THE GREATEST PREACHERS

Apparently, some time ago, one of the world’s most respected theological publishers, Banner of Truth Trust, announced a list of the world’s greatest preachers of all time. These were the preachers whose preaching shaped their world, and ours, for generations to come. Not surprisingly, Jesus of Nazareth topped the list. (I’m rather pleased to inform you that F.W. Boreham was among the top 20 on that list.) It does cause one to ask though, What constitutes a preacher as ‘great’? As a preacher, I’d also be interested to know how one becomes a ‘great’ preacher.  

The point is, Before you trust, you have to listen. But unless Christ’s Word is preached, there’s nothing to listen to.
Romans 10:17 THE MESSAGE

WHAT MAKES GREAT PREACHERS GREAT PREACHERS

History is peppered with many great preachers. Men such as Ambrose (340 – 397) was an Italian preacher whose preaching changed the world. His preaching led Augustine (354 – 430) to Christ who went on to become one of the greatest preachers of his day. John Wycliffe (1330 – 1384) was an English preacher who shook the world. Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) was a German preacher whose preaching changed the Europe. Count Nicolaus Ludwig Von Zinzendorf’s (1700 – 1760) preaching changed the destiny of at least three continents. John Wesley (1703 – 1791) was an English preacher whose preaching is credited as saving England from the destruction that tore France apart. Billy Graham (1918 – 2018) preached to more people than any other preacher and witnessed more people coming to Christ than any other preacher. Each of these great preachers exhibited 5 essential qualities:

1. Great preachers are attractive – they attract people to listen to them.
2. Great preachers are easy to listen to – they are simple, eloquent and hold people’s attention.
3. Great preachers have something important to say – they need people to listen.
4. Great preachers move people to action – they create a movement for change.
5. Great preachers speak from their compassionate hearts as well as their sharpened minds – they will often memorise facts, Scriptures, and poetry to reinforce their message. 

for “‘In him we live and move and have our being’; 
¶ as even some of your own poets have said, 
“‘For we are indeed his offspring.’
Paul of Tarsus, Acts 17:28

WHAT THE GREATEST PREACHERS ALSO DO

Determining who should be considered among the greatest preachers is generally based on the level and scope of their influence and effectiveness. This is why the Apostle Paul is rightly considered to be the most influential preacher of all time (after Christ of course). His preaching clearly impressed people. The people of Lystra (Acts 14:12), for example, thought he was the god Hermes since he was such a good speaker. Was it his training that made him a great preacher? Was it his level of practice? Was it his dedication? Was it his great learning? There is something often overlooked about each of the truly great preachers that made them great, especially the Apostle Paul, : they prayed – but not how you might think. 

The universal trait of every great preacher is that they were unusually intense pray-ers. You would be forgiven for thinking that great preachers often prayed to be a great preacher. But the evidence suggests that this was never their prayer focus. Using Paul as our model, we can see from his epistles just how this great preacher prayed. Reading his epistles, one thing becomes very clear about how Paul saw the connection between prayer and preaching: he saw them as a partnership, a dual partnership. This dual partnership was firstly between prayer and preaching, and secondly, his support community and him. Note these two Scriptural examples.

At the same time, pray also for us, that God may open to us a door for the word, to declare the mystery of Christ, on account of which I am in prison—
Colossians 4:3

¶ Finally, brothers, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may speed ahead and be honored, as happened among you,
Second Thessalonians 3:1

