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HARVEST HOUSE PUBLISHERS

EUGENE, OREGON

Verses marked RSV are taken from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Verses marked KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

Cover by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota

A PASSIONATE CALLING

Published by Harvest House Publishers

Eugene, Oregon 97402

www.harvesthousepublishers.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Ogilvie, Lloyd John.

A passionate calling / Lloyd John Ogilvie.

pages cm

ISBN 978-0-7369-5487-7 (hardcover)

ISBN 978-0-7369-5488-4 (eBook)

1. Preaching. I. Title.

BV4211.3.O35 2014

251—dc23

2013023640

All rights reserved. No part of this electronic publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The authorized purchaser has been granted a nontransferable, nonexclusive, and noncommercial right to access and view this electronic publication, and purchaser agrees to do so only in accordance with the terms of use under which it was purchased or transmitted. Participation in or encouragement of piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s and publisher’s rights is strictly prohibited.

Dedication

To Dr. Richard J. Mouw, dynamic preacher, author, visionary theological educator, prayer partner, and esteemed brother in Christ

Contents

Dedication

Foreword by Dr. Mark Labberton

Preface and Acknowledgments

Chapter 1 The High Calling of a Preacher

Chapter 2 The Conscription of the Preacher

Chapter 3 The Passion of the Preacher

Chapter 4 The Prayer Life of the Preacher

Chapter 5 The Parish of the Preacher

Chapter 6 The Preparation of the Preacher

Chapter 7 Three Minutes to Set the Hook

Chapter 8 Thirty Minutes to Raise the Dead

Chapter 9 Communicating God-Esteem

Chapter 10 Preaching to the Underwhelmed

Chapter 11 Finishing Well

Chapter 12 Playing Catch in the Pulpit: Dialogical Preaching

Notes

Foreword

by Dr. Mark Labberton

Every Sunday was marked by two anticipations: that God would have a word and that the preacher would be ready to deliver it.

It was my first year at Fuller Theological Seminary. A good friend, Andy, and I drove the labyrinth of LA freeways each week from Pasadena to Hollywood to worship. By the weekend we were overfilled with seminary studies and were hungry to hear God’s Word and to do so from a master preacher. The Rev. Dr. Lloyd John Ogilvie was then the pastor of First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. Worship—we did. Preach—Lloyd did. Speak—God did. It was a weekly, life-giving feast.

Very few preachers have the rich baritone Lloyd does. But what’s more, very few preachers give themselves to the task of preaching as Lloyd does. This arises for him not just as a commitment of the will, or a dedication to performance, but first and foremost as a passion of his heart.

When someone has the exceptional gifts of presence, and command, and sound that Lloyd Ogilvie has, it is possible to imagine that it would be easy to let those strengths just carry the day. In fact, some might rely on those gifts alone and neglect preparation, exegetical or spiritual. Lloyd did neither. Instead, what he gave week by week in his preaching was the harvest both of devotion and of hard work. “An hour in the study for every minute in the pulpit” was his watchword—and it was plain.

Lloyd’s passion of the heart is the fire that burns in him. This is what enables his labor to be focused and purposeful, and the outcome of that labor to be in humble service of God’s Word for the transformation of God’s people. I remember the sheer pleasure and honor of listening to him preach, while also being struck as a pastor-in-training by the powerful combination of zeal and labor that lay behind how he did so. It was a rich, anticipated, weekly gift of grace.

All this contributed to my shock when, 33 years later, Fuller Theological Seminary asked me to consider becoming the Lloyd John Ogilvie Professor of Preaching and founding director of the Lloyd John Ogilvie Institute of Preaching. I am not Lloyd John Ogilvie! I couldn’t imagine being in these positions when my own gifts seemed to me so different from his. In the surprising providence of God, however, the door opened, and I left serving as pastor of the beloved First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley to take these newly formed positions at Fuller.

In my early days at Fuller, Lloyd and I met to be together and to pray. The man I had only known from the balcony now became a brother in Christ. The enveloping voice and the penetrating eyes I had encountered from a distance became over time simply characteristics of this true friend. During the first two years I was at Fuller, I accompanied Lloyd as he led his Preaching with Passion conferences in Pasadena and beyond. Over and over again, I discovered that the combination of zeal and labor that had made such an impression years earlier continued to mark his life. The passion of and the passion for Jesus Christ motivated, filled, and empowered him—and, by grace, lives were changed.

