Just preach the Gospel. Preach the Gospel—and do it freshly.
The man whom generations of students have affectionately known as “Rev. Rossow” turned one hundred years old earlier this year. Ordained for over seventy years, Francis C. Rossow only stopped teaching three years ago, “When my hearing went shot and I started giving crazy answers to questions.”
Rev. Rossow was born a farm boy in mid-Michigan. He attended what was at that time the junior college in Fort Wayne and then, subsequently, Concordia Seminary in St. Louis (CSL). He went on to serve as pastor to congregations in North Dakota and in the Michigan “bay area” of Saginaw, before being called to teach at the newly founded “Senior College” in Fort Wayne. When that school disbanded in the 70’s, Rev. Rossow was one of only eight faculty to make the move to CSL, where he taught full-time from 1976 until his retirement in 1997.
You can still find the Rev. most mornings in chapel at Concordia Seminary, dressed in suit and tie and sitting in his familiar pew just a few back from the pulpit. After a recent service of Matins, he and I sat down and talked preaching, creativity, and how students have changed in his decades of teaching ministry.
You taught for over sixty years, and nearly fifty here at the Seminary. How have you seen students change in that time?
Well, in two ways. One is, I think I sort of crusaded—I don't like to say that word—for what I call the full, literal gospel: That Christ not only died a physical death, but that He died a spiritual death, that He was damned on the cross. I don't think a lot of people knew about it. And I must say, Richard Caemmerer brought that to my mind, and I sort of grabbed the bait and went for it. I don’t mean to say that I “changed preaching”—no, but I think people realize more fully what our Lord Jesus did for us, and they're proclaiming that from the pulpit.
Second, I think students are better than we were in our day. We were hell-raisers. [laughs] I'm not saying that I was that—I was a good boy. So, I'm optimistic for the future.
Do you have any critiques of contemporary preachers?
I feel too many people still read their sermons. Not many people can do that successfully. Some do. I usually took a manuscript with me in the pulpit, but our previous [Concordia Seminary] president once said—he never used a manuscript, Dale Meyer—but he said once to a bunch of students that Rossow knows how to use a manuscript. I did take one with me. But I don't think I was a slave to it.
And [Martin] Franzmann always did that too, back when I was at the Sem. He’d read it, and you'd be happy to get a fourth of it. It was profound. It was insightful. It was good. It was worth noting. But he was fast and I couldn't keep up. They're great to read, though.
Who is one of your favorite preachers?
[Dr. Joel] Biermann, for one. I just love his content. He's an amazing preacher, and he reads the darn thing, he does.
When I was a student, Caemmerer. I owe a lot to him, despite his more liberal leanings that unfortunately developed. But he was the favorite prof back in my day. I was spellbound by his preaching. He was better orally than in his writings. Just the opposite of me!
Are there other aspects to our preaching that you feel we don't give enough weight to, or that you wish there were more emphasis on?
I'm a person who in my early ministry pushed the pericopes [i.e., the lectionary—RT], and now I think we're a little bit enslaved to it. So, I would break the routine. I don't like slavish pericopal preaching anymore. In our church at Saginaw, we would preach from the pericopes one year and free text the next. That's the way we divided it, rightly or wrongly.
What do you think is the ideal length for a sermon?
Well, I think that's changed a little bit. When I went into ministry, I could preach 25 minutes, and I did. Eventually that became shorter and shorter and shorter. I think a sermon has to be the length that people expect it to be. You can't push the boundaries on that. If they expect a 15 minute sermon from you and you go 20, 25 minutes, you're risking your neck.
Do you prefer to preach at a wedding or at a funeral?
I enjoy them both. I mean, enjoyment is the wrong word, but, uh, I like weddings.
When you were using the pericopes, what did you find yourself gravitating toward: Old Testament, Epistle, or Gospel?
Well, when we preached pericopally, there was no Old Testament in those days. So, I preached the Epistles and Gospels. I find the Old Testament to be a very rich area now, and a lot of my chapel sermons were Old Testament sermons.
What would be your favorite feast day to preach on?
Oh, I love Christmas, for the incarnation.
Walk me through your process of preparation. How would you go about preparing to preach?
I spent a lot of time writing. Writing was never simple for me. I was a little bit too tight about that. I put a lot of stress on content and gospel preaching—fresh gospel preaching. Sometimes we aren't fresh, no matter what we think.
I wrote sermons way ahead of time. I was scared to death. I still am. I mean, I don't think I can make the butterflies fly in formation. In that sense, I'm manuscript bound.
I want to pick up on what you were just saying about the freshness of preaching. You have written a lot about creativity and the gospel. Why is creativity important in preaching?
Well, I think I'm playing with the Word. It lies in the very creativity of the Gospel. And I thought [preaching the Gospel] deserves that kind of approach from the pastor as well. Sure, I wanted to tell the gospel story, but not in the same old words. And I spent a lifetime trying to do that. I didn’t always succeed, but that was my creed.”
Speaking of creativity: The class I was fortunate to have you for was “Christianity and Literature.” Why do you think it is important for pastors, for preachers, to be not only reading the Bible, but reading literature, too?
You know, the Gospel isn't just present in church. I found it in so many books. Maybe I forced it. In one of my books [Gospel Patterns in Literature], I have intentional gospel patterns, and then ones that were unintentional, and those that we don’t know if the author meant it or not.
What are some novels in which you see those gospel patterns at work?
Evelyn Waugh’s especially, Brideshead Revisited. That is a beauty. A perfect example of what I mean. And another book of his, A Handful of Dust. And John Steinbeck, too. He was flippant about [including the Gospel], but he did it.
Also, Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment. The Brothers Karamazov is sort of long, so I didn't use it [for class] very often, but it's also great.”
When you think about the future for the Church and for pastors, what gives you encouragement?
Well, I suppose I’m just optimistic about the Lord’s promises. That's basically it. I wish pastors had more time to spend at their preaching. I think they let other things in the ministry get in the way. They start out good, but nowadays there are so many distractions.
If there's one thing that you want to impart to preachers today, what do you want to make sure they know?
Just preach the Gospel. Preach the Gospel—and do it freshly.
