From the Top of a Banana Box
When I was studying to be a Minister of the Gospel, my student churches were two adjacent wooden churches in the inner slum areas of Melbourne. For seven years during the 1950’s and early 1960’s the people of those inner slum areas were my parish.
Looking back on it I guess I must have looked very much like a boy preacher. I started preaching during my 17th year but I had been preparing for it for some time. All my first sermons were preached to a congregation of none in the quietness of the lounge room of my mother’s house. My first pulpit was an upturned banana box on top of a piano stool. It held my notes and I took turns in leaning upon it, leaning over it, holding onto it and thumping it as I went through my sermon manuscripts.
No one had taught me to preach. I had not read any “teach yourself to preach” books. All I knew was that the example of preaching that I had been hearing for many years in our own local church in Box Hill was not quite the kind of preaching that I wanted to emulate.
I wanted preaching to be vital and alive, full of interesting comment on events that were happening at that moment in the newspapers and magazines, and bringing to bear insights from the Bible.
Not knowing where to turn for material and not having much water in the bottom of my own well, I had been cutting out articles from magazines like “The Readers’ Digest” for some time. I re‑wrote these into a style that suited myself, placed carefully some Biblical quotations and insights, and thought that that made a sermon. My ignorance was only surpassed by my confidence.
I put together those sermons, wrote out pages of notes and standing in the empty lounge room with the upturned banana box in front of me, preached to imaginary congregations.
The first sermon I really got working well came originally from a sermon written by Dr. Peter Marshall who was quite in vogue at that time following his tragic death. Dr. Marshall, who was the subject of the film “A Man Called Peter” was the Chaplain to the United States Senate. A book of his sermons called “Mr. Jones, Meet The Master” had just been published and a condensed version of one of his sermons entitled “Disciples in Clay” had featured in “The Readers’ Digest”.
I took this Readers’ Digest condensed version of his sermon, adapted it and worked it over and over.
Just after my 18th birthday I was invited to take an evening service in the Newmarket Church of Christ.
I organized friends from my home church and some relatives who lived near Newmarket to attend that night. I looked forward to that first sermon with tremendous enthusiasm and practiced preaching it on the upturned banana box in my lounge room until I was very familiar with every part of it. I even wrote out every word for conducting the rest of the service including the prayers, the reading, a poem I had found, the welcome to people and the announcements and all the other bits and pieces that went to make an interesting evening service.
What my banana box did not prepare me for, however, I discovered thirty seconds after walking out onto the platform before the congregation ‑ there was a microphone in the pulpit. I had not been prepared for the microphone and it rather mesmerized me. Knowing how off‑putting it can be for people to move in close to a microphone and then far away from it, all that first night I maintained a steady distance from the microphone in order to give the listeners the right level of microphone help. I need not have bothered. I found out later that it was not plugged in! It was not even a microphone for amplifying my voice through loud speakers, but a microphone to amplify the sound into some sets of hearing aids for deaf listeners, none of whom were present anyway!
I should not have been overawed by the congregation. True, my friends had come from the Box Hill willing to help out a young student in his first sermon, and my Aunty and Uncle and a couple of cousins were there. Together my friends and relatives swelled the congregation. The fact was there were 14 people in the church that night including myself, and eleven of them were my friends and relatives.
I preached Dr. Peter Marshall’s sermon “Disciples in Clay” with tremendous enthusiasm.
On the way out of church that night, one of the two Newmarket people who were there, a young girl about 16, came up to me and without batting an eye said, “I really loved that sermon. That was a magnificent presentation tonight. It really moved me, I really loved that sermon.”
My ego swelled up and my head nearly burst at such praise. Then she went on “Yes, I really loved that sermon. In fact it was one of the best The Readers’ Digest ever published!”
Talk about being deflated. The air went out of me quicker than a balloon which has been let go.
From that moment on I learnt to avoid The Readers’ Digest and I have never used anything in The Readers’ Digest subsequently as a source for likely sermon insights.
Other students also had problems with their preaching. I remember a student friend of mine, a former farmer named Cliff. He was a big strong rugged fellow but he had problems with some of his words. He would frequently use a wrong word which sounded something like the right word, sometimes with disastrous results.
He was preaching in the other little wooden church at Ascot Vale one day close to Easter. He was telling the story of how the Apostle Peter betrayed Christ on the night before his crucifixion. Cliff made the point quite clearly that Peter followed Jesus into the courtyard of the High Priest, and stood round the fire as it was burning in the centre of the courtyard. Using a touch of dramatic realism said “And there stood Peter, in the High Priest’s courtyard, warming his hands on the brassiere.” From that moment on none of the women in the congregation could stop laughing and several of the men guffawed out loudly. Poor Cliff’s sermon was lost, but I am quite sure that he learnt what the distinction was between a brazier and a brassiere.
