When something the preacher said doesn’t sound right

This has happened to me a number of times. I’m sitting in a meeting with hundreds of the Lord’s people representing churches across our state or country. A large number of preachers are in the audience. The speaker is sounding forth on some subject of importance to us all.

Suddenly, the speaker comes out with a statement that gets a hearty “amen,” something profound that reinforces the point he is making. He goes on with the message and everyone in the room follows him but one person. Me, I’m stuck at that statement. Where did he get that, I wonder. Is it true? How can we know?

If “Facebook,” that wonderful and exasperating social networking machine, has taught us anything, it is to distrust percentages and question quotations.

A Facebook friend’s profile contained a quote from President Kennedy. I happen to know the quote and while I cannot prove JFK never uttered those words–proving a negative like that is impossible–I know how the line got attached to the Kennedys. It’s a quotation from a George Bernard Shaw play.

Some see things as they are and ask ‘Why?’ I see things that never were and ask ‘Why not?’

In 1968, at the funeral of his brother Robert F. Kennedy, Senator Ted Kennedy spoke that line as applying to him. It’s a terrific depiction of vision.  And, for most of us, it was probably our first time to hear that quote.  The source was not given in the oration, which may have led some to believe Senator Kennedy made it up.

One thing we know, however, no Kennedy is its source.  And yet, keep your eye out for that quotation. Half the time, it will be attributed to one of the Kennedys.

So important to get it right

Accuracy is important for everyone, but particularly those called to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  That message should not be tainted with error of any kind.

Obviously, because pastors preach so much, our sermon machines consume a lot of material. It figures that sometimes we are going to get something wrong.

That’s why a statement from a particular preacher hit me so hard and drove me to do some research.

Billy Graham has said that 70 percent of the members of our churches are unsaved.

A preacher friend said that on Facebook. It did not sound right, definitely not like anything I’d ever heard Mr. Graham say.  So, I contacted the pastor to ask for his source.

“It’s on his website,” the pastor said. “It’s common knowledge.”

A few minutes later, I returned to him.  “Friend, I’ve gone to his website and there’s a ton of great stuff there. But if you can locate that quote, you’re a far better man than I am.”

He promised to look into it.

In the meantime, I began searching the internet for what Billy Graham “was said to have said” on the subject of how many church members are lost.

I ended up combing through massive lists of irrelevant material. Eventually, I came up with two pertinent quotations.

A preacher in Los Angeles said, “Billy Graham says 85 percent of the members of our churches are lost.” And a consultant with our Southern Baptist North American Mission Board said the number was 50 percent.

Unable to find more, I put out the call to my Facebook network for “research geniuses” among us to help me find what Billy Graham had actually said on that subject.

An hour later, Damon Olson, a pastor from Sand Mountain, Alabama, came back with this response from the Graham organization:

“We appreciate your inquiry concerning a quote attributed to Mr. Graham. Unfortunately, though we hear this question from time to time, we do not have any further information confirming that Mr. Graham ever claimed that a high percentage of church members (as much as 85%) are not saved.”

“We would suppose that some denominations which stress the need for the new birth would have a much higher percentage of born again believers. A poll by the Barna Research Group several years ago may shed some light on this subject. They indicate that ‘Protestant church attenders are two and a half times more likely than are Catholic attenders to be born-again Christians (60% to 23% respectively.’”

So, apparently, Billy Graham never even mentioned it.

Snopes alive! What are we preachers thinking! Why would we utter such harsh statements when we do not know what we are talking about!

No wonder some of the more inquiring minds (and discerning souls) in the congregation turn us off. We are feeding them hearsay and innuendo and gossip, and expecting them to treat it as God’s Truth.

As the Lord said to the sham preachers of Jeremiah’s day in a not-too-dissimilar context, “What does straw (man’s ponderings) have in common with grain (God’s Word)?” (Jeremiah 23:28)

While attending a large denominational gathering, I was struck by something the speaker said in quoting Winston Churchill. He should have known, but I’d wager that he didn’t, that in his vast audience were those who knew as much about Churchill as he did. His quote completely misrepresented this man.

