prayer before he went on national television, so I secured a private room. After we arrived at the studio the following morning, I pulled T. W. Wilson aside and said, 'Just so you know, I have a room down the hall where we can go to have a word of prayer before he goes on TV.'

"T.W. smiled at me and said, 'You know, Larry, Mr. Graham started praying when he got up this morning, he prayed while he was eating his breakfast, he prayed on the way over here in the car they sent for us, and he'll probably be praying all through the interview. Let's just say that Mr. Graham likes to stay "prayed up" all the time.'

"We didn't need to use that room," Ross added. "That was a great lesson for me to learn as a young man."

Trust the power given

Because Billy realized the power didn't come from him but came through him, he didn't feel obligated to overreach with his methods.

Jack Hayford, himself a powerful preacher, observed, "Billy Graham reveals a remarkable absence of the superficial, of hype, or of pandering to the crowd. His communication consistently avoids exaggeration or 'slick' remarks. There's never been anything cutesy or clever about his style. There are no grandiose claims or stunts employed to attract attention. Graham merely bows in prayer while seekers come forward—moved by God, not a manipulative appeal."

That confidence in the power of the message frees the leader from having to work over-hard on presentation techniques to convince the hearers. When a basketball player is not in a position to take a shot but puts it up anyway, coaches call it "forcing the shot."

Forced shots are usually ineffective. Coaches will tell players to wait until they're in a good position, then the shot has a better chance of success. Likewise, people can sense that efforts are forced when a leader isn't convinced his message has spiritual power.

Because Billy was well connected to his continuous voltage, he knew where the power came from. He simply made himself available to receive it.

Harold Myra was named publisher of Christianity Today by Graham in 1975. Myra retired as executive chairman in 2007 and the coauthor of The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham(Zondervan).

Marshall Shelley was the editor of Leadership Journal and the coauthor of The Leadership Secrets of Billy Graham(Zondervan). He is currently the director of the Doctor of Ministry program at Denver Seminary.

The post Why Was Billy Graham’s Preaching So Powerful? appeared first on Christianity Today.

The experiences we preachers go through are not accidents; they are appointments.
—Warren W. Wiersbe

It doesn’t make sense!” said my pastor friend.

We were lingering over lunch and discussing the Bible conference I was conducting in his church. I’d just commented that the church was having a strong influence on the students and staff of the nearby university.

“What doesn’t make sense?” I asked.

“Where you and I are serving,” he replied.

“You’re going to have to explain.”

“Look, I’m really a country preacher with a minimum of academic training, yet I’m ministering to a university crowd. You write commentaries, and you read more books in a month than I do in a year, yet your congregation is primarily blue-collar and nonprofessional. It doesn’t make sense.”

The subject then changed, but I have pondered his observation many times in the intervening years. I’ve concluded it’s a good thing God didn’t put me on his “Pastor Placement Committee” because I would have really messed things up. I never would have sent rustic Amos to the affluent court of the king; I’d have given him a quiet country church somewhere. And I’d never have commissioned Saul of Tarsus, that “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” to be a missionary to the Gentiles; I’d have put him in charge of Jewish evangelism in Jerusalem.

Why is it, then, that so many preachers do not enjoy preaching? Why do some busy themselves in minor matters when they should be studying and meditating? Why do others creep out of the pulpit after delivering their sermon, overwhelmed with a sense of failure and guilt?

The difference a witness makes

Without pausing to take a poll, I think I can suggest an answer: they are preaching in spite of themselves instead of preaching because of themselves. They either leave themselves out of their preaching or fight themselves during their preparation and delivery; this leaves them without energy or enthusiasm for the task. Instead of thanking God for what they do have, they complain about what they don’t have; and this leaves them in no condition to herald the Word of God.

A Christianity Today/Gallup Poll some years ago showed that ministers believe preaching is the number one priority of their ministries, but it’s also the one thing they feel least capable of doing well. What causes this insecure attitude toward preaching?

For one thing, we’ve forgotten what preaching really is. Phillips Brooks said it best: Preaching is the communicating of divine truth through human personality. The divine truth never changes; the human personality constantly changes—and this is what makes the message new and unique.

No two preachers can preach the same message because no two preachers are the same. In fact, no one preacher can preach the same message twice if he is living and growing at all. The human personality is a vital part of the preaching ministry.

Recently I made an intensive study of all the Greek verbs used in the New Testament to describe the communicating of the Word of God. The three most important words are euangelizomai, “to tell the good news”; kerusso, “to proclaim like a herald”; and martureo, “to bear witness.” All three are important in our pulpit ministry.

We’re telling the good news with the authority of a royal herald, but the message is a part of our lives. Unlike the herald, who only shouted what was given to him, we’re sharing what is personal and real to us. The messenger is a part of the message because the messenger is a witness.

God prepares the person who prepares the message. Martin Luther said that prayer, meditation, and temptation made a preacher. Prayer and meditation will give you a sermon, but only temptation—the daily experience of life—can transform that sermon into a message. It’s the difference between the recipe and the meal.

I had an experience at a denominational conference that brought this truth home to me. During the session at which I was to speak, a very capable ladies’ trio sang. It was an up-tempo number, the message of which did not quite fit my theme; but, of course, they had no way of knowing exactly what I would preach about. I was glad my message did not immediately follow their number because I didn’t feel the congregation was prepared.

Just before I spoke, a pastor in a wheelchair rolled to the center of the platform and gave a brief testimony about his ministry. Then he sang, to very simple accompaniment, “No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus.” The effect was overwhelming. The man was not singing a song; he was ministering a word from God. But he had paid a price to minister. In suffering, he became a part of the message.

The experiences we preachers go through are not accidents; they are appointments. They do not interrupt our studies; they are an essential part of our studies. Our personalities, our physical equipment, and even our handicaps are all part of the kind of ministry God wants us to have. He wants us to be witnesses as well as heralds.

The apostles knew this: “For we cannot help speaking about what we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20 niv). This was a part of Paul’s commission: “You will be his witness to all men of what you have seen and heard” (Acts 22:15 niv). Instead of minimizing or condemning what we are, we must use what we are to bear witness to Christ. It is this that makes the message our message and not the echo of another’s.

The myth of “The Great Sermon”

It’s easy to imitate these days. Not only do we have books of sermons, but we have radio and television ministries and cassettes by the thousands. One man models himself after Charles Spurgeon, another after A. W. Tozer; and both congregations suffer.

Alexander Whyte of Edinburgh had an assistant who took the second service for the aging pastor. Whyte was a surgical preacher who ruthlessly dealt with human sin and then faithfully proclaimed God’s saving grace. But his assistant was a man of different temperament who tried to move the gospel message out of the operating room into the banqueting hall.

During one period of his ministry, however, the assistant tried Whyte’s approach, without Whyte’s success. The experiment stopped when Whyte said to him, “Preach your own message.” That counsel is needed today.

I am alarmed when I hear seminary students and younger pastors say, “My calling is to preach, not to pastor.” I am alarmed because I know it’s difficult to preach to people whom you do not know.

