THE AUDACITY OF PREACHING

This is the latest of the Lyman Beecher Lectures, given annually by invitation at the Yale Divinity School. The Rev. Dr. Gene E. Bartlett, now on the staff of the Colgate-Rochester Divinity School, was the 1961 lecturer. Having spent many years as pastor and preacher, he is able to speak with authority to the condition of the modern preacher, who finds himself caught up in a parochial maelstrom in which he is often tempted to question, if not to doubt, the effectiveness of his ministry, the validity of his message, and his own ability to cope with a changing world situation too bewildering for him to comprehend or relate to the Christian Gospel as he understands it. These lectures do not give all the answers, but they do raise the problems in the Christian context in such a way that the preacher does gain a new insight into the real nature of his task, and reassurance that God is able to use even him in reaching the people if he gives himself to his work with humility, honesty, and renewed dedication. Protestant pastors and preachers can well afford the time and the cost to let Dr. Bartlett speak to them through the pages so that they may the better persist in the audacity of preaching.