Preaching by Street Light
By Marshall Shelley
April 1, 2004
A Leadership cartoon a while back depicts a preacher showing a friend the pulpit of his magnificent cathedral. He gestures grandly at the organ pipes and stained glass and massive arches and says, "I love the home-field advantage."
In the years since that cartoon, fewer and fewer preachers are finding much of a home-field advantage, in church or anywhere else.
These days, preachers can't assume loyal listeners. Preachers have to earn a hearing every time they speak. They have to compete with countless other media voices for the attention and allegiance of their hearers.
Stained-glass sermons have largely given way to street-level preaching. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
Recently I've been working on a book about Billy Graham, the most listened to preacher in history—more than 80 million have heard him in person, hundreds of millions more via TV, satellite, radio, and film.
Billy learned his preaching at street level. In the 1930s, his early sermons were in jails and on the street corners of Tampa, Florida. Outdoor preaching was no picnic. He had to put up with sneering spectators or worse, such as the time he was punched by an enraged tavern keeper who considered an evangelist on the sidewalk bad for business.
Street-level preaching means communicating courageously and clearly. Another street-level preacher, Dwight L. Moody, put it this way: "A good many preachers say I am lowering the pulpit. I'm glad I am. I'm trying to get it down to the level of men's hearts. If I wanted to hit Chicago, I would not put the cannon on top of this building and fire into the air. Too many preachers fire into the air."
Likewise Billy, whose middle-of-the-night vision for a magazine of biblical conviction and social conscience spawned Christianity ...
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