It is a truth universally acknowledged, that preachers are readers. We line our offices and studies with books: biblical commentaries, systematic theologies, church histories, and specialized volumes on pastoral subjects such as counseling, evangelism, and, of course, preaching. We understand that preaching is a function of mind, heart, and soul. As God sanctifies our hearts and regenerates our souls, we share with Him the task of renewing our minds by studying to show ourselves approved. Thus, we read.
For preachers, there has never been a deeper well from which to draw. We have abundant resources on sermon preparation and delivery, biblical interpretation, and application. Preaching has been elevated to an art and science worthy of serious study, and pastors and scholars have risen to the task. But this article is about reading that seems to have nothing to do with preaching: reading literature. I argue that preachers should immerse themselves in great books because great reading shapes the soul and the sermon, the mind and the message. Dickens and Dostoyevsky, Dante and Bronte (all three of them), have something profound to say about what it means to be human. The preacher who has joined the great conversation of written human experience will have much more to say, and more tools with which to say it, than the preacher who merely studies preaching. In this article, I’ll discuss what great reading does for the preacher. In a follow-up article, I’ll examine what great reading can do for the sermon.
What Great Reading Does for the Preacher
Moral Imagination
Homiletics requires hermeneutics. What happens in the pulpit is the culmination of what begins in the pastor’s study. Expository preaching is the product of intensive study. But if we are not careful, our preaching can become clinical and analytical at the expense of the deeply personal message God speaks in His word. All logos and no pathos makes for a dull sermon. The letter without the spirit can descend into pedantry. Too much of what a preacher reads is often technical and circular. God is the great Artist, and His canvas is the earth, the sky, the human soul. We were created by God to imagine lives different than the ones we are living. We thrive on fantasy, and discipleship requires it. If I cannot imagine loving Christ more, giving Him more of myself, and following Him with bolder obedience, I will never move toward these things. Great literature allows us to “try on” different lives, to see ourselves in different situations, so that we can catch a vision of greater discipleship.
Aesthetic Development
E. M. Bounds famously said: “the church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men.” If we take this saying to heart, we will seek not only to become better preachers, but better men ourselves. Thus we join with the Holy Spirit in His work of sanctification, seeking to become more like Christ as we resist sin and pursue holiness and love of God and man. C. S. Lewis wrote The Abolition of Man to address, among other things, the subject of education. Specifically, he was interested in what we read and how we read it. He argues here and elsewhere for a classical approach to education in which the great books are read not only for intellectual growth but also for moral development. He appeals to Augustine’s conception of virtue as ordo amoris, or rightly ordered affections. Lewis writes: “the pupil who has been thus trained in ‘ordinate affections’ or ‘just sentiments’ will easily find the first principles in Ethics; but to the corrupt man they will never be visible at all and he can make no progress in that science.”¹ Lewis believed, like many before him, that to be great men, we must learn to love what is great. The mind shaped by this kind of aesthetic development is poised to get to the heart of the matter, whatever the matter may be. The great conversation of western civilization centers on the greatest questions ever asked about what it means to be human. If we opt out of the conversation, what will shape our aesthetic development? What will train our affections, that we might bring our heightened moral sensibilities to Scripture and drink more deeply? Hollywood is too perverse. The Hallmark Channel is too superficial. The greatest minds in history are waiting at the library.
Lewis warned us about those who are deprived of the aesthetic development provided by the education of great ideas: “In a sort of ghastly simplicity we remove the organ and demand the function. We make men without chests and expect of them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honour and are shocked to find traitors in our midst. We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”² In other words, if you want to become a better preacher, become a deeper person.
Empathy
Hebrews 4:15-16 says that Jesus Christ is a High Priest who is able to sympathize with our weaknesses, though He is without sin. As Christ’s under-shepherds, we should develop the ability to place ourselves, as much as possible, into the shoes of those who hear us preach so that we do not simply preach, but preach to them. As pastors, we may not personally know what it means to be so wounded and oppressed by others that we make monstrous moral decisions that haunt us for the rest of our lives. Reading Beloved, by Toni Morrison, puts us in the place of Sethe, an escaped slave who killed her own children to spare them the horrors of slavery. Many young women in our churches feel powerless and alienated, trying to navigate life while keeping their virtue in difficult circumstances. Jane Eyre is a first-person narrative of just such a young woman, and reading her story helped me to relate better to the young ladies I serve. The full range of human experience has been committed to paper by the greatest authors who ever lived. I’m a middle-aged, white, well-educated middle-class pastor in a small town. My slice of life is pretty narrow and very comfortable, but reading the great books allows me to step into many other facets of human experience and consider how I might preach to those who are different.
¹ C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, Internet Archive Edition, p. 6. The Abolition of Man : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
² C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, p. 8.
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