LOOKING FOR PRAYERFUL PARTNERS

If you have ever heard a great preacher, you can be certain that there is a team of people praying constantly for them and the effectiveness of their message. When the Apostle Paul sought prayer from those he turned to, he didn’t seek it so much for himself, rather, he sought it for its effectiveness of the preached Word when it was preached to those without Christ (note the two examples above). Down through the ages whenever God raised up a preacher, He also raised up their support team who would pray for the effectiveness of their preaching. Perhaps the most recent and clearest example of this would be the one they called,The Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. He became a preacher at the age of 16. By the age of 19 he was pastoring a small Baptist church near the Thames in London. His friends and family back home in the countryside where he came from were praying constantly for the young preacher with the strange country twang to ears of Londoners. By the time he was 26, his church had grown far bigger than their building could hold. A public building was leased while the church constructed its new facilities in Elephant and Castle (inner London). Over 30,000 people gathered in that building to hear the young preacher and thousands of them made a commitment to Christ over the coming years. When Spurgeon opened ‘Metropolitan Tabernacle’, it could hold 6,000 people and they could hold up to five services a Sunday to fit the crowds in. This tabernacle was built with a furnace room downstairs and whenever Spurgeon preached there was always hundreds of people down there praying for the effectiveness of his message! 

Today, I’m praying that God will raise up both great preachers and great pray-ers. In next week’s post, I’ll discuss how these great preachers prayed for those who responded to their preaching. For now, I pray that God may stir you to be either one who preaches or one who prays for those who preach and what is preached to bear fruit for Christ. Let’s pray.  

Your Pastor,

Andrew Corbett

Is It Time To Unsheathe Spurgeon's Sword?

by Dr. Andrew Corbett 4th February 2013

He's known as the "Prince of Preachers". There was once a time when kings and their princely sons were the first ones into battle with their armies to defend their people. And if this is what is required of princes, then Charles Haddon Spurgeon deserves the royal accolade. For when the Church was under vicious attack in the nineteenth century from both within and without, it was Charles Spurgeon who had the courage to step into the fray at great personal cost. These attacks came in three waves during Spurgeon's career. While he fought valiantly, he most frequently fought alone and it was this sad aspect of his battles that arguable led to his premature departure.

No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits, since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.
Second Timothy 2:4

Spurgeon was converted at the age of 15 after an irregular visit to a Methodist Church in Colchester where he sought refuge from the snow. Even at such a tender age he was acutely aware of his sinful condition. He knew that he did not have peace with God. But on this day, a lay preacher called his tiny congregation and their 15 year old visitor to "look unto Me, and be ye saved" (Isa. 45:22). It was this simple revelation that effected Charles Spurgeon's faith in Christ as his Saviour.

"I believe that I had been a very good, attentive hearer; my own impression about myself was that nobody ever listened much better than I did. For years, as a child, I tried to learn the way of salvation; and either I did not hear it set forth, which I think cannot quite have been the case, or else I was spiritually blind and deaf, and could not see it and could not hear it; but the good news that I was, as a sinner, to look away from myself to Christ, as much startled me, and came as fresh to me, as any news I ever heard in my life. Had I never read my Bible? Yes, and I read it earnestly. Had I never been taught by Christian people? Yes, I had, by mother, and father, and others. Had I not heard the gospel? Yes, I think I had; and yet, somehow, it was like a new revelation to me that I was to ''believe and live.''
Charles Spurgeon, The Early Years (Autobiography)

From that time, Spurgeon became a fully devoted follower of Christ. His call as an evangelist was immediately obvious as he handed out Gospel tracts, wrote scriptures on scraps of paper to drop on the ground along his walks, and went house to house asking if he could be of assistance. His potential became apparent to the leader of the local Preachers' Association, who gave him his first church preaching assignment when he was just 16. His text for that first sermon? Isaiah 45:22 "Look unto Me and be ye saved all the ends of the earth..."

Spurgeon's father and Grandfather were both preachers. Much of the time he spent at his Grandfather's as a young boy was invested in reading many of the Puritan books in the Rev. Spurgeon's library. Charles Spurgeon learned to read books from a very young age. From his 20s, while pastoring a church of thousands, he made it his habit to read 4 "difficult" books a week. From the age of 17 Charles was appointed the pastor of a small chapel in Waterbeach, Cambridge. But within two years he received a call to the historic pastorate of New Park Street Chapel in London.

