Preaching – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

What About Lent? Part 3

A page from Lloyd C. Douglas, “What About Lent?” in The Christian Century, 2/3/1921.

The following is from an article by Lloyd C. Douglas in the February 3, 1921, issue of The Christian Century. The title of the article is, “What About Lent?” Douglas has been saying that the seasons themselves put people in the appropriate mood for each part of the church calendar, but the local pastor is often harried by outside forces to preach about something entirely unrelated to the season the church is celebrating. Douglas writes:

“In the fall, when [the pastor] knows he should be driving deeply into the ‘thanatopsis’ mood and making the most of it in his sermons, the secretary of his denomination’s board of education sends him a whole wastebasket full of literature providing plans and specifications for the sermon he is to preach on the importance of supporting the little church colleges. He knows this is a worthy cause. He wishes, however, that he might be permitted to speak about it some other time. Just now he has himself all set to do a constructive task bearing upon the spiritual life of his congregation. To spend one Sunday morning parading the poverty of our wretched little – our own little – our all-but-dead little Peewee College at Hinkum’s Crossing – will upset the continuity of his proposed series of sermons; but if he doesn’t come through with the Peewee business, he will be put down as ‘a brother hard to work with.’

“In the same mail, he gets orders from someplace – he is not quite sure whence – that the next Sunday thereafter is the first day of ‘Good Literature Week.’ Unless he proposes to classify himself among the unread and unwashed who are indifferent to this wonderful movement, he had better load himself with good literature propaganda and be prepared to fire it off on the appointed day. It will be easy to do this, for the National Council for the Spread of Good Literature has not only prepared him a sermon outline, but has selected his text, his hymns, his Scripture lesson, his homiletic illustrations; so that though he may be a wayfarer, he need not err therein. (Incidentally, the impertinence of some of these people who persist in preparing sermons for us wherewith to present their various movements seems equaled only by the stupidity of the stuff they send us. One Sunday when the war was on, and we were getting sermons from Washington, the writer, thinking his people needed a moment of relaxation and a chance to have a hearty laugh, read a few paragraphs of a regulation government sermon. It was good.)”

[Douglas will continue his essay in my next post…]

Lloyd Douglas on Church Music, Part 1

by Ronald R Johnson

The title page of “The Music of the Church,” by Lloyd C. Douglas, as published in The Christian Century on January 13, 1921. The photograph is taken from Douglas’s 1920-1923 Scrapbook. The green item in the upper left side of the picture is a cloth “snake” that the Bentley Library provides to help lay pages flat while being photographed.

Lloyd Douglas continued making controversial comments in The Christian Century in an article entitled, “The Music of the Church,” published in the January 13, 1921, issue. This time he took aim at church music.

He began by describing the pastor who doesn’t feel it’s his responsibility to supervise the church’s music. And that, he says, explains why “his church treasurer is always blue over a bank balance that is always red.” Douglas continues:

“Nor need this good man [the pastor] quest an ampler reason for the habitual listlessness of his congregation on the first day of the week, if it is listless, or for the diminutive size thereof, if it is small. Of course, there may be other excellent reasons, but this one will do quite nicely.”

Douglas employed a number of writing techniques that were unusual for the time and especially for Christian magazines. Here’s an example: he pretends that he’s being interrupted by one of his readers.

“Our young brother in the second balcony heckles us to state a few of these other reasons [why the pastor’s congregation might be listless or small]. We dislike to be interrupted [Douglas jokes, since he’s actually interrupting himself], but the question is fair. Well – for instance – something may be wrong with the preacher’s sermons. Their dimensions may be at fault – too long, too deep, too narrow. They may be blighted with a chronic pessimism. Weekly information to the effect that the world is going, if not already gone, to the dogs, and that the whole of nature groaneth and travaileth to the exclusion of any other lawful pursuit gets to be an old and not very attractive theme after a while. And people get tired of hearing, constantly, that they are miserable sinners – a fact too obvious to demand such frequent repetition. When they have enough, they quit. That is one reason, and a mighty good one.”

[And there are others, which Douglas will mention in my next post. But he’s actually going to talk about church music. That’s all coming! To be continued…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 3d: Launching the Sermon

by Ronald R Johnson

A page from Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Third Phase—The Sermon Sample,” in the August 26, 1920, issue of The Christian Century.

