During his 1907 Lyman Beecher lectures on preaching at Yale University* (these lectures became his classic Positive Preaching and the Modern Mind), Forsyth shared the three ways in which he thought the Church suffers: i. from triviality. ii. from uncertainty. iii. from satisfaction (with itself, or more specifically, complacency).
He later went on in that address to emerging pastors and preachers to make this statement: “What we need is not the dechurching of Christianity, but the Christianizing of the Church.” This was his answer to the three ways the church suffers. But how was this to happen? Here’s what he said and he may well have been speaking yesterday:
“When I consider the span of my life absorbed into the eternity which comes before and after – as the remembrance of a guest that tarrieth but a day – the small space I occupy and which I see swallowed up in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I know nothing and which knows nothing of me, I take fright and am amazed to see myself here rather than there; there is no reason for me to be here rather than there, now rather than then. Who put me here? By whose command and act were this time and place allotted to me?”
His book, Run with the Horses, is for me, one of the most important books that I try to read once a year. It is a superb commentary on the life of the great prophet Jeremiah, and shows forth the real elements of a life lived in service to God and pastoral ministry to the people. The phrase, run with the horses, is taken from Jeremiah 12, and is God’s challenge and slight warning to him, after he had complained about how tough ministry had become for him. I use this phrase and unpack it when teaching other students in ministry, since I can’t find a better picture than this.