Sermonising
As soon as Gordon decided to become a Churches of Christ minister he began gaining experience by volunteering to speak at youth camps and any other suitable church activity.
Most evenings while the rest of the family pursued their own activities, he shut himself in the front room and practised for these appointments. He pushed the big square gramophone out of the way and pulled the pianola stool forward. He brought a wooden box in from the laundry, balanced it on the stool and that became the pulpit on which to spread his sermon notes.
At crucial points in his discourse he thumped the box’s uneven surface; when he made an earnest appeal he leaned perilously across its rickety boards. His congregation—mother’s glass-fronted china cabinet—remained unmoved.
Gordon knew that ministers sometimes read a little poem during their sermons, or told a story, or used an interesting anecdote to illustrate a Biblical point. So he began gathering suitable material from the Reader’s Digest, church papers and religious magazines. By the end of the year he had a bulging file.
For hours he pored over his bits of information, trying to meld them into some semblance of a sermon. He refused to ask help from any local clergy—he did not care for their ponderous style. He wanted his type of preaching to be more lively. Something that would guarantee to keep his hearers awake.
Then he discovered an easier way. The Reader’s Digest published an abridged form of the newest best-seller: “Mr Jones, Meet the Master,” the collected sermons of Peter Marshall, late chaplain to the United States Senate. Gordon read and re-read it.
One sermon particularly appealed to him. “Disciples in Clay” told how Jesus had taken a motley group of twelve men, most of whom were uneducated fishermen, and changed them into a band of brave leaders of the early church.
He read that sermon many times, added a few thoughts of his own, altered the texts and turned the sequences around, until he convinced himself that “Disciples in Clay” was his own creation.
Shortly after his eighteenth birthday the Newmarket Church of Christ in Melbourne invited him to take an evening service.
Gordon guessed that the congregation would not be large so he invited his relatives who lived near Newmarket to attend. Beverley and some of the Box Hill Church youth came too, and his own sister, Lorna, and dear Miss Perry and her sister Maggie.
Counting himself and three members of the Newmarket church, a fourteen person congregation heard Gordon’s first sermon. Naturally “Disciples in Clay” was the chosen topic.
Nervousness was not normally one of Gordon’s problems and he had practised the sermon so often he could have preached it in his sleep; but just to be on the safe side he wrote out every word. He also wrote down the entire order of service from the words of welcome right through to the benediction. Satisfied that he had done everything he could to ensure success, he confidently mounted the steps to the pulpit.
His self-assurance deserted him the moment he stepped onto the platform and saw the microphone. He hadn’t counted on that. For just a moment he stared hypnotized by this symbol of twentieth century progress, then his mind went into top gear.
From a hearer’s point of view, he knew how aggravating it was when a speaker moved too close to a microphone and thundered at his audience, or moved too far away from it and the listeners could not hear him.
All right, he wouldn’t do that. Gordon grimly concentrated on maintaining an even distance between himself and the microphone. It meant that his delivery was more `wooden’ than he had planned, and he couldn’t execute the dramatic gesture that would have enhanced his climax, but he felt satisfied that the congregation heard every word.
(It did nothing for Gordon’s self-esteem when he found out several weeks later, that the microphone was not connected to a set of loud-speakers at all. It was a microphone that amplified sound into sets of hearing-aids which the church had installed for several partially deaf members—who were not present on that particular night).
It seemed to Gordon that a lifetime passed during that service but eventually it was over. With his knees still shaking from the ordeal he positioned himself at the church door and shook hands with his departing friends and relatives and the three members of the Newmarket Church of Christ.
Last to leave was a girl who appeared to be slightly younger than he. As they shook hands she looked him straight in the eyes and said, “I enjoyed that sermon tonight. It got through to me.”
Gordon beamed proudly. He felt his head swelling just a little as he gave her hand another shake.
“Yes,” she continued. “I liked that one best of all the Peter Marshall sermons printed in the Reader’s Digest.”
Gordon dropped her hand as if it had suddenly become red-hot. That humiliating experience taught him an important lesson—never try to pass off another’s material as your own—someone will recognize your source.
However, he must have done something right that night because even before he began his theological studies, Newmarket and Ascot Vale, two inner city Churches of Christ in Melbourne, invited him to fill their pulpit in the New Year.
With his first preaching experience over Gordon breathed more easily—until he realized that when he became a minister he’d have to prepare a different sermon for the next Sunday, and the next, and the Sunday after that.
Incredibly by the time he finished preparing his second sermon he had used up everything of worth in his year-long collection of poems and cuttings. Now what could he do?
Gordon had been a Sunday School teacher for years and led the boys’ club and youth camps and even some teen study groups, but preaching was immensely different. He not only needed to know more about the Bible, but more about people’s needs and how the Christian faith met those needs. In desperation he bought or borrowed books on homiletics and theology and studied them. They were as dry as woodchips.
