Quiet Hints, Chapter 20–"Meanness”

Notes taken from Quiet Hints to Growing Preachers by Charles E. Jefferson, Chapter 20, “Meanness.”

How to reach a mean man when once entrenched in a pulpit is indeed a problem.

A Christian worker who has had experience in the making of programs is inclined to think that if five speakers are wanted to grace an important occasion it would be safer to trust five men chosen at random from the penitentiary to do unto one another in the division of time the thing that is right, than five eloquent clergymen taken from as many Christian pulpits.

Ecclesiastical fences are no longer high and some men are adepts in the knack of inducing sheep to jump from one field into another.

What shall it profit a man to build up his church membership and lose his own soul?

The word of a minister should be as binding as his bond. Whatever he says he will do he should perform.

There are men who are swift to promise and slow to fulfill . . . It is men of shining gifts who are most likely to be thus ensnared.

If a minister cannot be a saint or hero, he can at least be decent.