On the theme of faithfulness to our duty for which we will all give account to the Lord, the preacher told how during the dark days of World War II, Britain’s coal miners threatened to go out on strike for higher wages. If that were to happen, it could cripple the war effort, weaken the economy, and leave millions of Britons in the cold. Churchill had to put a stop to the strike.

The speaker told how Winston Churchill met with the mine owners and a representative group of miners and delivered an impassioned speech that drove them out of the meeting hall and back into the pits to dig the coal.

According to my notes, the speaker quoted Churchill thusly: “One of these days, we will all stand before the Lord Jesus Christ at the final judgment. He will turn to the fighter pilots and ask, ‘What did you do?’ and they will say, ‘We gave our all in the defense of liberty.’ He will say to the soldiers, ‘What did you do?’ and they will answer, ‘We faced the enemy and risked everything for our nation.’”

The speaker went on like that for a bit, then, quoting Churchill, he said, “Then the coal miners will come before the King of Kings, and He will ask, ‘What did you do?’ and they will say, ‘We cut the coal.’”

Something about that did not sound right. I have a shelf of Churchill books in my study and while I had heard that story, I was fairly certain he had never spoken of anyone standing before Jesus Christ at judgment.

The next day, on returning home, I went straight to the large volume of Churchill’s wartime speeches. I found the one in question.

The date was October 31, 1942. Churchill was addressing a conference of coal-mine operators and miners in Westminster’s Central Hall. A brief speech, it can be read in five minutes. As Churchillian rhetoric goes, it wasn’t all that much. No brilliant oratorical flourishes, nothing really memorable until the final paragraph.

We shall not fail, and then some day, when children ask, ‘What did you do to win this inheritance for us and to make our name so respected among men?’ one will say, ‘I was a fighter pilot,’ another will say, ‘I was in the Submarine Service,’ another: ‘I marched with the Eighth Army; a fourth will say, ‘None of us could have lived without the convoys and the Merchant Seaman; and you in your turn will say, with equal pride and with equal right: ‘We cut the coal.’

At least the preacher got the last line right.

Now, I think I know what happened here. After all, I may have done something similar myself over the years. Some preacher in years past read that and liked it, but decided it needed something. It needs juicing up a tad.

I recall hearing someone quote Churchill’s final line as “We were down in the pits with our faces to the wall, cutting the coal!” That flows a little better, although how in the world one decides to improve on Churchill’s words is beyond me.

I come from a long line of coal miners. One of my brothers was a miner, my dad and all his brothers were miners, and their father and uncles before them labored in those dark, unsafe pits. I suppose that accounts for why I remembered the story in the first place. This is holy ground, so to speak, for me.

It would probably be a good thing for a minister to believe that someone in his congregation will know more about any subject than he does, if that would drive him to get his facts right and his story straight.

But even if they don’t–even if he is preaching to a congregation of fifty souls in the backwoods of Louisiana’s swamps or Alabama’s hills, many of whom may not have read a newspaper all week or a book all year–even so, he still ought to be sure of his quotes and his stories and his numbers.

The pastor is dealing with two precious commodities when he stands in the pulpit: the precious Word of God and the fine China of people’s lives.

Handle with care, faithful servant of God.

Churchill aside, you and I really will stand before the King of Kings at judgment and give account.

5 thoughts on “When something the preacher said doesn’t sound right

  1. The GA Baptist Mission Board has told us that based on their research that 70% of our population is lost. They say they have documentation.

  2. As a pastor, we know we never get everything right and are grateful when others show us grace in that matter. Still, it’s hard isn’t it, to listen to other preachers without getting “stuck” on something said, or without being too critical or even critiquing the message. That said, I recently went to my son’s church where the guy preached a great, spot-on message about the reliability of God’s Word. But I got stuck on something. He was talking about the intertestament period, what’s often referred to as 400 years of silence. He didn’t use that term, but he said, “During this time, God said nothing. God did nothing. Period.” I’m still stuck on it. Because I know Jesus said, “My Father is always working to this day and I too am working.” It didn’t take away from the message (except for me, lol) and everything else was spot on in my opinion. I really thought, “Oh my, how many mistakes have I made and someone thought the same.” Anyway, good word as always Joe.

    • Right, Mark. He definitely overstated the case. The very idea that “God did nothing,” makes us wonder “and exactly how did you know what God was doing, or not doing?” He didn’t. Foolish.

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