New Park Street Chapel began in 1650 as a Reformed ("Particular") Baptist Church. When they called the 19 year old Spurgeon as their pastor in 1854, this 2000 seat church was barely drawing a hundred people to worship. But within a few months of Spurgeon arriving, it was full. Not long afterward they undertook a building expansion program to accommodate another 200 seats. Yet the crowds kept coming and queuing outside to get in so that there was an inordinate number of people standing during the service. The church hired large music halls each Sunday from 1856 to be able to seat those attending. Eventually the church decided to buy property at the Elephant and Castle in South London and contruct The Metropolitan Tabernacle. This new building was opened in 1861 and could seat 6,000. Spurgeon would pastor this church for 38 years, ended by his illness and death at the age of 57 in 1892.

In his book, THE FORGOTTEN SPURGEON, by Iain Murray, he identifies three great battles which Charles Spurgeon felt he must fight. Each of these battles had two attackers which Spurgeon took it up to. His first great battle was over... [read full article] 

The Pen And The Pulpit

F. W. Boreham is widely regarded as the preeminent Christian essayist of all time. You can read my Finding Truth Matters article on him to find out why [read]. Boreham inspires me in a way no living preacher does. He was destined to be a man of words from his earliest infancy when a wandering gypsy prophesied that he would be a writer - "place a pen in his hand and he will lack for nothing" was the essence of the message. His loves of books developed in his childhood. His ability to report and comment began in his teens. By his twenties his vast intellect enabled him to graduate from Bible College a year earlier than other students. His first pastoral appointment was an adventure as Mr Spurgeon invited him to go to the fledgling nation of New Zealand. From a church of thousands led by the great Charles Haddon Spurgeon (whom Boreham regarded as being past his preaching prime by the time he heard him) he went to a rural community of around 1,000 people in Mosgiel (south of Dunedin). He pastored a church of less than 200 people for twelve years.

Almost immediately Boreham felt a mixture of frustration and inadequacy. His mentor, John Doke, advised him to read. "Read what?" Boreham replied. "Start with Gibbon" said Doke. And thus began Boreham's quest to buy one new book a week and read a book a week. His sermons became saturated with the most exquisite illustrations as he drew from ancient and modern literature; the classics and the obscure; fiction and non-fiction; and even technical journals read in waiting rooms! He humbly felt the 'waste' of these sermonic masterpieces and sought a wider audience for them. Quite a challenge in the 1890s! He converted his sermons to newspaper articles for Otago Times, the New Zealand Baptist magazine, then sometime later an Australian Christian weekly newspaper. His writing grew in popularity across the Tasman. In years to come, at the urging of many colleagues, he part self-published his first book ("The Luggage of Life") which was a phenomenal success. Boreham, now an Australian, would go on to become the contributing editor of the Hobart Mercury and the Melbourne Age, and become the best-selling Australian author of all time. His books are now highly prized collector's items. On eBay you can pay as much as $US1499 for some of his first edition books.



I have now become a devotee of Boreham. I have acquired about 56 of his 58 books. While I try to read current books, I am always reading a Boreham book. I have come to know F.W. Boreham as a writer without par. But when I preaching at Beaumaris Baptist Church in Melbourne, Victoria, I met people who had heard Boreham! They said to me that he was equally as good a preacher as he was a writer. 

Boreham wrote often about preaching. In his autobiography he talks briefly about the tension he experienced between writing and preaching and in essence said there was no tension for him: preaching and writing were complementary. By reading and writing much, Boreham said, a preacher could formulate his words and learn to select the most apt word to more fully convey the force of an idea, illustration, or concept. In fact, Boreham thought that every preacher should write his sermon out after he had preached it. This is precisely what he did and he felt that the discipline was invaluable to the quality of his preaching.

I have tried to apply Boreham's wisdom and develop my reading, writing and preaching with the common goal of magnifying the immensity and infinity of the eternal God. I hope you find the story of his life and ministry as shown in this DVD series as inspiring as I have.

Andrew Corbett