The Preacher's Toolbox: Preach Till You Drop

In Open Secrets, a memoir about his first years serving as pastor to a small rural parish, Richard Lischer recounts the ghastly sight that greeted him on his first Sunday in the pulpit. A dying man, “white as snow and as cold to the touch,” was sprawled across a chaise lounge in the sacristy. The man, hairless and shriveled, wore a cassock and surplice. He also had a hymnal open across his lap.

It was Lischer’s predecessor, Erich Martin. Reverend Martin had been so ravaged by cancer that he could not so much as sit in the pew. Instead, Sunday by Sunday, he took up residence in the room adjacent to the chancel and worshiped there, an audience of one. Nobody but Lischer could see him. But see him he could, from any vantage point around the altar, and out of his peripheral vision from the pulpit.

This persisted for the first several months of Lischer’s tenure, until Martin finally passed. But reflecting on the experience, Lischer remarks:

“If I was tempted, as preachers occasionally are, to replace the proclamation of the Gospel with affable chatter, the presence of a liturgically vested, dying man in a chaise lounge never failed to dissuade.”^[1]

“Affable chatter” is a seemingly benign phrase which cuts like a freshly sharpened steak knife. Affable chatter is when you offer good ideas rather than good news. Affable chatter is more excited about congregational programs than biblical exposition. Affable chatter talks about God but hangs out in the vestibule rather than ushering people into the Holy of Holies. Affable chatter can spin a yarn but cannot save a soul, because it is rooted not in God and His truth but the preacher and his personality. Affable chatter is the pleasant path to perdition.

To be clear, there are variations of affable chatter across the spectrum. There is hipster-coffeeshop-chatter and culture-warrior-chatter. There is smells-and-bells-chatter and social-justice-chatter. It is not a temptation of only one particular stripe of church or pastor. What all variations of affable chatter share in common is that the preacher does not do justice to the most salient fact about him and his hearers: They are dead men walking.

Preach as if You Were Dying

I know of few writers who have a more honest, unflinching relationship with reality than Annie Dillard. The author of Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, Holy the Firm, and many more, Dillard has an ambivalent attitude toward the Church but a persistent longing for God (join the club, I know). Reading Dillard is always a good spiritual palate cleanser.

In a classic essay for the New York Times, “Write Till You Drop,” Dillard gives her advice to aspiring writers:

“Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?”[2]

All too often, preachers act like they are the living among the living. That can draw a crowd, for a while. Eventually, your most faithful people, the ones who are honest enough to know their true state, will leave and look for genuine aid elsewhere. Or worse yet, they will stick around and shrivel where they sit for want of words that are spirit and life.

 All too often, preachers act like they are the living among the living.

Dillard’s advice is easily adapted to preachers... and should be. Preach as if you were dying, preaching to a congregation of terminal patients. No one should understand this better than followers of Jesus of Nazareth. He who said, “The one who seeks to save his life will lose it, and the one who loses his life for My sake will find it.” He who came to seek those who are moldering in unacknowledged graves. He who died and lived again to be Lord of all. Him we proclaim.

That Is What Saves People.

There is an iconic scene in the Johnny Cash biopic “Walk the Line.” Johnny and his band have finally gotten their big break. They are at an audition with the legendary producer, Sam Phillips, but they fall absolutely flat as his group offers up some retread, wannabe gospel music. Phillips mercifully interrupts and asks if they have anything else. Cash is annoyed by the interruption, but you get the sense he is unsurprised. “You didn’t let us bring it home,” he protests. “Bring it... bring it home?” Philips asks. He goes on:

“All right, let’s bring it home. If you was hit by a truck and you was lying out there in that gutter dying, and you had time to sing one song. Huh? One song that people would remember before you’re dirt. One song that would let God know how you felt about your time here on Earth. One song that would sum you up. You tellin’ me that’s the song you’d sing? That same Jimmy Davis tune we hear on the radio all day, about your peace within, and how it’s real, and how you’re gonna shout it? Or... would you sing somethin’ different. Somethin’ real. Somethin’ you felt. Cause I’m telling you right now, that’s the kind of song people want to hear. That’s the kind of song that truly saves people.”[3]

Dirt we are and to dirt we shall return, and only the One who rose up out of the dirt can help us. When you recognize you and your hearers are dying, and you preach that way, you do not enrage by your triviality. You do not waste time with affable chatter but reach right for the words of eternal life. That is the kind of sermon which truly saves people.

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^[1] Lischer, Richard. Open Secrets: A Memoir of Faith and Discovery. New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2001. 66.

[2] Annie Dillard, “Write Till You Drop,” May 28, 1989, accessed February 28, 2024, URL link to article.

[3] Walk the Line, directed by James Mangold (Beverly Hills, CA: Twentieth Century Fox Films, 2005), You-Tube clip, accessed February 28, 2024, URL link to clip.