Preach Magazine Issue 5 - Preaching to the unconverted | Page 47

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47

What I’ve learnt
THE WISDOM OF A SEASONED PREACHER

Graeme Garden was born
in 1935, a non-conformist
by birth. His mother was
a Congregationalist (pre
URC), and his father the
son of a Baptist minister.
With the outbreak of war
in 1939 and the subsequent
fuel restrictions, which
ruled out excessive
use of the family car,
a decision was taken
to transfer loyalties to
the nearby Methodist
church, a decision which
proved, possibly, the
most significant change
in Graeme’s Christian
journey having celebrated,
this year, his sixty-first
year as a Local Preacher.

W

illiam Cowper – the writer of
several much loved hymns
– is perhaps best known
for writing ‘God moves in
a mysterious way, his wonders to
perform’, a hymn that has for many
years been high on my personal list of
favourites. It is filled with challenging,
inspiring and reassuring promises,
culminating, in the sixth verse, with
the words — ‘Blind unbelief is sure to
err/and scan his work in vain/God is
his own interpreter/and he will make
it plain’.
We are constantly seeking reassurance
and explanations. We strive to make
sense of so many things with which
we are regularly confronted and we
have difficulty finding satisfactory
answers to the many questions which,
inevitably, fill our minds; but we have
already acknowledged that ‘God is
his own interpreters’ and we can take
comfort from that and put our trust in
him. Many of us will recall our Sunday
School days when we sang, with great
enthusiasm, ‘trust and obey/for there’s
no other way/to be happy in Jesus/but
to trust and obey’.
I guess I was about six years old
when I first ‘took to the pulpit’. Every
Sunday morning I would accompany
my parents to church and I could
hardly wait, on returning home, to
take myself off into the lounge where
I would clamber on to a stool at the
back of an arm chair and ‘preach’ to
my imaginary congregation. I suppose
I could be said to be answering a ‘call
to preach’ but I knew that, all too
soon, I would have to abandon my
‘congregation’ and join the rest of the
family for lunch, although not until
after my father, himself a son of the
manse, had invited me to say grace!

Many people have influenced me on
my journey as a preacher, not least
those who have taught me that I do
not always, necessarily, know what
is best for me. At one time I was
convinced that my future would lead
me into full-time ministry. At an initial
interview, shortly after my completion
of two years’ National Service, it was
suggested to me that I would be wise
to put the idea on hold until I had
taken time to more fully consider
the implications. I was young and
impetuous and I had been thinking
about little else for several years.
I was devastated. I felt rejected. But
I remained convinced that God was
calling me and I was haunted by those
words of William Cowper: ‘God is his
own interpreter...’ I threw myself into
preaching whenever and wherever
I was able. I had the privilege of
serving the Leaders of Worship and
Preachers Trust as National Advocate
in 2013/14 and, for the past several
years, have had the opportunity of
travelling widely and offering myself
in the service of him ‘whom to serve
lies perfect freedom’ (to quote St
Augustine).
One of my lasting memories is
spending a few hours with a close
friend, a minister, who aged just 38,
was dying from cancer. We spoke
about the future of our church and the
hundreds of youngsters who attended
it. His final words to me were, ‘Our
task and privilege is to teach them
and preach them into
the Kingdom.’ What
greater task could
one be challenged to
undertake?
Graeme Garden