As an itinerant Bible teacher, I know what it’s like to “hit a place and quit a place,” and I can assure you it is not easy. After thirty years of ministry, which included pastoring three churches, I’ve concluded it is much easier to preach to your own congregation week after week. You get to know them, and they get to know you. You’re not a visiting Christian celebrity, but a part of the family. It is this identification with the people that gives power and relevance to your preaching.

Every profession has its occupational hazards, and in the ministry it is the passion to preach “great sermons.” Fant and Pinson, in 20 Centuries of Great Preaching, came to the startling conclusion that “great preaching is relevant preaching.” By “relevant,” they mean preaching that meets the needs of the people in their times, preaching that shows the preacher cares and wants to help.

If this be true, then there are thousands of “great sermons” preached each Lord’s Day, preached by those whose names will never be printed in homiletics books, but are written in the loving hearts of their people. Listen again to Phillips Brooks:

The notion of a great sermon, either constantly or occasionally haunting the preacher, is fatal. It hampers the freedom of utterance. Many a true and helpful word which your people need, and which you ought to say to them, will seem unworthy of the dignity of your great discourse. Never tolerate any idea of the dignity of a sermon which will keep you from saying anything in it which you ought to say, or which your people ought to hear.

Preaching Christ, not myself

Let me add another reason for insecure feelings about our preaching. In our desire to be humble servants of God, we have a tendency to suppress our personalities lest we should preach ourselves and not Christ.

While it is good to heed Paul’s warning (“For we do not preach ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake”—2 Cor. 4:5 niv), we must not misinterpret it and thereby attempt the impossible. Paul’s personality and even some of his personal experiences are written into the warp and woof of his epistles; yet Jesus Christ is glorified from start to finish.

During the past twenty years, I have been immersed in studying the lives of famous preachers of the past. Most of these ministered during the Victorian era in Great Britain, a time when the pulpits were filled with superstars. If there’s one thing I learned from these men, it is this: God has his own ways of training and preparing his servants, but he wants all of them to be themselves. God has put variety into the universe, and he has put variety into the church.

If your personality doesn’t shine through your preaching, you’re only a robot. You could be replaced by a cassette player and perhaps nobody would know the difference.

Do not confuse the art and the science of preaching. Homiletics is the science of preaching, and it has basic laws and principles that every preacher ought to study and practice. Once you’ve learned how to obey these principles, then you can adapt them, modify them, and tailor them to your own personality.

In my conference ministry, I often share the platform with gifted speakers whose preaching leaves me saying to myself, What’s the use? I’ll never learn how to preach like that!

Then the Lord has to remind me he never called me “to preach like that.” He called me to preach the way I preach!

The science of preaching is one thing; the art of preaching—style, delivery, approach, and all those other almost indefinable ingredients that make up one’s personality—is something else. One preacher uses humor and hits the target; another attempts it and shoots himself.

The essence of what I am saying is this: You must know yourself, accept yourself, be yourself, and develop yourself—your best self—if preaching is to be most effective.

Never imitate another preacher, but learn from him everything you can. Never complain about yourself or your circumstances, but find out why God made things that way and use what he has given you in a positive way. What you think are obstacles may turn out to be opportunities. Stay long enough in one church to discover who you are, what kind of ministry God has given you, and how he plans to train you for ministries yet to come. After all, he is always preparing us for what he already has prepared for us—if we let him.

Accepting what we’re not

I learned very early in my ministry that I was not an evangelist. Although I’ve seen people come to Christ through my ministry, I’ve always felt I was a failure when it came to evangelism.

One of the few benefits of growing older is a better perspective. Now I’m learning that my teaching and writing ministries have enabled others to lead people to Christ, so my labors have not been in vain. But I’ve had my hours of discouragement and the feeling of failure.

God gives us the spiritual gifts he wants us to have; he puts us in the places he wants us to serve; and he gives the blessings he wants us to enjoy.

I am convinced of this, but this conviction is not an excuse for laziness or for barrenness of ministry. Knowing I am God’s man in God’s place of ministry has encouraged me to study harder and do my best work. When the harvests were lean, the assurance that God put me there helped to keep me going. When the battles raged and the storms blew, my secure refuge was “God put me here, and I will stay here until he tells me to go.”

How often I’ve remembered V. Raymond Edman’s counsel: “It is always too soon to quit!”

It has been my experience that the young preacher in his first church and the middle-aged preacher (in perhaps his third or fourth church) are the most susceptible to discouragement. This is not difficult to understand.

The young seminarian marches bravely into his first church with high ideals, only to face the steamroller of reality and the furnace of criticism. He waves his banners bravely for a year or so, then takes them down quietly and makes plans to move.

The middle-aged minister has seen his ideals attacked many times, but now he realizes that time is short and he might not attain to the top thirty of David’s mighty men.

God help the preacher who abandons his ideals! But, at the same time, God pity the preacher who is so idealistic he fails to be realistic.

A realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned. There is a difference.

Self-evaluation is a difficult and dangerous thing. Sometimes we’re so close to our ministry we fail to see it. One of my students once asked me, “Why can’t I see any spiritual growth in my life? Everybody else tells me they can see it!” I reminded him that at Pentecost no man could see the flame over his own head, but he could see what was burning over his brother’s head.

A word from the Scottish preacher George Morrison has buoyed me up in many a storm: “Men who do their best always do more though they be haunted by the sense of failure. Be good and true; be patient; be undaunted. Leave your usefulness for God to estimate. He will see to it that you do not live in vain.”

Be realistic as you assess your work. Avoid comparisons. I read enough religious publications and hear enough conversations to know that such comparisons are the chief indoor sport of preachers, but I try not to take them too seriously. “When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise” (2 Cor. 10:12 niv).

Although we are in conflict against those who preach a false gospel, we are not in competition with any who preach the true gospel. We are only in competition with ourselves. By the grace of God, we ought to be better preachers and pastors today than we were a year ago.

If we are to be better pastors and preachers, we must be better persons; and this means discipline and hard work. The “giants” I’ve lived with these many years were all hard workers. Campbell Morgan was in his study at six o’clock in the morning. His successor, John Henry Jowett, was also up early and into the books. “Enter your study at an appointed hour,” Jowett said in his lectures to the Yale divinity students in 1911-12, “and let that hour be as early as the earliest of your businessmen goes to his warehouse or his office.” Spurgeon worked hard and had to take winter holidays to regain his strength.

Obviously, we gain nothing by imperiling our health, but we lose much by pampering ourselves, and that is the greater danger.

The gift is sufficient

If God has called you, then he has given you what you need to do the job. You may not have all that others have, or all you wish you had, but you have what God wants you to have. Accept it, be faithful to use it, and in due time God will give you more.

Give yourself time to discover and develop your gifts. Accept nothing as a handicap. Turn it over to God and let him make a useful tool out of it. After all, that’s what he did with Paul’s thorn in the flesh.

Often I receive letters and telephone calls from anxious chairmen of pulpit committees, all of whom want me to suggest a pastor for their churches. “What kind of pastor do you need right now?” I always ask.

“Oh, a man who is about forty years old, a good preacher, a love for people.”