Anyone who encounters Lloyd cannot help but be struck by his unique aura. Throughout his extraordinary service from Illinois, to Pennsylvania, to California, to Washington DC through his pastoral ministry; across the country through the weekly broadcast of Let God Love You; to the scores of his books, Lloyd has made an indelible mark. What he does, and how he does it, is impressive.

What has struck me time and again, however, is who Lloyd is—a genuine disciple, a lover of Christ, a student of Scripture, a servant of the church, a gentle and generous friend, a pastor of the mind and the heart. This explains what was evident to me from the balcony and now became known firsthand: the passion of Jesus Christ fills Lloyd Ogilvie, and this is the defining reality of Lloyd’s life.

This book on the passion of preaching gives us marvelous windows into what Lloyd does in preaching and how he does it. Drink in these lessons, reflect on these practices, learn these habits. And, let the God who loves you make your life the sermon that you proclaim and preach. This will show you have inwardly digested what Lloyd John Ogilvie here teaches and exemplifies—that the passion of Jesus Christ you proclaim is your hope and the hope of the world.

Dr. Mark Labberton

President, Fuller Theological Seminary

Preface and Acknowledgments

Gratitude is a gift of grace. For me, it is the result of realizing that all that I am, have received, and have accomplished are evidences of the magnificent generosity of the goodness of God. I know that I could not breathe a breath, think a thought, write lucidly, compose a sermon, preach with passion, or write a book without the inspiration of God.

All that I want to communicate in this book about preaching with passion flows out of 64 years of a personal relationship with the Father through the passion of Christ and the power of the Holy Spirit.

One of the Lord’s most gracious gifts is friendship with the people He puts in our lives, on time and in time, to help us accomplish what He has called us to do. What would we do without our friends? As I look back over my life, I am aware of how the Lord intervened through people He sent into my life to provide love, affirmation, wisdom, encouragement, courage, and accountability.

Throughout the pages of this book I want to introduce you to the loved ones, friends, professors, and fellow adventurers in living life to the fullest who have helped me claim the passionate calling of preaching the gospel.

When I retired as chaplain of the United States Senate in 2003, I had the pleasure of having lunch with my good friend Richard Mouw, then president of Fuller Theological Seminary. He expressed a hope that I would pass on what I had learned about preaching in my years of ministry. The offer of the possibility of establishing a chair of preaching and an institute of preaching in my name at Fuller was very moving.

Dr. Mouw explained the development of the Brehm Center for Worship, Theology and the Arts through the vision and generosity of William and Dee Brehm of Washington DC. He suggested that an Ogilvie Chair of Preaching and an Ogilvie Institute of Preaching should be part of the Brehm Center and that a distinguished preacher be selected to fill these two positions and be a part of the team of the Center and a member of the faculty of the seminary. Dr. Mouw also expressed the desire that the conferences on preaching I had planned to do throughout the nation as a concluding phase of my ministry be done through the Center.

This vision could not have been accomplished without the commitment, enthusiasm, and leadership of Sam Delcamp, then the executive director of The Fuller Foundation. Sam had been a faithful cheerleader during my years at the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood, a member of the board of directors of Dunamis Christian Ministries, which guided my radio and television ministry, and a close, trusted friend. His provision of funds from the foundation to match money raised made it possible to establish the chair of preaching and the institute of preaching. I am grateful for all the friends throughout the nation who contributed to make the vision come true. The search for the Ogilvie Professor of Preaching was begun.

After an extensive search and countless interviews, a call was extended to Dr. Mark Labberton, then senior pastor of Berkeley Presbyterian Church. I had followed Mark’s career, read his writings, and knew of his biblically rooted, Christ-centered, and Holy Spirit-inspired ministry. Most of all, I knew he was one of the truly great preachers in America. I was profoundly moved with gratitude that the Lord would send a person of Mark’s talents and gifts to lead a movement to call, ignite, and equip a bold, brave, new breed of passionate preachers.

And talk about the gift of friendship! The Lord galvanized a great friendship between Mark and me right from our first time together as we shared our faith and our vision for the development of the calling to train potential preachers and renew the fire of passion in preachers in parishes throughout the nation. Since then Mark has become a wonderful prayer partner for my wife, Doris, and me.

I will always be grateful for the way Mark and I were able to work together on a series of Preaching with Passion conferences held nationwide. The messages I gave at these conferences became the basis of some of the chapters of this book.