[The following is an excerpt from the third installment of Lloyd Douglas’s series about the fictitious minister, Rev. D. Preston Blue in the Christian Century during summer/fall 1920. The series was called, “Wanted – A Congregation!”and the third installment, dated 8/26/1920, was titled, “The Sermon Sample.”]

“Blue has resolved to begin no more sermons with the remark, ‘According to Usher,’ – so-and-so is this-that-or-some-other-thing. He has promised himself that he will never start another sermon with, ‘Scientists tell us that’ – whatever-it-is-that-they-tell-us. He has vowed himself a solemn pledge that he will never dig around again in a volume of canned stories for some tale wherewith to anaesthetize the saints. Never again will he spin a marine yarn about a shipwreck unless he is able to give the actual data. He is done with all disasters at sea that begin, ‘The story is told of a vessel foundered on the reef.’ No more will he attempt to point out a moral by telling a story of ‘a young man who broke his mother’s heart by his dissipation.’ No, sir; if he is going to deal with such a situation, he must make it glow with life and color, as did the Parable of the Prodigal – until, when he is well into it, his congregation knows that young fellow so well that they could almost draw a picture of him sitting among the hogs, ragged and ruined.

“Blue’s new trouble is to decide which is the very best of ten illustrations of a single point, instead of mooning over his dusty old books searching for some incident that may or may not have occurred back in 1842. Indeed, he is becoming so embarrassed with homiletic riches that he can’t pack everything into one sermon that properly belongs there. This leads him into the business of preaching most of his sermons in ‘series.’ It may take him three or four weeks to get through with one idea. For example, take the matter of shipwrecks. What causes shipwrecks? He had thought of preaching about it. He can do a sketchy job of outlining these causes in a single sermon, but he knows that there is material here for several sermons. He resolves to preach a series of sermons on ‘Shipwrecks.'”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 3c: Automobiling and Religion

by Ronald R Johnson

“Since pretty nearly everybody in Centerville is interested in automobiles, Blue, after a long trip in his little car during his vacation, decides that he can do no better than preach a sermon on ‘The Courtesies of the Road,’ which he announces as of special interest to every man who drives a car. He has been in the ditch and has been dragged out at the end of a stranger’s rope. If he can’t find an illustration in that worthy to be mentioned in connection with the story of the Good Samaritan, he is a preacher who has no right to run a car! ‘Let your light so shine that men might see your good works,’ muses Blue as he waits, blinded by some discourteous fellow’s glare, fearful to go on lest he slip off the road. Indeed, as he figures on the possibilities of this theme, his little car becomes alive with illustrations – flat tires, flooded carburetor, defective ignition, overcharged battery, burned-out brakes! Blue begins to understand why all Palestine had followed him about who had made homiletic capital of everything he saw along the road – men building houses, children at play, farmers plowing, women baking, fishermen casting nets, fruit growers mulching a fig tree, camels being unloaded to pass a narrow gate, merchants driving bargains, threshers wielding flails, masons laying brick. Surely, if it did not undignify the Great Preacher to light up his sermons with illustrations about brooms, crumbs, chaff, pennies, dogs, birds, grass, yeast, mustard-seed, and manure, he, Blue, could at least afford to keep his eyes open for the significance of the little, homely facts in common experience.

“If this mention of Blue’s new interest in sermonic materials seems to be slightly off the subject of his great desire to recruit a large congregation, one may justify the digression on the ground that no amount of advertising is going to help Mr. Blue’s pulpit unless the preacher is prepared to interest his audience when he gets it. He recalls with humiliation the ingenuously brutal remark of his own small daughter who, when asked why she didn’t want to go to church, replied, ‘Oh, church is nothing but a lot of old men sleeping, and nice old ladies waving fans!’ That had been a pretty hard jolt – doubly shocking because of its strict adherence to the truth!”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 3b: Samples of Sermons

by Ronald R Johnson

“Our friend Blue is becoming more and more convinced every day that the way to call the public’s attention to the alluring attractiveness of the gospel is to come before the people occasionally with an interesting sample of it. He has been practicing on the composition of sermon abstracts for the Monday papers. They are so readable that people are coming to look at them, now, with eagerness. Already there is an appreciable increase in his congregation due to the publicity his pulpit is receiving from this quarter. His little homilies in the papers deal with some one fact of common interest, introduced with a simple illustration chosen from people’s everyday experience.