If I don’t interrupt them, they usually go on to describe a combination of Billy Graham, Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, Mother Teresa, and the Lone Ranger.

“Forgive me,” I usually say when they take a breath, “but that’s not what I had in mind. What kind of ministry does your church need just now—evangelism, missions, administration, teaching, or what? After all, very few people can do everything.”

The long silence that follows tells me the chairman and the committee have not really studied their church to determine its present and future needs. How, then, can they ever hope to find the right pastor to meet those needs?

Preaching is not what we do; it’s what we are. When God wants to make a preacher, he has to make the person, because the work we do cannot be isolated from the life we live. God prepares the person for the work and the work for the person, and if we permit him, he brings them together in his providence.

God knows us better than we know ourselves. He’d never put us into a ministry where he could not build us and use us.

Copyright © 1995 by Leadership/Christianity Today

The post Your Preaching Is Unique appeared first on Christianity Today.

The character of our praying will determine the character of our preaching. Light praying makes light preaching.
E. M. Bounds

A preacher reading about how to preach better can easily begin to feel like the farmer who finally refused to go to any more farm extension courses. His reason: “I don’t need to learn any more. I already know how to farm better than I do now!”

Reading about the great ideas and wonderful successes of other preachers can be intimidating — the pastor who prepares sermons months early, the one packing in a thousand people compared to my fifty-five, the preacher with the seemingly inexhaustible supply of fresh stories, the witty one, the creative one, or the scholarly one. There will always be someone who preaches better. Always.

So why try? What good is my preaching compared to theirs?

Warren Wiersbe rides to the rescue of all who are ready to shelve their Bibles. Besides three decades of parish ministry, Wiersbe draws from an extensive conference, broadcast, and writing ministry. He’s experienced the preacher’s doldrums. He’s been intimidated by the gifts of others.

But he can also put those feelings in perspective and celebrate the uniqueness of the individual preacher. And he tells each of us, whom God has tapped to proclaim his Word, “Indeed, your preaching is unique.”

It really doesn’t make sense!”

That statement was made to me by a pastor friend about a dozen years ago. We were lingering over our lunchtime coffee and discussing the Bible conference I was conducting in his church. I’d just commented that the church was having a strong influence on the students and staff of the nearby university.

“What doesn’t make sense?” I asked.

“Where you and I are serving,” he replied.

“You are going to have to explain.”

“Look, I’m really a country preacher with a minimum of academic training, yet I’m ministering to a university crowd. You write books, and you read more books in a month than I do in a year; yet your congregation is primarily blue-collar and nonprofessional. It doesn’t make sense.”

The subject then changed, but I have pondered his observation many times in the intervening years. I’ve concluded it’s a good thing God didn’t put me on his “Pastor Placement Committee” because I would have really messed things up. I’d never have sent rustic Amos to the affluent court of the king; I’d have given him a quiet country church somewhere. And I’d never have commissioned Saul of Tarsus, that “Hebrew of the Hebrews,” to be a missionary to the Gentiles; I’d have put him in charge of Jewish evangelism in Jerusalem.

All of which brings me to the point of this chapter: If God has called you to preach, then who you are, what you are, and where you are also must be a part of God’s plan. You do not preach in spite of this but because of this.

Preaching and the Preacher

Why is it, then, that so many preachers do not enjoy preaching? Why do some busy themselves in minor matters when they should be studying and meditating? Why do others creep out of the pulpit after delivering their sermon, overwhelmed with a sense of failure and guilt? Without pausing to take a poll, I think I can suggest an answer: They are preaching in spite of themselves instead of preaching because of themselves. They either leave themselves out of their preaching or fight themselves during their preparation and delivery; this leaves them without energy or enthusiasm for the task. Instead of thanking God for what they do have, they complain about what they don’t have; and this leaves them in no condition to herald the Word of God.

A Christianity Today/Gallup Poll showed that ministers believe preaching is the number one priority of their ministries, but it’s also the one thing they feel least capable of doing well. What causes this insecure attitude toward preaching?

For one thing, we’ve forgotten what preaching really is. Phillips Brooks said it best: Preaching is the communicating of divine truth through human personality. The divine truth never changes; the human personality constantly changes — and this is what makes the message new and unique. No two preachers can preach the same message because no two preachers are the same. In fact, no one preacher can preach the same message twice if he is living and growing at all. The human personality is a vital part of the preaching ministry.

Recently I made an intensive study of all the Greek verbs used in the New Testament to describe the communicating of the Word of God. The three most important words are: euangelizomai, “to tell the good news”; kerusso, “to proclaim like a herald”; and martureo, “to bear witness.” All three are important in our pulpit ministry. We’re telling the good news with the authority of a royal herald, but the message is a part of our lives. Unlike the herald, who only shouted what was given to him, we’re sharing what is personal and real to us. The messenger is a part of the message because the messenger is a witness.

God prepares the man who prepares the message. Martin Luther said that prayer, meditation, and temptation make a preacher. Prayer and meditation will give you a sermon, but only temptation — the daily experiences of life — can transform that sermon into a message. It’s the difference between the recipe and the meal.

I had an experience at a denominational conference that brought this truth home to me. During the session at which I was to speak, a very capable ladies trio sang. It was an uptempo number, the message of which did not quite fit my theme; but, of course, they had no way of knowing exactly what I would preach about. I was glad my message did not immediately follow their number because I didn’t feel the congregation was prepared. Just before I spoke, however, a pastor in a wheelchair rolled to the center of the platform and gave a brief testimony about his ministry. Then he sang, to very simple accompaniment, “No One Ever Cared for Me Like Jesus.” The effect was overwhelming. The man was not singing a song; he was ministering a Word from God. But he had paid a price to minister. In suffering, he became a part of the message.

The experiences we preachers go through are not accidents; they are appointments. They do not interrupt our studies; they are an essential part of our studies. Our personalities, our physical equipment, and even our handicaps are all part of the kind of ministry God wants us to have. He wants us to be witnesses as well as heralds. The apostles knew this: “For we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard” (Acts 4:20). This was a part of Paul’s commission: “For thou shalt be his witness unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard” (Acts 22:15). Instead of minimizing or condemning what we are, we must use what we are to bear witness to Christ. It is this that makes the message our message and not the echo of another’s.

It’s easy to imitate these days. Not only do we have books of sermons, but we have radio and television ministries and cassettes by the thousands. One man models himself after Spurgeon, another after A. W. Tozer; and both congregations suffer.

Alexander Whyte of Edinburgh had an assistant who took the second service for the aging pastor. Whyte was a surgical preacher who ruthlessly dealt with man’s sin and then faithfully proclaimed God’s saving grace. But his assistant was a man of different temperament, who tried to move the gospel message out of the operating room into the banquet hall. However, during one period of his ministry he tried Whyte’s approach but not with Whyte’s success. The experiment stopped when Whyte said to him, “Preach your own message.” That counsel is needed today.

