First Baptist Church

Jonathan Edwards, the great American preacher, was born in 1703 in East Windsor, Connecticut. He graduated from Yale (then the Connecticut Collegiate School) as valedictorian just shy of his seventeenth birthday. In 1729 Edwards became the pastor of the church in Northhampton, MA where he served 21 years until being dismissed by that congregation in 1750. On July 8, 1741 he preached his most famous sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” in Enfield, Connecticut an integral part of what later came to be known as “The Great Awakening.”

Edwards’ approach to ministry and to preaching was strikingly different than it is in our day. Author Douglas A. Sweeney, in his biographical work entitled Jonathan Edwards and the Ministry of the Word, writes,

Edwards’ world was strikingly different from ours. Its pastors worked as theologians. Its theologians worked as pastors. People expected ordained clergy to spend the bulk of their time in study, preparing to minister the Word to them in depth and rich detail. They wanted their pastors to be learned more than flashy, therapeutic, businesslike or even approachable. They paid attention to words, biblical words most of all. Many knew their Bibles well, believing their lives depended upon it.
(pg. 30)

Sadly, in the present day pastors are usually seen far more as CEO’s, problem solvers, business leaders, the man to do all the work of ministry, do the discipling, do the evangelism, and set all the goals. In Edwards’ day the primary task of all tasks was to be exceptionally well prepared to feed the people from the pulpit.

Edwards spent an average of 13 hours per day in study. Usually rising in the very early morning hours and spending about 3 yours in study before breakfast and a family devotion time with his 11 children at around 7:00 AM. Edwards wrote extensively, made pastoral visits, entertained in the family home, and farmed 40 acres. He often withdrew on walks or rides to secluded places where he thought and prayed.

Preachers have changed and the appetites of the people have changed when it comes to expectations for preaching. Sweeney writes, “The pastor led a corporate prayer of public confession and intercession. Then he preached a massive, exegetical sermon, usually one to two hours in length.” (pg. 58) Today, the average sermon is approximately 50 to 80 percent shorter, and much lighter in content than would have been one of Edward’s sermons.

Church-going was not seen in anything that resembles the manner in which it is viewed today. People were required to attend, since it was deemed important, even essential. The puritans organized their laws around, and in accordance with the scriptures. In early New England, one could not vote or hold office who was not a church member and no one could join a church without giving a testimony regarding their conversion. Those who held office were viewed as being God’s servants, making laws in accordance with biblical teaching. Church attendance was mandatory, although exceptions were made for men at war, the aged, ailing, and nursing mothers. But no such allowances were made for secular obligations, laziness, and lack of interest. Fathers were often punished by the community for failing to “catechize” their children. In other words, a father failing to teach his children Christian doctrine was seen to be miserably failing as a father in the single most important of his duties.

Even though Edwards’ day was different, in many respects it would do churches and individuals today to re-capture many of the beliefs and practices which he, and others of that time period, held so dearly. In the overall scheme of time it was not really that long ago. When we consider how far we have evolved as a culture and as a church it is frightening! Edwards has been termed by many, and I believe fittingly so, the greatest theologian ever produced in America. Sweeney writes, “He remains influential, rather, because he invested prayer, sweat and tears in the life of the mind. Such commitment requires trust that God will use the Word as he says. We ought to ask ourselves today whether we have that kind of trust.” Too many these days are only paying lip service to trust in God and, really and truly, are trusting their own ingenuity to garner whatever they consider to be “success” in ministry. All church members and pastors would do well to study and become familiar with the life and ministry of Jonathan Edwards.

In Christ,

Pastor Allen Raynor