SermonStudio

SELDOM HAVE preachers been more foolish than when they have supposed that people think with their heads!

It was a long while before Pastor Pulpitpounder made this great discovery for himself; but when he did, he said to his wife, "Half of my life I spent in school training my head. Half of each week my head works on my sermons. How stupid of me to work so hard with my head when people think with their hearts and not with their heads."

It was a hot day in July, when the village preacher was pushing his lawn mower, that his hat fell off his head. Now this was no simple matter of carelessness, for he dropped his hat because of a startling thought that burst into his funny little head. "It was not in school that I learned to preach," he exclaimed with sparkling eyes. "I learned to preach by beating drum in the band!" For you see, before our friend was a preacher, he was a drummer. He thought, "How I did pound the big bass drum and crash the shining cymbal!" And then he remembered that people always listened best to the band when he pounded hardest on his drum and crashed loudest on his cymbal. "Tomorrow," he promised himself as he picked up his hat, "my pulpit shall be my drum and my ringing voice shall be my cymbal."

The next day was a perfect day for drumming. The sun was bright and the leaves were green, but best of all, it was the Fourth of July. Early in the morning firecrackers were popping and children were shouting.

"What a day," thought Brother Pulpitpounder, "to fire my friends with a drummer's delight! I shall preach as no man ever preached."

The morning service began with a rousing hymn about freedom from the devil and the dictators. The hymns were sung by the congregation with the shouts of Joshua's legions, until the janitor feared the very walls would come tumbling down.

And then came the sermon.

Never before had such preaching been heard in the tiny village. Percussionist Peter introduced his sermon with the clanging of cymbals and the roaring of drums. On through his points of departure he beat, and as he pounded his pulpit drum, the people rose in their fervor until they felt that they were truly "Christian soldiers marching as to war."

Peter continued to depart from his text with the bombast of march time and the after-beat of the snare drum. He called them to their feet with the ringing cymbals of the dogfight and the rolling rumbles of the National Anthem. And when the sermon reached its climax, he defied the unchangeable laws of the band parade and ended his sermon with a stinger-even though he was on the march!

Now Burly Bill, the village plumber, seldom found his way to the Holy House on the quiet Sabbath; but when his saintly wife returned from the church that day wearing the radiance of inspiration on her face, he met her with this query, "And how was the sermon today, my dear?"

"Oh, Bill," she exclaimed, "I have never heard such a sermon in all my life. The preacher carried me away like the wind."

"But what did he say?" Bill inquired.

"Oh," she sighed deeply, "I don't remember what he said, but oh, how he did say it."

And as our pulpit drummer marched home from his church that day, he thought in his funny little head, "Why should I pound so hard with my head, when I can just as well pound with my fist?"