Mixing Parish and Personality

I am alarmed when I hear seminary students and younger pastors say, “My calling is to preach, not to pastor.” I am alarmed because I know it’s difficult to preach to people whom you do not know. As an itinerant Bible teacher, I know what it’s like to “hit a place and quit a place,” and I can assure you it is not easy. After thirty years of ministry, which included pastoring three churches, I’ve concluded it is much easier to preach to your own congregation week after week. You get to know them, and they get to know you. You’re not a visiting evangelical celebrity but a part of the family. It is this identification with the people that gives power and relevance to your preaching.

Every profession has its occupational hazards, and in the ministry it is the passion to preach “great sermons.” Fant and Pinson, in Twenty Centuries of Great Preaching, came to the startling conclusion that “Great preaching is relevant preaching.” By “relevant,” they mean preaching that meets the needs of the people in their times, preaching that shows the preacher cares and wants to help. If this be true, then there are thousands of “great sermons” preached each Lord’s Day, preached by men whose names will never be printed in homiletics books but are written in the loving hearts of their people. Listen again to Phillips Brooks:

The notion of a great sermon, either constantly or occasionally haunting the preacher, is fatal. It hampers … the freedom of utterance. Many a true and helpful word which your people need, and which you ought to say to them, will seem unworthy of the dignity of your great discourse.… Never tolerate any idea of the dignity of a sermon which will keep you from saying anything in it which you ought to say, or which your people ought to hear.

Let me add another reason for insecure feelings about our preaching. In our desire to be humble servants of God, we have a tendency to suppress our personalities lest we should preach ourselves and not Christ. While it is good to heed Paul’s warning (“For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake” 2 Cor. 4:5), we must not misinterpret it and thereby attempt the impossible. Paul’s personality, and even some of his personal experiences, are written into the warp and woof of his epistles; yet Jesus Christ is glorified from start to finish.

During the past twenty years, I have been immersed in studying the lives and ministries of the famous preachers of the past. Most of these men ministered during the Victorian Era in Great Britain, a time when the pulpits were filled with superstars. If there’s one thing I learned from these men it is this: God has his own ways of training and preparing his servants, but he wants all of them to be themselves. God has put variety into the universe, and he has put variety into the church.

If your personality doesn’t shine through your preaching, you’re only a robot. You could be replaced by a cassette player and perhaps nobody would know the difference. Do not confuse the art and the science of preaching. Homiletics is the science of preaching, and it has basic laws and principles that every preacher ought to study and practice. Once you’ve learned how to obey these principles, then you can adapt them, modify them, and tailor them to your own personality.

In my conference ministry, I often share the platform with gifted men whose preaching leaves me saying to myself, What’s the use? I’ll never learn how to preach like that! Then the Lord has to remind me he never called me “to preach like that.” He called me to preach the way I preach. The science of preaching is one thing; the art of preaching — style, delivery, approach, and all those other almost indefinable ingredients that make up one’s personality — is something else. One preacher uses humor and hits the target; another attempts it and shoots himself.

The essence of what I am saying is this: You must know yourself, accept yourself, and develop yourself — your best self — if preaching is to be an exciting experience in your ministry. Never imitate another preacher, but learn from him everything you can. Never complain about yourself or your circumstances, but find out why God made things that way and use what he has given you in a positive way. What you think are obstacles may turn out to be opportunities. Stay long enough in one church to discover who you are, what kind of ministry God has given you, and how he plans to train you for ministries yet to come. After all, he is always preparing us for what he already has prepared for us — if we let him.

Realistic Evaluation

I learned very early in my ministry that I was not an evangelist. Although I’ve seen people come to Christ through my ministry, I’ve always felt I was a failure when it came to evangelism. One of the few benefits of growing older is a better perspective on life. Now I’m learning that my teaching and writing ministries have enabled others to lead people to Christ, so my labors have not been in vain. But I’ve had my hours of discouragement and the feeling of failure that always accompanies discouragement.

God gives us the spiritual gifts he wants us to have; he puts us in the places where he wants us to serve; and he gives us the blessings he wants us to enjoy. I am convinced of this, but this conviction is not an excuse for laziness or for barrenness of ministry. Knowing I am God’s man in God’s place of ministry has encouraged me to study harder and do my best work. When the harvests were lean, the assurance that God put me there helped to keep me going. When the battles raged and the storm blew, my secure refuge was “God put me here and I will stay here until he tells me to go.” How often I’ve remembered Dr. V. Raymond Edman’s counsel: “It is always too soon to quit!”

It has been my experience that the young preacher in his first church and the middle-aged preacher (in perhaps his third or fourth church) are the most susceptible to discouragement. This is not difficult to understand. The young seminarian marches bravely into his first church with high ideals, only to face the steamroller of reality and the furnace of criticism. He waves his banners bravely for a year or so, then takes them down quietly and makes plans to move. The middle-aged minister has seen his ideals attacked many times, but now he realizes that time is short and he might not attain to the top thirty of David’s mighty men.

God help the preacher who abandons his ideals! But, at the same time, God pity the preacher who is so idealistic he fails to be realistic. A realist is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been purified. A skeptic is an idealist who has gone through the fire and been burned. There is a difference.

Self-evaluation is a difficult and dangerous thing. Sometimes we’re so close to our ministry we fail to see it. One of my students once asked me, “Why can’t I see any spiritual growth in my life? Everybody tells me they can see it!” I reminded him that at Pentecost no man could see the flame over his own head, but he could see what was burning over his brother’s head. A word from the Scottish preacher George Morrison has buoyed me up in many a storm: “Men who do their best always do more though they be haunted by the sense of failure. Be good and true; be patient; be undaunted. Leave your usefulness for God to estimate. He will see to it that you do not live in vain.”

Be realistic as you assess your work. Avoid comparisons like the plague. I read enough religious publications and hear enough conversation to know that such comparisons are the chief indoor sport of preachers, but I try not to take them too seriously. “When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise” (2 Cor. 10:12). Whoever introduced the idea of competition into the ministry certainly assisted the enemy in his attack against the church. Although we are in conflict against those who preach a false gospel, we are not in competition with any who preach the true gospel. We are only in competition with ourselves. By the grace of God, we ought to be better preachers and pastors today than we were a year ago.

If we are to be better pastors and preachers, we must be better persons; and this means discipline and hard work. The “giants” I’ve lived with these many years were all hard workers. Campbell Morgan was in his study at six o’clock in the morning. His successor, John Henry Jowett, was also up early and into the books. “Enter your study at an appointed hour,” Jowett said in his lectures to the Yale divinity students in 1911-1912, “and let the hour be as early as the earliest of your businessmen goes to his warehouse or his office.” Spurgeon worked hard and had to take winter holidays to regain his strength. Obviously, we gain nothing by imperiling our health, but we lose much by pampering ourselves, and that is the greater danger.

If God has called you, then he has given you what you need to do the job. You may not have all that others have, or all you wish you had, but you have what God wants you to have. Accept it, be faithful to use it, and in due time God will give you more. Give yourself time to discover and develop your gifts. Accept nothing as a handicap. Turn it over to God and let him make a useful tool out of it. After all, that’s what he did with Paul’s thorn in the flesh.

