Preaching? by Motyer Alec

Author:Motyer, Alec [Motyer, Alec]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Christianity
Publisher: Christian Focus Publications
Published: 2013-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

Varying the Diet

This is as good a place as any to raise a small warning against sameness. To me sausages, mashed potato and a rich gravy constitute one of the world’s great tastes. I am a person of simple pleasures! But even I would find an unvaried daily menu of sausages, mashed potato and gravy somewhat on the tedious side! A careful cook varies the diet and varies the presentation, tempting the appetite, so as to encourage hearty eating.

Take alliteration, for example. It is an effective way to try to make our headings memorable – and this is a desirable objective and a covetable achievement when it works. But how tiresome alliteration is if every sermon is presented that way! We as a family sat under such a ministry at one period. The material itself could not have been more biblical, the diet of truth more wholesome, or indeed the preacher more dear to us, but in the car on the way home we used to share further points we had worked out for ourselves once we had ‘twigged’ what the alliterative scheme for the day was going to be! A sad confession – using the Scriptures as if they were a word game – and I guess we were not alone in our guilt. Alliteration has other hazards if it becomes an obsession. It can so easily become forced and artificial – words being used not because they are exact and apt but because they begin with the appropriate letter, and an alliterative scheme can give a spurious unity to three or four entirely disparate thoughts which have little or nothing to do with each other – and maybe no more than an alliterative link with the passage itself. Alliteration is often a good servant, always a bad master. It is far better to present a plain (even if seemingly less clever) statement of a truth than to force it into an artificially imposed mould.

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