A preaching professor at a seminary had an interesting class session. He scheduled his students to preach on The Parable of the Good Samaritan at various places throughout the school all on the same day. He set it up so that each student would go, one at a time, from one classroom to another where he or she would preach the sermon. The professor gave some students 10 minutes to go from one room to the other; but for others he allowed much less time forcing them to rush in order to meet the schedule. Each student…one at a time…had to walk down a certain hallway and pass a disheveled and confused person who was obviously in need of help who had been planted there for the exercise.
The results were equally as interesting as the experiment. The percentage of those good men and women who actually stopped to help were extremely low, especially for those who were under pressure of a shorter time period. It seemed that the tighter the schedule, the fewer were those who stopped to help the indigent man.
When the professor explained his experiment, you can imagine the impact on that class of future spiritual leaders. Rushing to preach a sermon on the Good Samaritan, they had walked past the beggar who was at the heart of the parable.
My AA friends say that it is one thing to “talk the talk” and quite another to “walk the talk”…There is a ministry at our doorstep… an opportunity to do for and with others.
Just pondering.
Each month a member of the Cook County Ministerium will offer Spiritual Reflections. This week our contributor is Pastor EvaLyn Carlson, serving as interim minister of Zoar Lutheran Church in Tofte.
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