“Thus, when in the present day the church is afflicted by so many and so various calamities, and innumerable souls are perishing which Christ redeemed with his own blood, we must be barbarous and savage if we are not touched with any grief. And especially the ministers of the Word ought to be moved by this feeling of grief because, being appointed to keep watch and to look at a distance, they ought also to groan when they perceive the tokens of approaching ruin.” John Calvin
“Preach to yourselves the sermons which you study before you preach them to others.” Richard Baxter
Not “a mere speaking tube or trumpet…reproducing perfectly but mechanically the message of God’s written Word” but a pastor “who is himself in heart and mind in perfect harmony with the pastoral Scriptures which he must preach.” Samuel Volbeda
“The preacher ….is not a professional man; his ministry is not a profession; it is a divine institution, a divine devotion.” E M Bounds
“We are fools for Christ’s sake. But professionals are wise. We are weak. But professionals are strong. Professionals are held in honour. We are in disrepute. We do not try to secure a professional lifestyle, but we are ready to hunger and thirst and be ill-clad and homeless.” John Piper
“The life-giving preacher is a man of God, whose heart is ever athirst for God, whose soul is ever following hard after God, whose eye is single to God, and in whom by the power of God’s Spirit the fleshg and the world have been crucified and his ministry is like the generous flood of a life-giving river.” John Piper and Wayne Grudem
“A great hindrance to our ministry is the gulf between our Biblical understanding and the corresponding passions of our hearts. The glorious and horrible truths which thunder through the Bible cause only a faint echo of fear and ecstasy in our hearts. We take a megaton of truth upon our lips and speak it with an ounce of passion. Do we believe in our hearts what we espouse with our lips?” John Piper
“It is the function of economists, not the pulpit, to work out plans of reconstruction. But it is emphatically the function of the pulpit to stab men broad awake to the terrible pity of Jesus, to expose their hearts to constraint of that divine compassion which haloes the oppressed and the suffering and flames in judgement against every social wrong…There is no room for preaching devoid of ethical directness and social passion, in a day when heaven’s trumpets sound and the Son of God goes forth to war.” James Stewart
“Ministers had need have the Spirit of the Lord upon them in order to the reviving of religion among the people.” Solomon Stoddard
“His view of his public work as a calling to speak to men in the name of God was inseparable from his conviction that the first demand in such a calling was that his own knowledge of God should be personal and first-hand.” Iain Murray on Jonathan Edwards
“he does not go forth…primarily as an organiser or a financier or an entertainer; he goes as a man authorised by the Lord of the Church, entrusted with the deposit of the Christian revelation, recorded in majestic outline in the Book in his hand, and incarnate in the Word made flesh.” Donald Coggan
“None will ever be a good minister of the Word of God unless he is first of all a good scholar.” John Calvin
“He who has ceased to learn has ceased to teach. He who no longer sows in the study will no more reap in the pulpit.” Charles Spurgeon
“The preacher’s life must be a life of large accumulation. He must not be always trying to make sermons, but always seeking truth, and out of the truth which he has won the sermons will make themselves….Here is the need of broad and generous culture. Learn to study for the sake of truth, learn to think for the profit and the joy of thinking. Then your sermons shall be like the leaping of a fountain, and not like the pumping of a pump.”” ” Phillips Brooks
“If I had only three years to serve the Lord, I would spend two of them studying and preparing.” Donald Grey Barnhouse
“the man, the whole man, lies behind the sermon. Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life. It takes twenty years to make a sermon, because it takes twenty years to make the man.” E M Bounds
“the best preaching is always the natural overflow of a ripe mind and the expression of a growing experience. A good sermon is never worked up but worked out.” James Black
“First , the priest is the teacher and preacher, and as such he is the man of theology. He is pledged to be a dedicated student of theology; and his study need not be vast in extent but it will be deep in its integrity. Not in order that he may be erudite, but in order that he may be simple. It is those whose studies are shallow who are confused and confusing.” Michael Ramsey
“When ministers were under the special influences of the Spirit of God, it assisted them to come at the consciences of men, and as it were to handle them with hands: whereas, without the Spirit of God, said he, whatever reason and oratory we make use of, we do but make use of stumps, instead of hands.” Jonathan Edwards
“His (Jonathan Edwards’) view of his public work as a calling to speak to men in the name of God was inseparable from his conviction that the first demand in such a calling was that his own knowledge of God should be personal and first-hand.” Iain Murray
“Unless he has spent the week with God and received Divine communications, it would be better not to enter the pulpit or open his mouth on Sunday at all….A ministry of growing power must be one of growing experience….Power for work like ours is only to be acquired in secret….The hearers may not know why their minister, with all his gifts, does not make a religious impression on them; but it is because he is not himself a spiritual power.” James Stalker