“Those people in the slums of Newmarket wouldn’t understand a word of this,” He closed one book with a bang. “What can I preach about that is relevant to them?”
He read books of sermons written by past great preachers, but he found nothing that he felt answered today’s needs.Remembering some of the discussions he and his peers had indulged in, He prepared material on “Creation or Evolution.” That was a most interesting topic and he enjoyed assembling proofs for what he believed, but it didn’t turn out suitable for a sermon.
Well, what about something like “Christ and the Philosophy of the Ages?” With high school studies of history still fresh in his mind he made a valiant effort to compress thousands of years of history into material for a sermon. That didn’t work either.
Like most young college and university students Gordon was fascinated with the various philosophies and politics of his era, so he began preparing a sermon on “Communism and the Bridge of Time.” It proved such a failure that he made no attempt to even finish it.
Next he tried religious topics such as the Problem of Suffering, the Reality of Heaven and Hell, the Equality of all Mankind. Nothing seemed right for him to preach to inner-city churches.
Day after day Gordon prayed: “Lord, what shall I preach about?” Each time he asked the question the only answer that came to his mind was one word, “Jesus.”
Jesus? What about Jesus? His parables? His miracles? His sinless life? Slowly his enthusiasm grew. The more he pondered the questions the more certain he became that he should preach about Jesus. He would begin by telling the people how he had found salvation through Jesus, and how much Jesus meant to him.
So the third sermon that Gordon prepared and preached was titled “The Central Character of the Centuries.” In it he told in his own words the marvellous story of the incarnation and what it meant. The congregation responded so well to the simple gospel story that his next sermon was “Our Unfailing Resources in Christ.” That night he stressed that Christ will help us to meet all of life’s burdens and difficulties.
Week by week Gordon preached Christ-centred sermons and the congregation began to take notice. He found that people didn’t want to learn about philosophy or politics, or listen to clever sermons on modern issues; they were hungry to hear about Jesus.
Soon the congregation began to grow. The beginning handful became fifty, then sixty, then seventy-two. As time went on Gordon prepared a series of sermons about the sayings of Christ: “I Am the Truth,” “I Am the Way,” “I Am the Bread of Life” and so on. When that ended he began a new series on the dynamic personality of Jesus: “The Authority of Jesus,” “The Divinity of Jesus,” “The Respect of Jesus,” and many more.
Gordon became so fascinated with the person and doctrine of Jesus Christ that as years went by he literally preached thousands of sermons about this central character of the centuries. The more he preached about Christ, the more people came and the more were converted. He had discovered that it is not dramatic preaching but the miracle of God’s grace that changes people’s lives.
Nothing less than perfect satisfied Gordon. He did not memorize his sermons, but in his efforts to make sure there were no mistakes, he read them. He purchased an ancient typewriter and with two fingers tapped out every word he planned to say, then he read and re- read the manuscript and practised suitable gestures.
So Gordon relied on manuscript sermons until one stifling summer day when he preached in the little timber church at Ascot Vale. An open window beside the pulpit let in a breath of fresh air, but a quarter way through the sermon a sudden gust lifted his twelve pages of notes and sent them fluttering like birds.
The congregation gasped and straightened in their pews as the papers scattered. Clearly they expected their deeply embarrassed student minister to step down from the pulpit to pick up his pages, get them back in order and proceed with the sermon.
But Gordon’s pride would not allow him to do that. Instead, in a split second he thought, “If I can’t remember a sermon that I’ve prepared, written out and practised, how can I expect the people to remember what I’ve said when they go home?”
Ignoring the scattered notes he continued preaching as if nothing had happened. To his delight he recalled the sequence of points in his sermon and what he had planned to say. Then he noticed something else. The congregation sat with their attention rivetted on his face as he spoke to them directly, letting his glance rest first on one and then on another. He had made an electrifying discovery concerning a new level of communication—eye contact.
After that memorable Sunday Gordon no longer felt bound to stand at a pulpit. At first he ventured to stand beside the pulpit, then away from it, then he descended from it to the platform where there was no barrier between himself and the people. As the years of his ministry progressed it was the strengthening of these innovations which made his ministry so popular and effective.
Although he still wrote out the major portion of his sermons Gordon always made sure that there was ample opportunity for eye contact with his listeners. As time went by he gradually weaned himself from reading sermons until after some years he could preach extemporaneously, or from the most meagre notes.
For a long time composing sermons remained a difficult task. As well as the Bible he had a head full of ideas, thousands of paper clippings, and some eight thousand typed quotations. Yet years later, when he re-read some of those early efforts, he marvelled that his ignorance was only overshadowed by his confidence and that in turn was surpassed by the patience of his hearers.