Often I receive letters and telephone calls from anxious chairmen of pulpit committees, all of whom want me to suggest a pastor for their churches. “What kind of a pastor do you need right now?” I always ask, and the reply usually comes back, “Oh, a man who is about forty years old, a good preacher, evangelical.…” If I don’t interrupt them, they usually go on to describe a combination of Billy Graham, Charles Spurgeon, Jonathan Edwards, Mother Teresa, and The Lone Ranger.

“Forgive me,” I usually say when they take a breath, “but that’s not what I had in mind. What kind of ministry does your church need just now — evangelism, missions, administration, teaching, or what? After all, very few pastors can do everything.”

The long silence that follows tells me that Brother Chairman and his committee have not really studied their church to determine its present and future needs. How, then, can they ever hope to find the right pastor to meet those needs?

Preaching is not what we do; it’s what we are. When God wants to make a preacher, he has to make the person, because the work we do cannot be isolated from the life we live. God prepares the person for the work and the work for the person and, if we permit him, he brings them together in his providence. Knowing we are God’s person, in God’s place of choosing, to accomplish God’s special work ought to be sufficient encouragement for us to weather the storm and do our very best. God knows us better than we know ourselves. He’d never put us into a ministry where he could not build us and use us.

Copyright ©1986 Christianity Today

The post Your Preaching Is Unique appeared first on Christianity Today.

She was smart enough to know that reading a book doesn’t automatically solve your problems any more than reading a prescription (if you can read it) instantly makes you healthy. You have to process the material you read and then act upon it by faith.

In times of pressure and difficulty during more than fifty years of ministry, I’ve often turned to these books for enlightenment and encouragement:

The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis.

It’s available in numerous editions. Mine is a sturdy pocket edition published by Oxford University. Read slowly and meditatively, and don’t try to hide or put up defenses. The book brings you back to reality—and to God, who is the source of reality.

Sacred Songs and Solos (Marshall Pickering, 2001), compiled under the direction of Ira D. Sankey.

A hymnal? Yes. Only the words are in this handy volume, but what words! (I don’t sing them—I read them carefully.) Drinking again and again from these “old wells” has brought me untold peace and joy, and also conviction.

Christian Perfection (Harper and Row, 1947), by Francois Fenelon, edited by Charles F. Whiston.

This is a collection of Fenelon’s “spiritual letters” and other writings, and they are rich treasures indeed. As you read, pause to think and pray. Saunter. You’ll miss too much if you run.

The Pursuit of God (Christian Publications, 1982), by A. W. Tozer.

Like Fenelon, whom he admired and read, Tozer compressed a great deal of truth into brief sentences that immediately start you thinking. He calls me back to spiritual priorities, to the importance of solitude, to seeking to please God alone. Calm down! God is still on the throne!

The Biography of James Hudson Taylor (China Inland Mission, 1965), by Dr. and Mrs. Howard Taylor.

There’s also a Moody Press edition called J. Hudson Taylor: God’s Man in China (1982). I never tire of reading how God took time to make a man and then used that man to make a ministry that serves God faithfully even today. How Hudson Taylor learned about the “exchanged life” and shared the news with others is a gripping story—and you and I can be in it!

A Minister’s Obstacles (Revell, 1946), by Ralph G. Turnbull.

My friend Ralph Turnbull knew God, knew his Bible, and knew the ministry; and all three are woven together in this book. Brief penetrating chapters deal with “The Paralysis of Pride,” “The Peril of Privilege,” “The Snare of Substitutes,” and other topics we didn’t hear much about in school. This book needs to be reprinted.

A Diary of Readings (Oxford University Press, 1955), compiled by John Baillie.

Baillie explored the writings of the great, the scholarly, the godly, and the forgotten to give us an incredible anthology of spiritual truth “to engage serious thought” (the compiler’s words). It’s arranged for daily reading, but I don’t apologize for occasionally opening the book at random and reading it.

Henry David Thoreau advised, “Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all.” I don’t know what books will be best for you, but these books have been among the best for me.

Warren Wiersbe was senior pastor of Moody Church in Chicago, 1971-1978, and radio teacher on “Back to the Bible” until 1989. He is a regular speaker at Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire conferences. The 46th of his “Be” commentaries, Be Distinct: 2 Kings, will be released this month.

Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The post A Library for the Long Haul appeared first on Christianity Today.

Kroll rehearses a couple of lines from the opening of his message, enough to provide a sound check. Downing makes a few adjustments and signals that he’s ready. Kroll clears his throat one last time. “Okay, this would be program 6146,” he says. “It’s 16 minutes long because it’s a Monday program. Here’s the iq.” In the parlance of Back to the Bible, iq is “interactive question.”

Kroll wants his daily broadcast to sound informal, so he opens his 25-minute program with a question from his interlocutor, Don Hawkins. Kroll then talks for 16 minutes and Hawkins asks several questions afterward in a gentle and easygoing conversational style that allows Kroll to highlight some of the points from the day’s meditation.

The only problem is that Hawkins, who does a late-night call-in program, is seldom in the building when Kroll records the message, so it is Kroll himself who reads the question that he has scripted for Hawkins: “I like your topic this week, Wood, ‘becoming a caring Christian.’ There always seems to be a shortage of those kinds of people.” Kroll responds to himself, “Yeah, Don, that’s true, and it’s not a shortage of care among those who simply call themselves ‘Christian’ as opposed to being a Buddhist or a Muslim or something else. There’s a shortage of people who know the Bible. People go to church. People can quote John 3:16. They just don’t seem to be as caring as they need to be as Christians today.”

With that introduction behind him, Kroll segues into his radio message for the morning, a meditation on how “caring Christians walk differently.” Over the ensuing 16 minutes, Kroll alternates seamlessly between his outline and his Bible with the practiced ease of a veteran preacher and Bible-conference speaker, which he is. His speech occasionally betrays the hard, flat, Pittsburgh twang he picked up during a childhood in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania, before he set off for Bible school, seminary, and a career of teaching and preaching the Bible. Kroll had three stints at Practical Bible College near Binghamton, New York, for in stance—first as a student, then as professor in the early 1970s and finally as president from 1981 to 1990. It was then that he succeeded Warren W. Wiersbe as the third president and senior Bible teacher at Back to the Bible.

Kroll’s 16-minute allotment is rapidly drawing to a close. His eyes dart to the digital clock mounted on the far wall, and he glides into his conclusion. “Think of some of the ways that you can communicate through your lifestyle,” he says, “that you belong to Christ and that you care about others.” His cadence slows now. “Caring Christians walk differently. People know when you’re a caring Christian.”

It’s now time for Hawkins to interact with Kroll about his message, but Hawkins is still nowhere to be found; it’s not that he’s late to work, it’s only that his voice won’t be needed on this broadcast for several weeks. As Kroll delivered his radio message, Downing simultaneously recorded it digitally on a computer hard drive, made a backup copy onto a compact disk, and recorded another copy onto a cassette tape. “We want to make sure the message is clear and understandable,” he explains. “No technical distractions.”

