Quiet Hints, Chapter 4–"Which Door?”

January 25, 2010


Notes taken from Quiet Hints to Growing Preachers by Charles E. Jefferson, Chapter 4, “Which Door?”

“It is well for a man not to be too heavily weighted with theories at the beginning of his career.”

“A man ought to preach not where he wants to preach but where he can preach.”

“But suppose a field is hard, shall a young man take it ? Why not ? All fields when known at first hand are hard.”

“The easy fields of which we sometimes read exist only in the imagination.”

“If a man is afraid of fields which are hard never let him think of becoming a minister.”

“Woe to the minister who is looking for an easy job! There is more hope for a fool than for him.”

“And as for the church being small, that is nothing against it. It is ’the glory of a small church that it can grow.”

“What greater privilege could a young man ask than that of taking a little church and by a process of nurture carried on through patient years causing that church through the blessing of God to develop until it becomes the crown of the community, the center of wide regions whose people look to it for impulse and guidance?»

“It is not becoming in young men fresh from school to be over particular about either geography or finance.”

“A man who will not preach at all unless some church puts into his palm the precise sum which he thinks his preaching worth ought to be left to die with all his sermons in him.”

“Men who are worthy of the Christian pulpit will get into it though they climb to it over obstacles high as the Alps, and over Himalayas of disappointment.”

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