Every Pastor Should Read This

A wonderful extract from Making Men Whole (p.75 -76) beautifully explaining the incredible honor and task of any communicator of the gospel. As usual, JBP brings fresh clarity and freshness to things that are easily passed over.

“The work of the pastor of human souls is a vocation about which I naturally know rather more. And here, if we are as Christ was, "gentle and humble in heart" (St. Matthew xi. 29) the cost is often high. To listen patiently, to use skilfully imaginative sympathy, to advise wisely - these things all carry something of the price of redemption. Those of us who try not only to sort out human muddles but to strip away misconceptions and prejudices which prevent the soul from seeing its God, know that we have a work with its own peculiar tears and toil and sweat. The preacher and the writer may seem to have an apparently easy task. At first sight it may seem that they have only to proclaim and declare; but in fact, if their words are to enter men's hearts and bear fruit, they must be the right words shaped cunningly to pass men's defences and explode silently and effectually within their minds. This means in practice turning a face of flint towards the easy cliché, the well-worn religious cant and phraseology, dear no doubt to the faithful but utterly meaning­ less to those outside the fold. It means learning how people are thinking and how they are feeling; it means learning with patience, imagination and ingenuity the way to pierce apathy or blank lack of understanding. I sometimes wonder what hours of prayer and thought lie behind the apparently simple and spontaneous parables of the Gospels. It is not enough for us who are preachers or writers to give an adequate performance before the eyes and ears of our fellow writers and preachers; instead we have the formidable task of reconciling the Word of truth with the thought-forms of a people estranged from God; interpreting without changing or diluting the essential Word.”