The actor Adrian Edmundson speaks about his comic influences, these including Laurel and Hardy, Spike Milligan and Flannagan and Allen.
He suggested that all the jokes that human beings have told and are telling, were once told by Laurel and Hardy. Their playbook contains the whole range of comic humour, so every other comedian is merely recycling the standards in a slightly different form.
For some preachers committed to preaching the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, there is a great suspicion of novelty. Maybe you have heard preachers say that if a preacher says something original, it probably is not true?
I often find that when I think that I am being original I soon remember or discover that it has been said before, and often better by a member of my Dead Preachers Society.
Other preachers are desperate never to be caught preaching something is “old hat” or doing so in a style that is archaic. I might have mentioned before the ambition of the mega-church preacher, Bill Hybels, to never use a Spurgeon quote in a sermon.
For Hybels, quoting the famous 19th Century Baptist preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a homiletical faux pas. For many preachers it is a badge of honour.
I have sympathy for both positions. We do need a good reason to quote a 19th Century preacher in the third decade of the 21st Century. We need to be careful not to overestimate how compelling the words of our theological heroes are in the ears of an average congregation.
We could also argue that using Spurgeon quotes might not be entirely faithful to the man himself, who seems to have worked hard to speak in language and pictures that ordinary hearers could connect with easily.
I guess that the moments when it is OK to quote from the ancients is when they say something in a timeless way, that can speak with resonance to any age.
What is the conclusion then? Are we to be content with recycling the tried and tested words and messages of the past or should we try to say something fresh?
Preachers cannot reinvent the wheel of the Christian gospel. We all have the same source material but as Phillips Brooks, the author of the Christmas carol, O Little Town of Bethlehem, put it, “Preaching is Truth through personality.”
No one is going to preach the gospel like you or me. We possess in our background, personality and gifts unique filters that mean that our preaching will let the light through in subtly different ways.
Ask Matthew, Mark, Luke and John whether they were committed to staying faithful to the one story of Jesus or if they wanted to make a distinctive contribution to telling that story to others, and their answer would be an emphatic “Yes.”
The Gospel quartet were equally committed to being faithful to the gospel but each one communicated that gospel in a fresh way.
Contemporary preachers need to learn creative ways to do the same thing, with or without Spurgeon quotes!
Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash
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