LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

a definite aim either to edify or convert, to encourage or instruct, whether he was preaching in church or in a works yard. The circumstances had to be considered as to whether the sermon was preached from notes or read from a script or delivered ex tempore as in a hospital ward or in the open air.

      Green followed the principles of the analysis of Augustine of Hippo addressing the intellect, the affections and the will. The intellect was addressed with some substance of church doctrine or history, the affections with the love of God and the will aroused to a sense of penitence with a call for conversion by reproof, correction and exhortation. According to the occasion emphasis on one of the component parts would be made, but all should be present. Although he aimed to be an effective teacher, using appropriate illustrations, especially with regard to the Sacraments, the supreme end of the sermon for him was the conversion of sinners, by instruction, edification, and encouragement.

      Green kept a notebook for illustrations to use from the Bible, from secular sources and from his own life experiences. He considered that the place of pain and suffering, common matters raised constantly with him, should be explored and explained as Green had a rational outlook on life and thought that explanations were possible and desirable. He believed in what he called “unconscious cerebration”⁷⁶ for sermons allowing his thoughts on a preselected topic to “boil and simmer” for six weeks whilst he prayed about it. He then “saw” the shape of the sermon in his mind and proceeded to write it out, revise it and then to put it in final form. If it proved to be satisfactory after delivery and receiving any immediate criticisms from his hearers he considered it was worth repeating. He was not shy of advocating the use of the sermons of others if they were worthwhile. Green recycled his own material all through his writings as he expressed his views repeatedly. He was enthusiastic about his preaching, and preached as often as he could to a wide variety of congregations. He aimed to be terse and simple and welcomed response. When he did not have enough time to prepare, or if he thought that his sermon was not up to the mark, he would do a Bible exposition as an alternative, but did not regard this as preaching.

      In his teaching he laid great stress on how to make a private confession as he had experienced the power of confession and receiving absolution for himself immediately before his ordination as priest and he emphasised the power of sin in stopping God’s grace. He knew the Church of England had the reputation of being obsessed by sin but thought himself that it was not obsessed enough and quoted Amiel’s mediaeval Journal: “The great defect (of the Church of his day) is that its conception of holiness is a frivolous one, or, what comes to the same thing, its conception of sin is a superficial one.”⁷⁷ Green did not regard it necessary for private confession to be habitual but he warned that “sins forgotten but not repented have great power to weaken the character and to hinder grace. The watch against sin and active striving after holiness become necessary as we grow older.”⁷⁸

      Green had a fixed time and place at St Philip’s and at the Cathedral to hear confessions and give absolution, which he regarded as “medicine not food.”⁷⁹ He heard confessions in the open church, and he rebuked vice fearlessly with a view to penitence ending to the restoration of self-respect. Although he aimed primarily at the individual to enable them to find integrity in combining faith and action he was equally fearless in rebuking vice to the general public especially with regard to drinking and gambling.

      Following what has been said about the clergyman leaving social action to the laity, it must not be assumed Green considered that ministry was the province of the ordained ministers only. He believed in shared ministry. As early as 1919 he advocated women should be allowed to preach in church and raised the matter of the ordination of women. When a pamphlet was prepared on the subject for the bishops in 1930 he challenged the Church to decide on the words of Galatians 3:28 “In Christ there is neither male nor female.” As far as his men were concerned his aim was to get them “on their knees to pray, and on their feet to speak for Christ.”⁸⁰ He trained them in study groups of eight to become public speakers. Those who survived World War I returned to become street preachers, to run the Sunday afternoon Men’s Convention and to devise and present a service in Lent with sermons on a Sunday evening with other participating church groups including the women’s groups, which was attended by 360 people from 9.30pm to 10pm.

      According to his account in The Man of God Green must have been one of the first priests in the Church of England to establish house meetings or cottage meetings with Bible study groups, prayer circles and missionary guilds, as adult activities although the Methodist church had established their classes long before.

      For all the importance of church groups and activities which had a religious base, individuals were more important to Green, “the good shepherd who knew his sheep” and they were mainly his parishioners who lived in poverty. He had an aggressive stance on the well-to-do, as he experienced extreme poverty in his parish and considered that the rewards in life should go to the needs of the poor not to the benefit of the rich as he had the welfare of his people at heart. He had learned from visiting the wounded soldiers in hospital during the war that, in his view, “the Englishman is the most lovable” and some of his returned lads were now out of work.⁸¹

      He said that he was amazed daily at the virtue of his poor people and he berated the clergyman who was critical of the members of his flock and did not love them. Green preferred one of average ability, who loved his people and encouraged them to good results, doing all to the Glory of God, and the salvation of souls. He came to the support of such clergy when he replied on 18^th August 1922 to criticism of them in the correspondence columns of the Church Times. He contributed an article entitled The Inexcusable Laziness of the Clergy as “one of them” and outlined his own punishing workload, as he was single-handed at that time in a busy parish with a population of over 10,000 inhabitants. However, this could not be achieved without them being converted Christians.

      Although he was hard-pressed his main object was to convert his people. Green’s approach to evangelism and the importance of Parish Missions follows to investigate his firmly held view: “It is not enough to get them to church. We need to get them to Christ. I fear that there are congregations in which a very large percentage of the regular members have never really faced the question of the entire surrender to Christ.”⁸²

      ⁵⁹ PG: The Town Parson (Longmans Green & Co., London, 1924), Author’s Preface to new edition.

      ⁶⁰ Ibid.: Dedication.

      ⁶¹ Ibid.: Preface xii.

      ⁶² PG: The Man of God (Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1935), p39.

      ⁶³ PG: The Town Parson, Preface xiv.

      ⁶⁴ PG: The Man of God, p103.

      ⁶⁵ Ibid., p100.

      ⁶⁶ PG: The Town Parson, p41.

      ⁶⁷ Ibid., p50.

      ⁶⁸ Ibid., p53.

      ⁶⁹ Ibid., p35.

      ⁷⁰ PG: The Man of God, p222.

      ⁷¹ Ibid., p229.

      ⁷² Ibid., p226.

      ⁷³ PG: The Town Parson, p80.

      ⁷⁴ Ibid., p23.

      ⁷⁵ Trevor Beeson: The Canons (SCM Press, London, 2006), p124.

      ⁷⁶ PG: The Town Parson, p141.

      ⁷⁷ The Amiel Journal, translated by Mrs Humphrey Ward (Macmillan, London, 1898), p155 (quoted in PG: The Man of God Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1935), p61.

      ⁷⁸ PG: The Man of God, p61.

      ⁷⁹ PG: The Town Parson, p222.

      ⁸⁰ Coggan, op. cit., p10.

      ⁸¹ PG: The man of God, p100.

      ⁸² Ibid., p141.

       CHAPTER

Скачать книгу