Recently, Mark has been elected to be the new president of Fuller, following Richard Mouw. I can’t think of a better choice. He combines the spiritual depth, intellectual acumen, relational skills, and administrative abilities to lead that benchmark seminary into the future.

And now my gratitude turns to you, my readers. I know many of you through the years of my travels to the small towns, villages, and metropolitan centers of the nation. You, together with new friends I hope to make as others of you read this book, are God’s gracious gift to me.

I have tried to respond to many of you who have expressed the hope that when I wrote a book on preaching, I would include illustrations of portions, and even full copies, of sermons I have actually preached. As one man suggested, “Make it a ‘show as well as tell’ book!” That’s exactly what I’ve tried to do.

Now, let’s get on with our conversation about the most challenging and rewarding calling ever given to men and women: to preach with passion!

Lloyd John Ogilvie

March 2014

Chapter 1

The High Calling of a Preacher

This book is written as a conversation between the two of us. You and I share the very high calling to be preachers. Therefore, I believe we are numbered among the prophets, apostles, evangelists, and biblical scholar-preachers of the ages. Presumptuous? I don’t think so.

An undeniable calling has put us there. Grace has kept us there. Supernatural power has been entrusted to us to make us impelling preachers there.

You and I have been conscripted to preach, and mandated with a message to preach with passion. We have been chosen to be communicators of the most stupendous good news ever entrusted to humankind.

Allow your mind to grasp it, free your emotions to soar with it, receive the full measure of God-esteem to take delight in it, make a fresh commitment to prioritize your life with an unreserved acceptance of it.

As a result of our preaching, people can come into personal relationship with God, the Creator, Sustainer, and Redeemer of the world. They can hear the healing, liberating news that they are loved and forgiven and can begin living an exhilarating life in Christ by accepting Him as their Lord and Savior. Their lives can be transformed and they can realize their full potential. They can be empowered by the Holy Spirit’s wisdom, knowledge, and vision beyond what any amount of education or experience can provide.

Instead of just fleeting happiness, they can know lasting joy in life’s excruciating suffering or difficulties. Superlative peace can be the source of their serenity in life’s most triumphant or troublesome times.

They can discover how to pray and receive strength and courage to live life to the fullest. Their most urgent questions can be answered and their deepest needs can be met. They can experience healing of hurting memories, emotional pain, and physical disabilities.

And that’s only the beginning. When we preach, people can receive their own personal call into the ministry of the laity. They can become communicators of grace to others and active workers for justice in the soul-sized issues of society. Marriages can be saved and families kept together. Profound bonds of friendship can be forged.

In the institutional church, faithful disciples can be set on fire, religious members who do not know God can be reached with the delight of living a dynamic, adventuresome faith, and dull worship services can be transformed into moving experiences of adoration, confession, and breathtaking hope.

Most humbling of all, through our preaching, people will come alive to live the abundant life now and live forever. Just imagine what it will be like when you and I graduate to heaven and meet the people who heard the gospel through us, accepted Christ as Lord and Savior, began adventuresome discipleship, and at the completion of this first phase of eternal life on earth, took the hand of the Savior and walked through the valley of the shadow of death and into the inexplicable glory of heaven!

This brief review of the impact of preaching makes me wonder where the wonder went in so many preachers’ lives. How could preaching ever become mundane and boring? Or what’s worse, how could preaching be moved so low on the list of what’s really important in the parish ministry? For the congregation as well as the preacher!

Preaching has been devalued among the multiplicity of responsibilities of pastors. Little time is expected to be allotted to prayer and study in preparation of the sermon. Congregations often have become accustomed to preaching that is neither inspiring nor impelling. Expositional preaching of the Bible often is replaced by topical oratory that is little more than anecdotes threaded together on the thin thread of a popular theme to entertain or assure popularity.

Recovering Our Awesome Calling

What a great time for you and me to be countercultural leaders of a movement to recover the awesome calling of preaching! Our time yearns for scholar-preachers who are steeped in the Scriptures and committed to expository preaching, are sustained by the courage of bold biblical convictions, are strengthened by personal growth in prayer, and are sharpened by the dynamics and methods of intellectually stimulating, spiritually compelling, emotionally moving, and volitionally instigating communication.

It is not a trite oxymoron to say that the urgent need today is for preachers who really know Christ, are able to introduce people to Him, can help them grow in their knowledge of Him through weekly biblical sermons, and will sound His clarion call of them into the ministry of the laity.

