Spurgeon on Open Air Preaching

"I fear that in some of our less enlightened country churches there are conservative individuals who almost believe that to preach anywhere except in the chapel would be a shocking innovation, a sure token of heretical tendencies, and a mark of zeal without knowledge. Any young brother who studies his comfort among them must not suggest anything so irregular as a sermon outside the walls of their Zion. 

In the olden times we are told Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the streets, she crieth in the chief places of concourse, in the openings of the gates'; but the wise men of orthodoxy would have wisdom gagged except beneath the roof of a licensed building. These people believe in a New Testament which says, Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, and yet they dislike a literal obedience to the command. Do they imagine that a special blessing results from sitting upon a particular deal board with a piece of straight-up panelling at their back—an invention of discomfort which ought long ago to have made people prefer to worship outside on the green grass? Do they suppose that grace rebounds from sounding-boards, or can be beaten out of pulpit cushions in the same fashion as the dust? Are they enamored of the bad air, and the stifling stuffiness which in some of our meetinghouses make them almost as loathsome to the nose and to tired lungs as the mass-houses of Papists with their cheap and nasty incense? 

To reply to these objectors is a task for which we have no heart: we prefer foes worthy of the steel we use upon them, but these are scarcely worth a passing remark. One smiles at their prejudice, but we may yet have to weep over it, if it be allowed to stand in the way of usefulness. 

No sort of defence is needed for preaching out of doors; but it would need very potent arguments to prove that a man had done his duty who has never preached beyond the walls of his meetinghouse. A defence is required rather for services within buildings than for worship outside of them. 

Apologies are certainly wanted for architects who pile up brick and stone into the skies when there is so much need for preaching rooms among poor sinners down below. Defence is greatly needed for forests of stone pillars, which prevent the preacher's being seen and his voice from being heard; for high-pitched gothic roofs in which all sound is lost, and men are killed by being compelled to shout till they burst their blood vessels; and also for the willful creation of echoes by exposing hard, sound-refracting surfaces to satisfy the demands of art, to the total overlooking of the comfort of both audience and speaker.

The great benefit of open-air preaching is that WE GET SO MANY NEW-COMERS TO HEAR THE GOSPEL WHO OTHERWISE WOULD NEVER HEAR IT. The gospel command is, 'Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature', but it is so little obeyed that one would imagine that it ran thus, "Go into your own place of worship and preach the gospel to the few creatures who will come inside." 

Go ye into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in, albeit it constitutes part of a parable, is worthy to be taken very literally, and in so doing its meaning will be best carried out. We ought actually to go into the streets and lanes and highways, for there are lurkers in the hedges, tramps on the highway, street-walkers, and lane-haunters, whom we shall never reach unless we pursue them into their own domains. 

Sportsmen must not stop at home and wait for the birds to come and be shot at, neither must fishermen throw their nets inside their boats and hope to take many fish. Traders go to the markets, they follow their customers and go out after business if it will not come to them; and so must we. Some of our brethren are prosing on and on, to empty pews and musty hassocks, while they might be conferring lasting benefit upon hundreds by quitting the old walls for awhile, and seeking living stones for Jesus. 

Let them come out of Rehoboth and find room at the street corner, let them leave Salem and seek the peace of neglected souls, let them dream no longer at Bethel, but make an open space to be none other than the house of God, let them come down from Mount Zion, and up from Ænon, and even away from Trinity, and St Agnes, and St Michael-and-All-Angels, and St Margaret-Pattens, and St Vedast, and St Ethelburga, and all the rest of them, and try to find new saints among the sinners who are perishing for lack of knowledge."

 

 C.H. Spurgeon. Lectures To My Students. Open Air Preaching - Remarks Thereon.