Emphasis Preaching Journal
The preacher as gracious antagonist
Guest column
As a young pastor fresh from seminary in my first call, I preached carefully exegeted, well thought out sermons on the weekly texts, which I thought, in my hubris, were pretty good. The president of our little congregation, however, didn't seem to share my obvious enthusiasm for these homiletic gems. After ten minutes he would begin to look at his watch. That didn't bother me. But when, after fifteen minutes, he would take his watch off and shake it to see if it was still working, that bothered me!