Our time needs a bold, brave, new breed of clergy to lead the church as the twenty-ninth chapter of the book of Acts continues to be written! And why not? The urgent need is for you and me to accept the call to greatness in our preaching ministry.

And our response? Unless I miss my guess, you and I have several things in common. We long for a deeper relationship with Christ; we yearn for a fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit’s supernatural gifts of wisdom, discernment, prophetic boldness, and courage; we want to press on in the pursuit of excellence in our preparation, presentation, and perfection of the skills of dynamic preaching; and we all have personal needs beneath the polished surface of our professionalism. Most of all, we need a reigniting of the fires of an authentic passion.

I really believe that our conversation in this book is a “trialogue.” The Lord who called us to preach is with us—as I write these words and now as you are reading them. He will recall us to be heralds of His grace, He will melt the icy-cold fingers of fear that often grip our hearts, He will hammer any hardness in our wills that resists a character transplant into His likeness, He will mold our thinking around new goals for our preaching and fresh expectation of the miracles of changed lives He has planned to result from our preaching, He will vitalize our vision of what we can be and our congregations can become, and He will infuse us with contagious charis and chara, unqualified grace and unlimited joy!

And why? Because Christ loves the people to whom we preach—searching people who have never committed their lives to Him; religious people who need an intimate relationship with Him; church people who need to have their hearts set ablaze again; struggling people who need hope in tough times; and secular people who are searching for a faith that works in the secret anguishes of their hearts, in the struggles of marriage and the family, the shadowy ambiguities on the job in the asphalt jungle, and the soul-sized issues of our time.

This is our high calling!

Chapter 2

The Conscription of the Preacher

Allow me to be very personal in sharing my own conscription to preach. Really, it began when I was 15. That’s not when I was called to preach, but when I first discovered the sheer delight of being a communicator. The calling to communicate grace came four years later.

My story begins at an ice-cream counter in a drugstore in Kenosha, Wisconsin. I was working as a “soda jerk,” as we were called in those days. One evening I had my head down in the freezer sorting out the flavors of the pints of ice cream. Suddenly, I heard a strong, magnificently articulated voice say, “I want some ice cream!”

From inside the freezer I answered with my newly registered, deep but fluctuating post-puberty teenage voice, “What flavor, sir?”

“Never mind the flavor, who are you?” the voice demanded.

I pulled my head out of the ice-cream freezer and responded with a mixture of insecurity and lack of self-esteem, “I’m Lloyd Ogilvie.”

“Where do you go to school?” the impressive, imposing man asked. I told him that I was a student at Mary D. Bradford High School, but that I was planning to quit and go to work in a factory.

“No, you’re not going to quit, and I want to tell you why! In fact, I’ll be back when you’ve finished work this evening and take you to my home, where you’ll meet my wife, Verona, and she’ll have some milk and cookies ready for us while we talk,” the man said.

Sure enough, he was waiting for me when I finished work. At his home, while I was devouring the freshly baked cookies and cold milk his wife had prepared, he told me that he was John Davies, head of the speech department of my high school. I was both intrigued and awestruck when he told me that he wanted to train me to be in a speech contest the next month. He explained that he would teach me how to memorize a three-page speech for an oratorical declamation contest and would show me how to use my voice, how to stand, and how to gesture.

By the end of the visit and a plateful of cookies, I left with a sense of excitement about the future I had never experienced. The idea of quitting school was overcome with a desire to learn everything John Davies could teach me. Self-esteem and purpose began to surge within me.

Though I didn’t realize it then, I had been recruited by one of the most outstanding speech teachers in the nation. He had trained many students who became famous speakers and actors in radio and the movies.

Every afternoon after regular classes, I met with Davies to go over the speech I was memorizing little by little. I stood at the center of an empty stage and repeated the speech over and over again, each time following new instructions he gave me as to how to move and gesture.

A month later, I traveled with fellow speech students to a contest in a nearby city. To this day I can remember how excited I felt when I gave my speech before an audience of students from the area—and most important of all, the judges who would decide who would be awarded first, second, third, and fourth places.

I was stunned when it was announced that I had won first place. “Congratulations!” my speech teacher said. And then, looking me in the eye, he said something I had never heard before: “I believe in you!”

That was the beginning. I felt the delight of being able to communicate as a speaker. Over the next four years, I continued my training, and in my senior year of high school was ready for original oratory. Now I had to decide what I wanted to say. The speech I drafted was delivered in contests throughout my state of Wisconsin and then in regional, and eventually national, competition. The American Legion Oratorical Contest provided me with a four-year scholarship to college.

