In his 1877 lectures on preaching at Yale University, Phillips Brooks asks, “What sort of man may be a minister?” (35) He notes that “there is far too little discrimination in the selection of men who are to preach, and many men find their way into the preacher’s office who discover only too late that it is not their place” (36).

Yet, answering the question of “who ought to preach” is not something we should do “too narrowly” (37). Why? Because “there is nothing more striking about the ministry than the way in which very opposite men do equally effective work” (37). That is, God uses men who differ from one another in striking ways to preach his Word and build His church. God uses Calvin and Wesley, Piper and Dever, your pastor and the one down the road.

Brooks, however, does not shy away from painting some sort of picture of the man who ought to do the work of preaching. He outlines several broader qualities that aim to give some insight into what type of man should step into the pulpit.

He answers his question, “Who ought to preach?” in a summary fashion like this:

The preacher should be a man: “Full of the love of Christ, taking all truth and blessing as a trust, in the best sense didactic, hopeful, healthy, and counting [phyiscal] health, as far as it is in his power, a part of his self-consecration; willing, not simply as so many men are, to bear sickness for God’s work, but willing to preserve health for God’s work; and going to his preaching with the enthusiasm that shows it is what God made him for” (42).

According to Brooks, “The nearer you can come to him, my friends, the better preachers you will be, the surer you may be that you have a right to be preachers at all” (42).