Tertullian Who?
Do average church members stand in awe of the giants of the faith? Not necessarily. "In one class I referred to Martin Luther," says Mark Littleton, pastor of Berea Baptist Church in Glen Burnie, Maryland, "and a teen-ager wanted to know why I left off his last name—King. In my sermons, I started noticing that when I invoked the name of John Wesley, Charles Spurgeon, or George Whitefield in sharp tones, I got only dull looks." Littleton's solution: a mini-series of 5-10-minute spots every other Sunday night on some important person, event, place, or book Christians should know about. "Several people have remarked that for the first time they're getting a feel for who's who and what's what in church history," Littleton reports. "The spots also lend much freshness and color to the evening services." Areas covered: • Great Christians—writers, preachers, artists, poets, missionaries. Sources: Walking with the Giants and Listening to the Giants by Warren Wiersbe; The Norton Anthology of Poetry. • Great events with a Christian focus—revivals, the Reformation, church councils, etc. Sources: Works of history by Will and Ariel Durant, Kenneth S. Latourette, Philip Schaff. • Great hymns and their stories. Sources: E. K. Emurian's Living Stories of Famous Hymns and Forty Stories of Famous Gospel Hymns (Interlude Books). The pastor now has members of the congregation doing some of the spot features. "We're getting acquainted with our heritage in drops rather than gallons," he says, "and as a result, it's sinking in. The research is also feeding me with many powerful illustrations I would not have discovered otherwise."
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