All during this busy period of my life, I gave little thought to God. I was an agnostic when it came to any kind of faith. My plan was to go on in speech and dramatics with a career in radio (television was still undeveloped in 1948), and with a hope of a chance at acting and the movies. God, who overlooked my agnosticism, had other plans. He was on the move preparing the way in the choice of a college I thought was my independent decision. Not so.

The head of the speech department at Lake Forest College, Lake Forest, Illinois, came to see me as I was reviewing college choices and offered to have me use my scholarship there. It seemed like a good choice. Little did I know that it was God’s choice.

When I arrived at Lake Forest College, I was assigned a dormitory room on the third floor of Durand Hall. The first person I met as I was struggling up the stairs pulling my trunk behind me was Bruce Larson, a senior student and the proctor of the dormitory. He helped me get settled and befriended me as I pressed on in my studies in speech and dramatics.

Bruce was also a speech major, so we had a lot in common. What I did not have in common with him was a faith in Jesus Christ. He had committed his life to Christ during the Battle of the Bulge as an army sergeant in World War II. He told me all about that as our friendship grew.

At that time, I also became good friends with Ralph Osborne, another senior who also had become a Christian during the war. Ralph had committed his life to Christ while serving on a battleship in the navy.

When Bruce and Ralph invited me to attend a Wednesday-evening Bible study and rap session in Bruce’s room, I was intrigued and motivated to attend by the quality of their life-affirming, joyous, and contagious faith. In the weekly meetings, I heard about the exciting adventure of knowing and following Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.

Six months later, after one of the sessions, Bruce and Ralph challenged me to turn over the control of my life to Christ and become His disciple. I returned to my room and, alone, struggled with that challenge. By four in the morning, on my knees, I finally choked out the words of a prayerful commitment to Christ as my Lord and Savior.

There were no flashing lights, bolts of lightning, or strains of beatific music, but a deep, gripping conviction that whatever else I did with my life, my passion was to be a disciple of Christ. Intellectually, I was convinced that Christ had died for me, forgiven me, and was calling me to serve Him first and foremost. Emotionally, I felt a surge of overwhelming love. Volitionally, I was liberated to surrender to Him my life and whatever talents had been entrusted to me. At this point, I assumed that meant being a Christian in the entertainment world. Once again, the Lord had other plans.

As I continued my studies in speech and dramatics, one day during my daily devotions I was profoundly moved by the desire for everyone to know the love, joy, and peace I had found in my growing relationship with Christ. I didn’t hear an audible voice, but in the depth of my soul I heard the Lord say, I want you to use the talents I have entrusted to you to speak to people about Me and what I have done in your life. Added to the talents I have given you on the human level, I will give you the supernatural gift of preaching. I am calling you into the ministry.

Talk about a conscription and the motivation of a mandate! I could not have said “No!” even if I had wanted to. In point of fact, just the opposite was true. Everything within me shouted an enthusiastic “Yes!” I felt a Christ-induced fire of a passion to preach.

I accepted every chance I was offered to speak about Christ. The following year, I left my part-time job as a radio announcer and became a director of youth in a local church. Later, as I was completing college and seminary, I became a student pastor. The more I learned from the Bible and studies in theology, the more excited I became about the privilege of preaching.

During my seminary years, I avidly read the writings of Dr. James Stewart and Dr. Thomas F. Torrance. Both were professors at New College, the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. The most fervent dream of my life was that someday I could study under these men. However, I did not have the financial resources to do that and dismissed the possibility. Once again, God had other plans.

One day Ruth Palmer, a teacher from my high school in Kenosha, Wisconsin, called me. She remembered my time as a student working with John Davies and had followed my progress through college and seminary. She asked me a very crucial question: “Is there something you feel led to do that you are not able to do? If so, I want to come and talk with you.”

One afternoon, Ruth drove down from Kenosha to Gurnee, Illinois, where I was serving as a student pastor as I finished seminary. She brought with her a pen and a pad of paper on which she recorded my vision for the next step of my education. I told her about my hope of being able to study at New College. “What would it cost?” she asked.

I already had looked into that. I related the cost of transportation, food and housing, tuition, and books. As I detailed the expenses, I assumed she was simply making conversation expressing empathy and concern for a poor student. Instead she was writing down all of the detailed list of expenses. At the end of my recitation, she drew a line at the bottom of the list, added all the figures together, and came up with the total cost.