Reflections on my call to preach : connecting the dots / Fred Brenning Craddock.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Craddock, Fred B.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Craddock, Fred B.

Vocation--Christianity.

Vocation.

Preaching.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (viii, 117 p.)

Place of Publication:

St. Louis, Mo. : Chalice Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Travel with revered preacher and author Fred Craddock through his early years as he considers what made him take to the pulpit. "For some reason, I felt I had to say 'Yes' or 'No' to the ministry so I could feel free again. My siblings and friends talked almost casually about options and preferences as to careers, but with no evident sense of urgency. Not so with me. I did not then, nor do I now know whether the burden of choice was a trait of personality, a kind of super-conscientiousness, whether the calling to ministry itself carried a weight, a burden, peculiar to the task itself. Rightly or wrongly, when I thought of possibly becoming a journalist, that would be a choice, 100 percent mine. When I considered becoming a minister, that was not totally my decision; I was responding to God's will for me. Of course, I had been told that journalists, lawyers, teachers, merchants, farmers-all could understand their lives as a vocation, a calling, but what I am telling you is that I perceived, I felt, I experienced the idea of being a preacher as different, and that difference was sobering, even burdensome. That's why advice about not being in a hurry, taking my time, was not helpful even if wise. If it was my decision, why could I not make it now; if it was God's decision, why did not God tell me, or at least tell my father or my mother? I prayed for the ache to leave me." -Excerpt from Reflections on My Call to Preach.

Contents:

Introduction

Before I was born

If you will let him live

The midwife

My mother

My father

Three to a bed

School days

School days (continued)

Sunday Shool

Staying for church

Bethany Hills

The summer of '46

Reflections on these reflections.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

ISBN:

0-8272-3280-2

1-282-96313-9

9786612963131

0-8272-3281-0