More thoughts on using quotes

Scholarly Christian authors, well-read and well-intentioned, often feel compelled to share favorite quotes on whatever subject they are currently covering. They love and have been affected by this or that particular quote, so they just have to include it so their readers can love and be affected by it as well. This goes to the purpose of the book, article, or sermon. Is it intended to be a review of the collected wisdom on a topic? Is that quote really the best way to say what you want to say, at this point in your narrative, to this particular audience, at this point in history? Is this touchstone to the past actually needed? Don't let your humility and your admiration for other writers misdirect your efforts, allow you to take the easy and (often) less effective way out, or limit the work of the Spirit through you.

Imagine if most Christian authors down through church history had taken that approach. What if, instead of striving to express themselves — to write — they continually quoted their predecessors, over time effectively quasi-canonizing the impressive but ultimately human insights and culturally bound expressions of those who had gone before? How well would that have served the church? Where would it have left us? Far less inspired, far less theologically attuned, and with far less ability to understand or speak to the present culture.

I know an extremely gifted and effective preacher who, at a particular point in his ministry, was so impressed by a dozen or so of the most perceptive and insightful writers, preachers, and theologians of the past that for a while his sermons consisted almost entirely of quotes from them. Despite appeals from his friends, his rationale for maintaining this approach had some merit: He could not have said it better himself. That was probably true, but only in a limited sense — not at all necessarily as it applied to the particular circumstances of the particular audience he was seeking to reach.

Once again, what is the purpose of the book, or the article, or the message? What is the most effective way to accomplish that purpose? These are always important questions to answer, and often surprisingly difficult ones. At a more granular level, is this particular quote, regardless of its objective merits, the very best thing to put right here, on this page, right now?