Another of my student preacher friends, Ivan, was speaking close to Easter on a great passage from 1 Corinthians 15:12 about the importance and the significance of the resurrection. In this passage the Apostle Paul says “Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead how can some of you say that there is no resurrection from the dead? And if there is no resurrection from the dead then Christ has not been raised, and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. And if Christ has not been raised your faith is futile and you are still in your sins and those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. For if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men the most to be pitied.”
As you can see Paul’s powerful argument hinges on that small word “IF”. Because if Christ has not been raised from the dead then these serious consequences follow.
Ivan had missed out the little word “if” and breaking up the verse into its constituent parts preached on the Sunday before Easter that:
1 there was no resurrection from the death,
2 that Christ has not been raised,
3 our preaching is in vain,
4 our faith is in vain,
5 the dead have not been raised,
6 our faith is futile,
7 you are still in your sins,
8 and your loved ones have perished.
His conclusion was: we are, of all men, the most to be pitied.
I wondered completely how any man could ever manage to preach those words without realizing the significance of that little word “if”, and without making us all see that these are the consequences if Christ had not been raised from the dead. Ivan never learnt to go on to say what the other side of the issue is, that because Christ has been raised from the dead then our faith is confidence, our life is assured, the dead are raised, and we of all people rejoice in the Easter hope.
Many people ask me when I first started to preach without being dependent upon notes.
The source of that habit came by accident. I was preaching one day in the little wooden church at Ascot Vale. The pulpit was beside a wide open window which had been opened to catch a breath of fresh air on a stifling hot summer Sunday. I was not long into my sermon when a gust of wind blew in the window and twelve pages of handwriting slid off the pulpit and fluttered down in all directions and in complete disorder onto the floor beneath. I suddenly realized that every eye in the congregation was riveted upon me wondering what I would do next. Nothing could have been done to caught people’s attention more than it was at that moment. I instantly thought “All of these people are wondering what I am going to do and they are waiting to laugh as I go down out of the pulpit, pick up all the pages, sort them into order and then go on.” Then I had a second thought “If I cannot remember it when I am preaching it, how can I expect people to remember what I have said when they go home?”
At that moment I decided to take the risk and preach the rest of the sermon without going down to pick up my notes. Everybody’s attention was upon me waiting to find out when I would stumble and stop, having run out of material. I kept my eye fixed upon everyone and there was magnificent eye contact. I finished the sermon as I had prepared it and made all the points that I felt necessary and not for one instance did anybody’s attention wander away.
I had discovered the secret of communicating with people by looking them in the eye.
Although I have often used notes since in more than 15,000 sermons I have prepared, always on the most of important occasions I preach without notes in order to keep that eye contact.
After that day I ventured down from the pulpit, preaching beside it, then a little away from it, and then finally preaching in the centre of the platform without notes and without any pulpit and with no barrier between myself and the people. The further I got away from the pulpit the more intense was the contact. Ever since I have written out my sermons in full, and generally speaking, preached without notes.
Later that year was my first Christmas service. It was an important occasion because all the churches of the area gathered together in a large Christmas service. The combined churches packed out the huge church in which we all gathered.
I had been asked to preach the Christmas Day sermon and I was shaking with fear during the hymn prior to my sermon. My nervousness must have been very obvious because the elderly Baptist minister reached across and placed his hand on my arm in a steadying influence and said something absurd which broke the tension and greatly relieved my fear. In the midst of this enthusiastic hymn while everybody was singing about shepherds watching their flocks by night, the Baptist minister said to me “People have funny faces when they are singing, don’t they?”
As I gazed down from the high pulpit I suddenly realized the truth of the matter and began to chuckle. My nervousness ceased and I commenced that sermon with a totally relaxed frame of mind.
After a little while in those two wooden churches I realized that preaching was the most important thing that a man could ever do. Because it has eternal consequences. A person can be made right with God eternally through the foolishness of what we preaching. I printed a sign upon the top of my pulpit where no one else could read it except myself which said “No man can at the same time present himself as important and Jesus Christ as Lord.” I have read that quotation thousands of times and I have sought to follow it in practice.
The task was to present Jesus Christ as Lord. That became the main feature behind everything that was said and preached. And over the next few years people did become Christians. That girl who had read the sermon written by Peter Marshall made her commitment to Christ, then her sister and friend; a whole group of boys who were on probation made their commitment to Christ and changed their entire lifestyle. Then some men who came on parole from prison made their commitments to Christ, and some parents of children who attended the little Sunday School and a whole host of teenagers from the high school where I used to conduct classes and then the young man with whom I had lunch once a week for two or three years discussing the faith, a young science graduate with his Masters degree in science and later his PhD completed, confessed faith in Christ. He too was baptized and came within the fellowship of the faith.
The pulpit may have been of polished wood but it was the old upended banana box standing on the piano stool that became the first pulpit from which the riches of Christ and His salvation were proclaimed.
At least that is the way I used to think about it as I finished off those services and walked out into the heavy air of a Sunday evening with the wind blowing from the abattoirs and started my motor bike, and headed back to The College of the Bible to continue training for the ministry, thinking about my meeting with some of God’s children in Newmarket.
GORDON MOYES