As the digital version moves to Neal Thompson, director of production services, the cassette tape goes to another department at Back to the Bible, where someone transcribes the message and someone else writes a script for the later “spontaneous” exchange between Kroll and Hawkins. Weeks later, the two men gather in the studio and record the banter for several of the broadcasts. The conversational exchange for the program recorded today will be added to the end of Kroll’s remarks, and Thompson will then produce the final version. He repairs any verbal slip-ups. If necessary, Thompson can patch in a phrase or even a word from a previous broadcast, and if Kroll is a bit long-winded on any given day—say 16 minutes and 37 seconds, as on this morning—Thompson simply punches a few keys on his computer and the message magically compresses to 16 minutes. “He’ll be talking faster, but the pitch is the same,” Thompson says. He adds the music and patches in Kroll’s signoff: “Have a good and godly day, for of what lasting good is a good day if it is not also a godly day?”

The Back to the Bible program leaves the building by Internet to Colorado Springs, where a server sends it up to a satellite. The nearly 400 affiliate stations then take it “off the bird” in whatever format they need: digital, analog, even a reel-to-reel tape recorder.

Signing on

When Theodore Epp, the son of Russian immigrants, started Back to the Bible in 1939, he would have been thrilled to have a reel-to-reel tape recorder. Epp had been pastor of the Zoar Mennonite Church in Goltry, Oklahoma, but he resigned in 1936 to do evangelistic work with T. Myron Webb, a medical doctor turned preacher and radio evangelist. Epp occasionally filled in for Webb on the radio broadcast, also called Back to the Bible, all the while continuing his itinerant preaching. When Epp visited family in Nebraska, a young woman asked him, “Why don’t some of you radio preachers from Oklahoma come to Nebraska? We have no daily gospel broadcast here.”

Epp considered the idea, and in the spring of 1939 he drove to Lincoln with $95 in his pocket, $65 of which had been donated for the purpose of starting a radio ministry. The $65 bought him 15 minutes of airtime on a 250-watt station for three weeks. Epp, with the blessing of his mentor, called his live broadcast Back to the Bible, and it aired for the first time on May 1, 1939.

After moving his operations briefly to Grand Island, about 90 miles west of Lincoln, Epp returned to the state capital in February 1942. The broadcast added live music (usually a gospel quartet) and increased its reach through telephone connections to KMA in Shenandoah, Iowa, and WNAX in Yankton, South Dakota. Back to the Bible added a publishing division and a children’s program, and short-wave radio allowed its signal to reach Quito, Ecuador, by 1943.

Today, Back to the Bible has branches in 15 countries. “More people listen to me abroad,” Kroll says proudly, “than here in North America.”

Indeed, Kroll’s spacious office at the international headquarters of Back to the Bible, located in northeast Lincoln, bears the marks of a traveler. There’s an inlaid wooden table from India, an antique chest from China, a couple of black ebony sculptures; framed posters of Switzerland and Paris hang on the wall, and two globes sit on his desk. His entire office is festooned with dozens of olivewood figurines from Israel. “I’ve been to the Holy Land 40 times now,” Kroll says.

Bookshelves take up the entire wall behind his desk, although Kroll says he does most of his study at home. “I have always believed that the preparation of the messenger is more important than the preparation of the message,” he says. “I bear a special responsibility to prepare myself before coming to the microphone.”

Kroll sees himself as continuing the tradition of Bible teaching that Epp began at Back to the Bible in 1939. “I have the best job in the world,” he says. “They pay me to study the Bible.” Back to the Bible, he adds, has always been about substance. “I’m not here to entertain. I’m not here to instruct. I’m here to change lives.” He pauses for emphasis. “The Bible does that.”

Theologically, Back to the Bible hews closely to a conservative evangelicalism, bordering on classical fundamentalism.

Kroll’s messages, meanwhile, lack tendentiousness, and his avuncular style continues a tradition that he inherited from both Epp and Wiersbe. His on-air demeanor resembles not so much a learned professor as a chatty neighbor who has dropped by with some good news and a bit of practical advice. A recent program, for instance, offered detailed guidance on choosing a new Bible, including a discussion of the distinctions among genuine leather, bonded leather, and Kivar hardcover materials. “Type size, friends, is important,” Kroll declared.

But nothing is more important at Back to the Bible than the Bible itself. Like so many Protestant organizations in American history—the American Bible Society, the Gideons, Navigators, to name just a few—Back to the Bible centers on the dissemination and the understanding of the Scriptures. For more than half a millennium, since Johann Gutenberg invented movable type in the 1450’s, Christians have relied on successive forms of technology both to manufacture and distribute Bibles themselves and to spread their understandings of the Bible.

Throughout American history evangelicals have regularly looked for new ways to propagate the gospel. When George Whitefield, an itinerant preacher from England, traveled throughout the Atlantic colonies in the 1730s and 1740s, local preachers very often denied him access to their pulpits. Whitefield simply preached in a barn or in the village square or at venues like Society Hill in Philadelphia. There, Benjamin Franklin, a member of the audience, calculated that Whitefield’s stentorian voice could be heard by 10,000 people.

Whitefield’s very presence in Philadelphia presaged the ways in which technology would change the world: the embryonic Industrial Revolution moved traditional gathering places from churches to marketplaces and other new “social places,” like Society Hill. Whitefield also took advantage of new printing technologies to disseminate thousands upon thousands of pamphlets, magazines, and other materials.

Less than a century later, Methodist circuit riders brought the gospel to the frontier, especially the Cumberland Valley, and when the rail lines sliced across the continent, colporteurs rode the rails, carrying Bibles and tracts both to fellow travelers and to settlers along the way. In the 20th century, evangelicals embraced electronic media with unabashed enthusiasm. Aimee Semple McPherson and Charles E. Fuller used the radio airwaves to preach the gospel long before Franklin Roosevelt discovered the value of radio as a communications medium. In television, too, evangelicals seized the opportunity to flood the airwaves with the gospel, and their programming was remarkably more effective than that of Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants, whose idea of riveting television was to broadcast their Sunday-morning services.

Media bias?

But evangelicals have long worried about a different kind of fidelity—fidelity to the gospel—and the potential for distortions in the headlong plunge into technology. Did McPherson compromise the faith with her theatrical productions out in Los Angeles? Surely something was lost in the translation when Kathryn Kuhlman and Oral Roberts enjoined their auditors to place their hands on the radio receiver or the television set to receive divine healing.

Perhaps the largest distortions, both political and theological, occurred in the 1970s and 1980s with the rise of the televangelists. The preachers of the Religious Right largely abandoned the noble heritage of 19th-century evangelical activism, which fought for the interests of those on the margins of society, in favor of a conservatism virtually indistinguishable from the ideology of the Republican Party. Other television preachers peddled a feel-good message devoid of theological content, or they advanced the name-it-and-claim-it, God-will-make-you-rich heresy.

