| Expression: |
"Even the great preachers have spent time in the preaching wilderness, talking to arid landscapes of cactus-like people. Take Martin Luther, clearly one of the best preachers Christendom has produced."
"Luther had been preaching in his Wittenberg church for years, but the longer he preached, the more discouraged he grew. People just didn’t get it. They gladly heard him, but instead of being inspired to discipleship, they only became lethargic. Luther noted that despite his preaching, “no one acts accordingly, but instead the people become so crude, cold, and lazy that it is a shame, and they do much less than before.”"
"For instance, when Luther and the reformers started teaching that attending worship was no longer a meritorious act, that it earned people nothing in God’s eyes, people applauded. They no doubt thought it a relief to hear that worship was first a gracious opportunity to thank God and hear his Word in freedom. Nonetheless, worship attendance dropped."
"In January 1530, Luther was so fed up, he announced to the congregation that he refused to preach any longer—essentially he went on strike. Of course, Luther couldn’t stay away from the pulpit for long. Still, discouragement dogged him his entire life."
"A year before he died, while on a trip, he determined not to return to Wittenberg, his home town, the center of the Reformation. He wrote his wife, Katherine, “My heart has become cold, so that I do not like to be there any longer.” He was aggravated that people seemed so indifferent to his preaching. Some even mocked him as they wondered aloud what gave Luther the right to question so much they had previously been taught. “I am tired of this city and do not wish to return,” he wrote. He would rather “eat the bread of a beggar than torture and upset my poor old age and final days with the filth at Wittenberg.”Within a month, though, one of the town’s citizens talked Luther into returning."
"Though discouragement with preaching has been the common lot of preachers through the ages, there are some dynamics that make preaching a unique challenge as we enter the twenty-first century. Television seems to have co-opted people’s attention spans. Relativism knocks the legs out from under authoritative preaching. A thousand modern Baals compete for people’s loyalty. And our congregations, well, they continue to act like people: run-of-the-mill sinners." |