How Gardner C. Taylor Preached: A Poet’s Words, the People in the Pews, and Christ
Gardner C. Taylor pastored Concord Baptist Church of Christ in Brooklyn for 42 years and became known as the “dean of American preaching.” We studied six of his sermons, from Easter 1988 to the National Baptist Convention in 2000. He preached like a poet who never forgot the people in the pews: words chosen for their sound, scenes painted so vividly you stood inside them, and every sermon landing on Christ.
Who Gardner C. Taylor was
Taylor led Concord, in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant, from 1948 to 1990, and the church grew from about 8,000 members to as many as 10,000. He was a friend of Martin Luther King Jr. and helped found the Progressive National Baptist Convention in 1961.
He gave Yale’s Lyman Beecher Lectures in 1976, published as How Shall They Preach (1977). Time called him the “dean of the nation’s black preachers” in 1979, Ebony ranked him first among America’s 15 greatest Black preachers in 1993, and a Baylor University survey named him one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English-speaking world in 1996. He preached at the 1993 inaugural prayer service for President Bill Clinton and received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2000.
The shape of a Taylor sermon
Taylor often opened light. Several of the sermons we studied start with humor, sometimes two jokes in a row, before the text takes over.
From there he moved inductively, by scenes and “moves” rather than numbered points. He put his hearers inside the biblical story. In “Show Us the Father,” the room is hushed in the upper room, seated beside Thomas. In another sermon he tells the Good Samaritan from inside the Samaritan’s own mind.
Those scenes usually build toward one big idea, and they often climb from sorrow or despair to joy. Sometimes he applied the text to the nation as well as to the person, and he drew on firsthand detail, like his own visit to Sardis.
Every sermon we studied ends in the same place: the person and work of Christ. In “Three Trees to Glory,” the climb ends at the tree of life.
What made his preaching different
Words for sound
He chose words for how they sing as well as what they mean. One observer said he had one of the best working vocabularies of any minister alive.
Paint the scene
He painted the biblical scene so vividly that listeners felt they were standing in the text, not hearing about it.
Controlled range
He kept an enormous rhetorical range under tight control, so the room felt something was about to break loose, and every scene moved toward one big idea and Christ.
What others said
“He whispers it, and then he shouts it; he pats, pinches and probes it.”
— Richard John Neuhaus
“Gardner Taylor combines eloquence and passion in the endeavor of preaching.”
— Timothy George, Beeson Divinity School, 1995 (Christianity Today)
What to take into your own pulpit
Listen to your sentences
Taylor chose words for their sound as well as their sense. Read your key lines out loud and ask whether they sing.
Put people inside the text
Don’t just describe the scene. Seat the listener in it, beside Thomas or inside the Samaritan’s head.
Hold power in reserve
Range matters less than control. A room that senses something is about to break loose leans in.
Those are the ideas. The guide turns them into ten steps you can follow this week, plus the sermons we studied and a fill-in outline in his shape.
Free PDF · Preach Like the Greats
Learn to preach like Gardner C. Taylor.
This post is the overview. The guide has the research and the method.
- The 6 sermons we studied, start to finish
- Ten steps to preach the way he did
- His sermon outline, movement by movement
- A fill-in template for your own text, 9 pages
Common questions
What was Gardner C. Taylor’s preaching style?
Poetic, pictorial and controlled. He chose words for their sound as well as their sense, painted the biblical scene so listeners felt they were in it, and kept a huge rhetorical range under tight discipline.
How did Gardner C. Taylor structure a sermon?
Inductively, by scenes and “moves” rather than numbered points. He often opened with humor, built toward one controlling idea, frequently climbed from sorrow to joy, and always ended on the person and work of Christ.
Why was Gardner C. Taylor called the “dean of American preaching”?
Time called him the “dean of the nation’s black preachers” in 1979, and a 1996 Baylor survey named him one of the 12 most effective preachers in the English-speaking world.