The Clown in the Pulpit

The Scottish preacher and theologian Thomas Chalmers, in a sermon on "The necessity of the Spirit to give effect to the preaching of gospel," declared:

How little must the presence of God be felt in that place, where the high functions of the pulpit are degraded into a stipulated exchange of entertainment, on the one side, and of admiration, on the other! and surely it were a sight to make angels weep, when a weak and vapouring mortal, surrounded by his fellow-sinners, and hastening to the grave and the judgment along with them, finds it a dearer object to his bosom, to regale his hearers by the exhibition of himself, than to do, in plain earnest the work of his Master, and urge on the business of repentance and of faith, by the impressive simplicities of the gospel.

William Plumer, commenting on this, makes clear that no minister should seek to be dull, sour and morose. I do not think that either man would be against the natural use of wholesome humour in its proper place, and to some extent that is a matter of personality. Nevertheless, says Plumer, the preacher should not be "a buffoon, not a jester, not a trifler" (37). Ted Donnelly, in his outstanding volume on heaven and hell (Banner), warns that   Continue at Jeremy Walker