Was technology responsible for these distortions of the gospel? Probably not. Technology itself is morally neutral—it can be used both to eradicate disease and to obliterate entire cities, for instance—but as media technologies make other demands that amplify some of the worst tendencies in evangelicalism, especially the weakness for populism and the cult of personality. Many evangelicals, lacking creedal formulas or strong denominational organizations, tend to galvanize around charismatic preachers, who all too often fall into the trap of pandering to popular tastes and prejudices in order to shore up their popularity. Survival on radio or television depends upon the conjoined twins of ratings and contributions, so the temptation to play to the audience—whether by providing entertainment, by offering shallow affirmations or sensational predictions or by reinforcing the prevailing political nostrums—becomes for some too great to resist. At that point, a different form of “fidelity,” fidelity to the gospel, is sacrificed on the altar of popularity and approbation.

The alacrity with which evangelicals have embraced new forms of media, however, belies the popular stereotype that they are suspicious of innovation or technology. Nothing could be further from the truth, especially in the arena of communications technology, where evangelicals have been pioneers more often than naysayers.

Back to the Bible once again provides a case in point. “Ten years ago we were a radio ministry,” Kroll says. “Now we’re a media ministry.” At Back to the Bible that means changing the paradigm from broadcast only to a variety of media, including videocassettes, television, a “family of radio broadcasts” and the Internet. “We’re devising ways to hold people for longer than half an hour,” Kroll says.

For Back to the Bible the movement into other forms of media is a dicey one, and Kroll measures his words carefully for fear of offending his radio affiliates, on whom he depends to carry his programs. In truth, however, it is the radio stations that have abandoned Back to the Bible, to some degree, at least. More and more affiliates in recent years have changed their formats—fm stations moving to music and am to talk—and in the process they have cast aside more substantive programs like Back to the Bible.

The classic Bible teachers, those who approach the microphone with an open Bible and little else, are falling out of favor in the media world (and perhaps in evangelicalism generally), but Kroll refuses to give up the fight. He says that when he teaches the Bible he asks three questions: What does the Bible say? What does the Bible mean? How does it apply to my life? More and more evangelicals, he laments, skip over the first two questions in their rush to the third. “We’re becoming bottom-liners,” he says. “When we do that, we lose Bible literacy.”

But even in the face of what he calls “church lite” (more taste, less filling), Kroll detects a growing hunger for understanding the Bible, not merely applying the Bible. He notes that although Back to the Bible’s largest demographic is, predictably, 55 and older, its second-largest is 18-25. Reaching this audience—and keeping its attention—requires new strategies, and it requires vaulting into new technological territories.

“Technology, for us, is really the name of the game,” Kroll says. “We’re committed to using every medium at our disposal to reach every person in the world.”

If technology is the name of the game at Back to the Bible, the name of the technology person is Chad Williams, a tall, athletic man who bears the title Director of Internet Services. His office cubicle is tidy, and he uses phrases such as “growth curve” and “philosophy of an effective Web site” with effortless familiarity. After graduating from Grace University in 1993, Williams started his own home-based computer business. Back to the Bible hired an outside contractor to build a Web site in April 1996, and Williams came on staff the next year to develop it further. When he started in 1997, about 400,000 people visited the Web site every month. Today, Backtothebible.org receives more than 1.675 million “page visits” a month. Six staff members keep the Web site going, and people from 185 countries have visited the site.

It’s not difficult to understand why. The Web site is attractive and (in the jargon of the Internet) user-friendly. You can watch a videotaped greeting from Kroll, click on today’s meditation or take the Bible Challenge quiz, the most popular page on the site, which offers multiple-choice answers to such questions as: “Abraham’s servant gave what gifts to Rebekah, Isaac’s future wife?” The site provides “hot buttons” to all of Back to the Bible’s programs as well as to a section called “Getting to Know God.”

There’s a chat room (“Big Questions”), a way to make a contribution online, and the inevitable store for ordering books, calendars, CDs, music, tracts, and gifts. Transcripts for all of Back to the Bible’s radio programs are available online, together with a search capability; a Sunday-school teacher, for example, can type in “marriage” and instantly gain access to radio transcripts addressing that topic. Staff members answer about 1,200 e-mails a month generated by visitors to the Web site.

One of Back to the Bible’s more popular programs in recent years is The Bible Minute, a 90-second spot “demonstrating the daily relevance of God’s Word.” Although it was devised for radio stations—”especially suited for drive-time hours,” the organization’s promotional materials read—Williams and the Web people at Back to the Bible have adapted it to the information age. If you visit The Bible Minute Web page (backtothebible.org/minute), you can click a small icon at the bottom of the page and download a transcript of today’s Bible Minute for your Palm Pilot.

Maintenance of the Web site itself is time-consuming. The organization has enlisted volunteers to transcribe some of the programs, and the Web team is always looking for new material. “Every six to 12 months we like to refurbish the Web site so it has a different design, look, and feel,” Williams says. The site itself is updated approximately half a dozen times a day. “We send the changes by Internet to the server in Grand Rapids, Michigan,” Williams says. (The site is hosted by Gospel Communications’ Gospelcom.net.) “We just press a button and, boom, it’s live,” meaning that the changes have gone into effect.

Where is all of this technology going? Williams laughs. “That’s a good question,” he says. “The challenge when you’re part of a ministry with limited resources is to know where to invest your time and resources.

“Maybe in five years we’ll have more people listening to us over the Internet than over the airwaves,” Kroll allows, “but radio is still our flagship. We’re going to ride this flagship forever.”

Kroll also takes a larger view, recognizing that all media have limitations in light of Jesus’ command to go into all the world and preach the gospel. “There will always be a need for live bodies,” he says. “Someone in India once told me that they regard Back to the Bible as God’s Air Force, but we still need ground troops.” Kroll shifts in his chair and considers the implications of the Incarnation—the Word made flesh—on media ministries like Back to the Bible. “Obviously, I want people to know that there are real human beings involved with our ministry, but using media as a form to get the message out doesn’t bother me.”

Randall Balmer is Ann Whitney Olin Professor of American Religious History at Barnard College, Columbia University, and author of Blessed Assurance: A History of Evangelicalism in America.

Copyright © 2001 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere

Back to the Bible‘s site offers free PDA downloads of “Bible Minute” and free Bible studies, like this one from Galatians.

A “history of evangelism and mass media” has disappeared off its servers, but can still be read through Google’s cache.

WFAX, a Washington D.C. Christian radio station, offers a history of Christian radio broadcasting.

Read more on Calvin, Luther, McPherson, and Fuller‘s use of technology.

See Christianity Today‘s “Not Your Grandfather’s Mission Field” which describes how evangelical in organizations like Wycliffe Bible Translators have used technology to further their proclamation of the Gospel.

Balmer’s Blessed Assurance: A History of Evangelicalism in America is available from Amazon.com and other online retailers.

Balmer has written several articles for Christianity Today including:

The Kinkade Crusade | “America’s most collected artist” is a Christian who seeks to sabotage Modernism by painting beauty, sentiment, and the memory of Eden. (Dec. 8, 2000)

Hymns on MTV | Combining mainstream appeal with spiritual depth, Jars of Clay is shaking up Contemporary Christian Music. (Nov. 15, 1999)

Still Wrestling with the Devil | A visit with Jimmy Swaggart ten years after his fall. (March 2, 1998)

Hollywood’s Renegade Apostle | Unless films like The Apostle succeed, other worthy motion pictures stand little chance of being produced. (April 6, 1998)

The post The Wireless Gospel appeared first on Christianity Today.