“Moreover, he has decided that if this is a good method to pursue in print, it is no less correct in the pulpit. He discovers, with some chagrin, that he has been consistently ‘overshooting.’ His sermons have been made up of abstractions – true and edifying, but bromidic. Noting, now, the way the eyes of his auditors light up when he leads a sermon with some practical illustration, Blue has begun to cultivate a ‘homiletic mood.’ No event, however trivial, gets by him these days without giving a good account of itself as a possible illustration of some spiritual verity. The woman with the apple puts him on the track of a brilliant idea about concentrating people’s attention on a single concept and making that one concept so attractive that it needs no argument. Indeed, Blue is going about now with his eyes and ears open. He snaps the electric switch beside his study door and gets no light. What is the matter? Is the trouble in the lamp or up in the attic inside the fuse box, or down on Tenth Street at the powerhouse? Clearly it is not at the powerhouse, for the neighbor’s lamps are brightly burning. And while he hunts for the cause of the annoyance, he is evolving a perfectly corking illustration which he means to use as the lead to a sermon on ‘The Darkened Room.’ Nothing in the Bible to fit it? What is the matter with the Parable of the Virgins?

“Of course, he does not rush to his pulpit with this matter until he has had time to think it all through carefully. He goes down to the powerhouse and talks to the manager, explaining exactly why he wants to know all the causes of defective lamps, interrupted power, broken wires, and burned-out fuses. Incidentally, while learning something useful, he makes a new friendship.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 3a: Knowing the Value of Your Message

by Ronald R Johnson

Title page of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Third Phase—The Sermon Sample,” in the August 26, 1920, issue of The Christian Century.

[The following is from the third installment in Lloyd Douglas’s series, “Wanted—A Congregation!” in the summer and fall of 1920. This installment, dated 8/26/1920, is titled, “Third Phase—The Sermon Sample.” The series is about the Reverend D. Preston Blue, who is on a campaign to enlarge his audience.]

“Late one afternoon when the Blues were sitting out on their front porch talking things over, a woman sauntered up the steps peeling an apple. She smiled pleasantly but said nothing; not even ‘how-de-do’ – just smiled and peeled. Neither did the Blues disturb the silence, so fascinated were they by the performance of the woman who was skinning the rind off that apple with a curiously shaped knife that turned work into play. After a moment, Mrs. Blue exclaimed: ‘Oh – do tell me where I can get a knife like that!’ ‘You may have this one,’ replied the woman, quietly – ‘for thirty-five cents.’ She took the money, left the knife, and, enroute to the gate, picked up two bags which she had parked behind a rosebush – a large bag and a small one. Said Mr. Blue as the gate clicked behind her, ‘The small bag is full of knives, and the large bag is full of apples – and the woman is full of wisdom.’

“Now it happens that this man, who is no other than our good friend, Rev. D. Preston Blue of the consuming ambition to preach to a large congregation, has been giving himself recently to a serious study of psychology – especially in its relation to the processes by which a demand may be created in the public mind for a thing of high value. For several minutes he was thoughtful after the agent had left, and then he said, half to himself, ‘That woman has a good head. She didn’t come up with a whole bagful of knives to make a long speech about their meritorious attributes. She didn’t muddle us with a lot of knives and arguments; she simply exhibited one knife – in operation.’

“‘Yes,’ responded Mrs. Blue, who guessed what was in her husband’s mind, ‘and she didn’t tell us what a good, kind man he was who owned the factory, or what kind of wood the handle is made of, or that she herself is selling them to support eleven starving children.’

“‘Exactly!’ approved D. Preston, nodding his head vigorously. ‘She knew the value of her merchandise and just let it sell itself by a demonstration.'”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2j: Jesus An Intuitive Psychologist

by Ronald R Johnson

Excerpt from Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Second Phase—Preacher and Newspaper,” Christian Century, August 19, 1920.

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” He is talking about a minister who wants to enlarge his audience and is writing an abstract of his sermon for the local newspaper.]

“Again, the preacher may have been talking about ‘The Uses of Adversity.’ This is always an attractive line of homiletic thought. In his newspaper account of what he said, let the lead suggest some such thought as the following:

Because he had the good fortune to plane all the fingers off of his left hand in his father’s mill, one of the most brilliant lawyers of this country was able to put his energies to work where they would do the most good. The accident ruined him for the life of a mechanic; but he hadn’t been intended for a mechanic. Instead of sitting down to nurse his lumps, he got up and trained what he had left – his brains.

