Cowper on Paul on Preaching (14)
As for you, always be sober-minded, endure suffering, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. 2 Timothy 4.5
He that negotiates between God and man,
As God’s ambassador, the grand concerns
Of judgment and of mercy, should beware
Of lightness in his speech. ’Tis pitiful
To court a grin, when you should woo a soul:
To break a jest, when pity would inspire
Pathetic exhortation; and to address
The skittish fancy with facetious tales,
When sent with God’s commission to the heart!
Such did not Paul.
– William Cowper, The Task (1785)
William Cowper did not much appreciate the preaching which was increasingly common in his day. He objected to all “lightness in speech” when negotiating matters of justice, mercy, and truth between God and men. He insisted that preachers should be, like Paul, “serious in a serious cause” when it comes to the proclamation of divine truth. He was confident that Paul “would not stoop/To conquer those by jocular exploits,/Whom truth and soberness assail’d in vain.”
Preaching is not just a matter of communicating Biblical information to an audience in a way that allows them to process that information as intellectual content only. Scripture speaks to the heart, as Cowper insisted, and in so doing it summons a raft of emotions, affections, and attitudes which the preacher must rightly represent in addition to the informational content of the text. The mind without the heart is not likely to result in meaningful acts of love (1 Tim. 1.5).
Preachers must, therefore, fully immerse themselves in their text, in all aspects of the text and not just the doctrinal content, so as to allow the text they intend to preach to first reach them in their minds, hearts, consciences, and everyday lives. Only when preachers have become thus absorbed in, enveloped by, and transformed by the text will they be in a position to understand how they should conduct themselves in conveying the mood or tone of its message.
And it is to the conduct of our preaching, following William Cowper, that we turn in the next few installments of this series.
Resources for being and making disciples
Pastor to Pastor Podcast: Pastor Jesse Slusher talks about the role of vision in a pastor’s life and ministry. Where the noise of the world threatens to woo us here and there, a clear and compelling vision can keep us moving in the right direction. Click the link at the top of this issue to listen in.
Other columns of interest: This week: In our ReVision column we complete our study on “God and Reason” and begin a new series considering “Everyday Christianity”. Our Read Moore podcast also takes up a new study. We’ll be reading from Patrick: A Devotional History, for the next several weeks.. Our Crosfigell teaching letter is studying the spiritual poetry of the Celtic Revival. And in our daily Scriptorium column we are working through Matthew 23. Click here to see all the other columns and writers available to you.
The Ailbe Bookstore: The people of God can, by their prayers, contribute powerfully to the growth and ministry of the local church. Our book, Pray for Your Church, offers 35 brief prayers in 7 topics to help readers seek the Lord for their church. Order your free PDF download by going to The Ailbe Bookstore (click here). If you’d like more of William Cowper’s views on preaching, order An Essay on Preaching from our Bookstore.
Resources for Shepherds: Have you ever considered how much the work of writing could add to your ministry? Writing can help you reach further and deeper into the lives of those you are called to serve. Our course, The Writing Pastor, can help you get started using writing more consistently. It will be my pleasure to proctor you through this course. To learn more, watch this brief video.
From the Celtic Revival
Spiritual Poetry of the Celtic Revival
Time and the hour is flying, age glides away by moments.
Scorn the joys of a transient life that perish.
Do not pursue frail wealth and empty gain,
Nor let overflowing abundance of riches be your concern.
Let your treasures be the teachings of divine law,
And the holy fathers’ rules of a chaste life,
All that the learned masters have written before,
Or the songs sung by scholarly poets.
Take these, and ever despise transitory treasures…
– Columbanus, “Verses to Sethus” (ca. 700 AD) [1]
To many people—including, I fear, many Christians—what Columbanus prescribes sounds a little, well, dull.
But he was serious about how we use our time, and we find him hammering away at this same theme in his poem to Sethus, another of his students and monks.
I want to look at how Columbanus viewed those eternal, spiritual matters which he commended to Hunaldo and Sethus as worthy of their time. He described these as treasures. Treasures! That should get our attention. Whatever he is about to recommend in place of the fleeting pleasures of this world are things to be treasured, to delight in, enjoy, benefit from, and share with others.
Columbanus had come to understand the value of the things he was about to recommend. He had spent his entire adult life learning to love and delight in these treasures, and to so fix them in his conscience that he would not easily depart from them. The treasures he held out to Sethus—and to us—enriched him with vision, courage, zeal for Christ, and a joyful life of fruitful ministry. He treasured these things because he had found them to be truly treasurable, and valuable beyond anything else he could have wanted.
You can read more about these treasures and why they’re so valuable by clicking here.
Subscribe to Crosfigell and join us for this entire series on spiritual poetry of the Celtic Revival. Scroll to the bottom of the home page, www.ailbe.org.
Resources from the Celtic Revival: Columbanus
Want to learn more about Columbanus? Download the free 30-day devotional featuring his writings and those of his biographer by clicking here.
T. M. Moore
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Except as indicated, Scripture taken from the New King James Version. © Copyright 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
[1] The translation is in Sancti Columbani Opera, G. S. M. Walker, ed. (Dublin: The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1957), p. 187.
