I was at the “Our Call for Justice” peace rally at the Leflore County Courthouse on Wednesday and heard a preacher who reminded me of those I grew up listening to at church.
Pastor Edward Hill of Radical for Christ Ministries in Cleveland spoke during the rally. He was excited, and his words excited people. Hill started loud and didn’t let up during his allotted four minutes at the podium. He delivered a message that was inspiring and entertaining.
Hill’s fiery talk brought memories of growing up at Broadmoor Baptist Church in Jackson. The pastor was Dr. David Grant. He was — and there’s no way to put this delicately — a screamer.
Some might describe him as a “fire and brimstone preacher.” Dr. Grant delivered the word of God at high volume. When I was very young, he scared me at times.
I heard more of the same at other Baptist churches I attended, most often the Liberty and Calvary Baptist churches in Carroll County. That’s the way most sermons were preached in Southern Baptist churches back then.
In an American literature class in high school, we studied “Sinners in the Hands of Angry God,” a famous sermon by 18th century Massachusetts pastor Jonathan Edwards. When Edwards preached the sermon for the second time in 1741, members of the audience became so upset that their shrieks and groans drowned out the final part of the sermon. There appears to be no record of what happened the first time he preached it at his home church. Perhaps he improved it with revisions.
I read Edwards’ sermon, but I really didn’t need to. I had heard it all before.
By the way, my father, who went to Calvary when he was a boy, insisted that Dr. Grant had nothing on some of the pastors he heard back then. I find this difficult to believe.
Despite my youthful fears, Dr. Grant was a wonderful man and pastor. And as I got older, I found his sermons to be inspiring rather than frightening.
He did turn down the volume in his delivery during his later years at Broadmoor. One reason was that he had throat problems and couldn’t get as loud anymore. Secondly, the preaching style (or at least the volume) of most Southern Baptist ministers started to change in the late 1970s.
Dr. Jim Phillips, pastor of North Greenwood Baptist Church, says that he considers himself an “old school pastor” but not a fire and brimstone preacher. Phillips says that few preachers scream at their audiences now, other than some he’s seen on television.
“Most of us don’t like being talked to that way,” he said.
Phillips says the ways pastors are being taught to preach at seminary has changed.
“I consider myself to be a conversational pastor and an expositional pastor,” he said. “I like to take a piece of Scripture and break it down and get out of the text what God’s saying.”
Phillips says one trend he doesn’t like is preachers whose teachings are “more philosophical than biblical ... I guess they’re trying to reach millennials.”
He said there are a number of very popular pastors around the country whose teachings follow this template and “that doesn’t work for me.”
Phillips, who said he was writing his Sunday sermon when reached by telephone at the church on Thursday afternoon, says he has a simple goal in every sermon:
“I try to be a preacher who brings the word of God, not the word of Jim.”
I’ll admit that I’m not as well-versed in preaching trends as maybe I used to be. My church attendance in the last decade has been spotty.
But thinking back, I don’t blame Dr. Grant for sometimes yelling while he preached. He probably knew that was the only way to get through to some of us.
• Contact Charles Corder at 581-7241 or ccorder@gwcommonwealth.com.