“Anybody in search of incidents similar to this will be bewildered over the wealth of materials at his disposal. They are all well worth telling. They have put more punch and renewed courage into the minds and hearts of the mentally, morally, and physically crippled than can be estimated in words or figures. The public may be depended upon to read all about the old lady who made candy; accidentally scorched the sugar; was on the point of pouring it out; hit upon a happy thought; poured the mess full of peanuts; made her fortune; lived happily ever after. Not very dignified? Well, how about this one? ‘In a city there was a judge who feared nobody, and a widow came to him, saying, “Avenge me of my adversary!” And he did not, for a while; afterward he decided, “I will avenge her, lest by her continual coming she weary me.”‘

“Indeed, this one is so good that a preacher could lead his sermon extract with it today – after this long lapse of time – and be sure of attention. Let all these good brothers who are trying to follow the Galilean Teacher pay careful heed to his processes of gaining and sustaining public interest. As an intuitive psychologist who ‘knew what was in man,’ he not only spoke authoritatively to the people of his own generation, but has furnished an example of the most effective methods by which life may be touched on its most sensitive nerves.

“Now that D. Preston Blue has had his first palatable taste of printer’s ink and has noticed the increased interest which the public is taking in his pulpit, he resolves to go a step further in the use of printed matter to recruit the crowd he means to have in his church, not once but every Sunday, rain or shine. Of that matter – its general scheme, the detail of its construction, the cost, the process of distribution, etc., a succeeding paper will endeavor to treat. D. Preston Blue has chopped up the piano box for kindling wood. He has resolved to find a crowd in Centerville.”

[In my next post, I’ll tell you about the third installment in the series, “Wanted – A Congregation!”]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2i: Putting the Graveyard in the Foreground

by Ronald R Johnson

“Or again, suppose the preacher has been talking about ‘the things for which we are remembered’ – not a half bad topic, by the way; though of course one would never think of announcing it in that fashion. Searching his notes for the ‘lead,’ the minister does not top his sermon abstract with a dissertation upon the graveyard; the tombstone toward which our footsteps are inevitably hastening; and the long grass growing in God’s Acre where that which is mortal of us will eventually rest while other people go on just as if nothing had happened, forgetting the departed pilgrim except for the two or three little things that he had chanced to do – deeds destined to live forever. No! And again, No! You cannot bait anybody to read a sermon that sets out in a hearse and ambles along to the cemetery. The public is obliged to make that trip often enough to satisfy all curiosity it has on the subject. If the preacher will talk about death, let him view it as a glorious beginning of something rather than discourse upon its less promising aspects. People do not relish a sermon that smacks of the undertaker’s suave instructions to the pallbearers, ‘Handles all down, please. Face the car, as I do. That’s very good – thank you. Take the third and fourth carriages, if you will. Very greatly obliged, I’m sure.’

“No; this preacher hunts for the one striking fact that had brightened the eyes of his audience, and he leads his sermon on ‘the things for which we are remembered’ somewhat after the following manner:

It was the worst road in Scotland. The supervisor told John Louden MacAdam that if he did not mend that road which made his estate almost impassable, he would be fined.

John Louden’s dignity was damaged. He had neglected that road because he was busy with more important matters. He was writing a monumental history of the MacAdam family.

But, required to repair his road, he decided to make one that would cast open shame upon all the roads of his neighbors who had made complaint.

He had all the clay hauled off the highway and the excavation filled with crushed stone and gravel. It was a good road.

Then he went back to his history of the MacAdams and spent the rest of his life celebrating their great deeds; but nobody remembered any other MacAdam but John Louden, and he is remembered not because he wrote a five-foot shelf of histories, but because he invented the macadamized road.

“The reader will go on and try to find out what all this leads to, it may be supposed. The preacher should have no trouble in coaxing him along into the next paragraph which deals with the little deeds rendered incidentally and the kindly words spoken casually – but saturated with that which makes for immortality.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2h: Newspaper Style

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who wants to enlarge his audience but was taught nothing at seminary about reaching the surrounding community through the local newspaper.]

