Sixty years of preaching
September 2, 2008 (Tuesday)
A pleasant surprise awaited me at Timbergrove Baptist Church Sunday, as a special lunch was held after worship services. I received congratulatory cards, and we had a wonderful barbecue meal. My children and their families were invited and there were ten of them here. All of this was to join me in celebration of sixty years since my first sermon at Liberty Road Baptist Church in Houston on Labor Day weekend, 1948. The lunch and guests were a complete surprise. I never suspected they were planning it. To all I give my heartfelt thanks.
My first sermon was a topical message based upon a verse of Scripture, Philippians 2:5, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.” The subject was, “Living as Jesus,” and the five or six points of the message were based upon the verses of Philippians 2 and upon my own ideas of what Jesus was like, as a man. I have lost the outline, but I recall one of the points was “Be humble,” based upon the verse, “He humbled Himself” (Phil 2:7). Another was “Overcome temptation,” based upon Jesus’ resistance when the Devil tempted Him (Luke 4). I’m sure I could reconstruct the sermon, given enough time to think about it. All in all, it wasn’t bad, considering the fact that I’d been in church only two months.
I preached for ten years and pastored three churches before taking a seminary course in preaching, in which I learned how to organize a message based upon a Bible text, telling the old story from the Bible in contemporary terminology. I shall always be thankful for Dr. Gordon Clinard, my professor. From that time on, my sermons were more easily understood by the congregation. That course was followed by a course in sermon delivery, taught by Dr. Ken Chafin, and that helped me, too. I’m thankful for those two courses in preaching and the men who taught them. I’m thankful for the privilege God has given me by calling me to preach His message.