Bowling Alone

The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam (Simon & Schuster, 2000)

This is not a book about revival in the spiritual sense, but it explains well how our family-oriented society collapsed into mall-culture and offers a few signs of renewal. Pastors will need to make the applications to ministry. Putnam’s big book (414 pp. plus endnotes) is punctuated by charts and graphs and lots of quotable statistics.

The American Paradox

Spiritual Hunger in an Age of Plenty by David G. Myers (Yale, 2000)

This is church-league “Bowling.” Myers, a psychology professor at Hope College, analyzes post-war trends in marriage and divorce, crime, media, and morality, and draws some implications for society and for people of faith.

Mustard Seed Versus McWorld

Reinventing Life and Faith for the Future by Tom Sine (Baker, 1999)

Sine approaches the trend data from a Christian perspective and brings to his findings an agenda for a simpler, faith-driven lifestyle. Sine’s engaging anecdotes from around the world are joined with recommendations for local churches to seed their own communities. The pastor whose congregation is younger, active, and aware of issues of environment, consumerism, and economic justice will appreciate Sine’s contribution.

Escape from Church, Inc.

The Return of the Pastor-Shepherd by E. Glenn Wagner (Zondervan, 1999)

After a sojourn as vice president of Promise Keepers, Wagner returned to a pastorate. Once there, he articulated the conviction that had been growing throughout his ministry and in his work with pastors through the men’s movement: pastors are shepherds, first, foremost, and finally. Too many have swallowed the heresy that contemporary pastors are more managers and marketers, Wagner says. He salts this admonition with biblical models and peppers it with present-day examples.

Jesus the Pastor

Leading Others in the Character and Power of Christ by John W. Frye (Zondervan, 2000)

The foreword is by Eugene Peterson, and that says a lot about Frye’s concept of the pastor. Frye draws on his personal experience in ministry and his encounters with the living Christ as much as he does the Gospel accounts to show how Jesus pastors.

They Call Me Pastor

How to Love the Ones You Lead by H.B. London and Neil Wiseman (Regal, 2000)

The 45 essays here read like articles in London’s Internet newsletter, “Pastor’s Briefing,” published by Focus on the Family. They are brief, direct, usually open with a personal story from the author’s ministry, and conclude with three or four exhortations. These short treatises aren’t anything a pastor couldn’t have come up with himself. Their merit is that someone else experienced the life, processed it, and penned a few lessons. The “me, too” factor makes the book worth perusing.

The Pastor’s Playbook

Coaching Your Team for Ministry by Stan Toler and Larry Gilbert (Beacon Hill, 2000)

Toler is a pastor. Gilbert founded Church Growth Institute. Both are advocates of team ministry. This little book (151 pp.) is for pastors who are perplexed by all the talk of team ministry. Chock full of steps, lists, and bullet statements, this really is a playbook for those who need to make the move from player or manager to coach.

The Dynamics of Spiritual Formation

by Mel Lawrenz (Baker, 2000)

Stuart Briscoe’s longtime associate and soon-to-be successor, Lawrenz shows how the regular activities of church, from Bible study to usher duty, are part of the spiritual formation of the believer. This is helpful for the pastor who struggles to find value in the ordinary and who is tempted to abandon familiar tactics in favor of untried. This is volume six in the series “Ministry Dynamics for a New Century.”

The Dynamics of Pastoral Care

by David Wiersbe (Baker, 2000)

In the fifth volume in the “Ministry Dynamics” series edited by his father, Warren, Wiersbe espouses the pastor-as-shepherd model of ministry in several chapters, but most of the book is simple how-to’s on such topics as visitation and leading worship.

NOTE: For your convenience, the following products, which were mentioned above, are available for purchase:

• Bowling Alone, by Robert D. Putnam
• The American Paradox, by David G. Myers
• Mustard Seed Versus McWorld, by Tom Sine
• Escape from Church, Inc., by E. Glenn Wagner
• Jesus the Pastor, by John W. Frye
• They Call Me Pastor, by H.B. London and Neil Wiseman
• The Pastor’s Playbook, by Stan Toler and Larry Gilbert
• The Dynamics of Spiritual Formation, by Mel Lawrenz
• The Dynamics of Pastoral Care, by David Wiersbe

Copyright © 2000 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The post BiblioFile Pages on Pastoring appeared first on Christianity Today.

John Bisagno reinvented his preaching three times during his ministry at Houston’s First Baptist Church. An evangelist when he was called there in 1970, Bisagno made the transition to doctrinal sermons. Later he began exegeting longer passages as his congregation developed a taste for expository preaching. About five years ago, Bisagno detected another shift in his listeners, and, at age 60, adopted “principle preaching.”

Warren Wiersbe reinvented his preaching in the later years of his ministry at the Moody Memorial Church. “Be competent” would be the advice of the respected expositor. His new book, The Dynamics of Preaching (Baker, 1999), includes an annotated bibliography to help us understand how listeners, and thus preachers, are changing. Here are some of his picks.

Christ-Centered Preaching

Bryan Chapell (Baker, 1994) Chapell brings excitement to expository preaching by employing new treatments for old forms.

The Sermon as Symphony

Mike Graves (Judson, 1997) Graves pleads for “form-sensitive” sermons. He examines ten literary forms in the New Testament and illustrates with contemporary sermons how these texts can be preached.

The Company of Preachers

David L. Larsen (Kregel, 1998) The best choice for a comprehensive one-volume history. Opening with Old Testament prophets, it concludes at the death of A. W. Tozer in 1963.

Marketplace Preaching

Calvin Miller (Baker, 1996) As in his earlier Spirit, Word and Story (Word, 1989), Miller focuses on the sermon as story and the need to understand the thinking of media-influenced listeners.

Preaching Christ Today

Thomas F. Torrance (Eerdmans, 1994) The theologian shows how the preacher and the scientist have more in common than they imagine.

Wiersbe’s choices were on our list. Here are a few more books not previously reviewed in LEADERSHIP for your consideration:

Pitfalls in Preaching

Richard L. Eslinger (Eerdmans, 1996) The path from pulpit to pew is fraught with hazards. Eslinger points to faulty preaching practices that are commonly accepted, even encouraged. This is a good checkup for those who have been in the pulpit awhile.

Anointed Expository Preaching

Stephen Olford (Broadman and Holman, 1998) The skilled expositor unpacks his sermon prep method, but his greater contribution here is urging and explaining preparation of the preacher.

Preaching with Spiritual Passion

Ed Rowell (Bethany House, 1998) Part of our series on The Pastor’s Soul, this volume calls us to stay fresh in the pastorate and in the pulpit.

Power in the Pulpit

Jerry Vines and Jim Shaddix (Moody, 1999) Vines’s two works on developing and delivering expository sermons have been revised, expanded, and combined in this single edition.

The Four Pages of the Sermon

Paul Scott Wilson (Abingdon, 1999) Wilson brings biblical times and the present world together with a four-phase sermon form: the problem, then and now, followed by the solution, then and now. He likens this approach to the unfolding of a movie plot.

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