“If he is of an extremely practical sort in estimating his assets, this preacher can console himself with the thought that whenever he wishes to do so he can use the column of The Morning Star as if he were the editor himself. This is not a negligible consideration to any man who wishes to give his pulpit some publicity. All he lacks now is the ability to use this space in such a manner that the reader will shout, ‘Fine! We must go around and hear this man Blue!’ – instead of muttering, ‘What rot these preachers get off in their churches! What bewildering stupidity!’

“Speaking generally, if the preacher who has been given an opportunity to preach to the public through the newspaper does not contrive to grip his readers with the first line, he had better save his typewriter ribbon. However, in his anxiety to lead his copy with something clever to attract attention, he must not forget that he is not selling shaving soap, or advertising a circus, but attempting to spread the good news of salvation. To spread that good news, it is necessary that he shall be honest with his constituency. To be honest does not mean, necessarily, that he must be dull. Possibly a few illustrations will help here.

“The preacher has talked about the importance of living up to one’s best self – a not infrequent theme among us. Of course, no attempt is made here to phrase the subject for announcement. Any man who would advertise that he was going to preach on ‘Living Up to One’s Best Self’ has really accomplished nothing but a deepening conviction on the part of the public that he has nothing to unload of interest to a populace sated with good advice.

“Whatever he may call the sermon, however, for purposes of arousing interest, this is his thesis – ‘living up to one’s best self.’ He thinks it is good enough to be given to the general public through the press. As he glances over his notes prefatory to composing the abstract, he searches for the one striking incident, anecdote, or ‘human interest fact’ most likely to reach out and grab the casual reader. When his sermon appears in print, next morning, it does not lead with a stiff procession of platitudes, marching along in single file with their chins in the air and their skirts carefully clutched to avoid the mud, but with the simple statement of a concrete fact.

“A study of newspaper style will show that a proper name, in the first line, is not uncommon. The mention of dollars and cents is always attractive to the reader. It interests him to learn that somebody has made some money. He is not much less interested in learning how somebody else lost some money. In the present instance, the sermon abstract begins as follows:

Wedgwood could not afford to lose the $40.00 which he had been offered for the vase. He was just starting in the pottery business and needed the money. But the vase was imperfect, and he ordered it broken and thrown upon the scrap-pile; for he vowed that no man could ever buy a ‘Second’ at his shop. He was going to make no ‘seconds.’ It looked like poor business at first; but Josiah Wedgwood became the most famous potter in the world.

“Now, after that, the preacher can say almost anything he likes about the importance of living up to one’s best self and expect to retain the interest of a considerable percent of his readers. Is there anything claptrap about that? Is it any more undignified to begin with ‘A certain man had two sons; and the elder of them said to his father,’ etc.? Indeed, isn’t this about the same process? Is the preacher to be more dignified than his Master? Is the servant greater than his lord?”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2c: The Crowded Church

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. The Reverend D. Preston Blue is excited thinking about increasing the size of his audience.]

“Moreover, Blue has learned upon inquiry that there is no room in the crowded church for such petty annoyances and puerile squabbles as customarily prey upon the frail vitals of the less prosperous. Little rackets which might do serious damage in a puny church are smothered, ignored, and forgotten in the crowd. Deacon Edgewise, peevish because his wishes have been disregarded in some minor manner, may announce to his fellow members of the Fifty-Percent-Efficient-Church that he is going to withdraw – he and his wife, man-servant and maid-servant, heirs and assigns, ox and ass, money, influence, prayers, and presence – thus creating sad havoc in Zion and necessitating the minister to undignify himself, his profession, and the cause he serves by trotting around to the Edgewise headquarters with his trusty molasses bucket. But if the Edgewises belong to a church habitually crowded, they will be somewhat cautious about ‘checking out’ in a moment of irritation, being fully aware that they will be missed about as seriously as a handful of clover blossoms plucked from a forty-acre meadow.

“All things considered, Blue believes that a crowd would mean the salvation of his church. He resolves to have one, if it is to be achieved by honest means. He lays out a definite campaign. We have seen his early efforts to line up the people who are already of his following. Now he has arrived at a decision to make his pulpit known to the general public. The most natural medium is the newspaper. He is going to avail himself of it. Only one condition holds him back. He hasn’t the faintest idea how to go about it.”

[To be continued in my next post…]