Editor’s Note: The following article contains excerpts from Jared’s most recent book Learning from a Legend: What Gardner C. Taylor Can Teach Us About Preaching (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2016).

On Easter Sunday 2015, the last pulpit prince died. How fitting that Resurrection Sunday would be the day that Rev. Dr. Gardner C. Taylor (1918-2015) boarded the last leg of a long flight from this life to eternity. What gospel preacher wouldn’t want to return home on such a day? At 96 years old, having outlived almost all of his contemporaries, it was time to go home.

Like Barnabas in Acts 11:24, Taylor was a “good man full of the Holy Spirit and faith.” His life was long, productive, and Christ-honoring. He received national and international recognition on account of his advocacy for African Americans, strategic leadership during the Civil Rights Era, campaigns for equal opportunities in education, community work in New York, and steadfast commitment to standing up and speaking out for the least, the lonely, and the lost. For these and other reasons, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Bill Clinton in the year 2000, the highest honor a civilian can receive. Yet, these accolades are only part of the story. They make more sense in the context of what countless leaders consider his most distinguished attribute. His preaching set him apart.

Taylor modeled sermonic excellence wherever he preached whether in various parts of the world, around the United States, or most often at Concord Baptist Church in Brooklyn where he pastored from 1948 to 1990. He mentored a younger cohort of preachers like Martin Luther King Jr., H. Beecher Hicks Jr., James Earl Massey, Otis Moss Jr., and Cleophus J. LaRue, to name a few. In fact, an entire generation of African American preachers looked to Taylor as the gold standard for pulpit eloquence. Moreover, some of the best-known White preachers of the mid-twentieth century like George Buttrick, Paul Scherer, Ralph W. Sockman, and others, held him in high regard and invited him to preach in their pulpits. In the 1960s, he preached on the radio to families across the nation through NBC’s National Radio Pulpit.

Taylor also accumulated numerous titles and distinctions on account of his preaching. In 1979, Time magazine named him, “Dean of the nation’s black preachers.”[1] In 1984 and again in 1993, Ebony magazine listed him as first on its list of the 15 greatest Black preachers in America.[2] In 1996, Baylor University named him one of the twelve most effective preachers in the English-speaking world.[3] Other titles also surfaced from various corners: “Poet Laureate of the American pulpit,” “Prince of the American Pulpit,” and, most recently in an obituary written by H. Beecher Hicks Jr. in The Huffington Post, “The Prophet of Jordan’s Mists.”[4]

To be sure, a person who excelled at preaching and Christian living for such a long tenure has much to teach the next generation of preachers. In my most recent book Learning from a Legend: What Gardner C. Taylor Can Teach Us About Preaching, I lift up six lessons in particular that can enhance our own preaching. However, in this article, I would like to emphasize two life lessons that I learned from Taylor that have not only helped me grow as a person, but have also shaped my preaching and teaching ministry.

Faithfulness

First, Dr. Taylor cared more about faithfulness than success. Even with so many accomplishments and commendations, especially in preaching, Taylor never pursued any of them. In today’s climate of news-cycle-driven, celebrity-focused, trophy-carrying actions and attitudes outside and inside the church, it almost seems odd that Taylor never tried to make a name for himself or act newsworthy. He did not pursue political office, although he could have. Many leaders looked to him as a significant and influential person in the civil rights movement, but he was fine with being behind-the-scenes rather than on the front-page. James Earl Massey puts it this way: “Taylor has been stuck with the church. He has been busy handling the themes of the gospel and seeking to affect society in ways that are consonant with the gospel purpose. This is not newsworthy like leading a sit in.”[5] Day after day, year after year, decade after decade, Taylor did the same thing God calls every preacher-teacher to do: he kept preaching, and he kept living out the gospel in everyday life. Faithfulness mattered more to him than success.

Greatness of the gospel

Second, Dr. Taylor made sure the accent was always on the greatness of the gospel instead of the greatness of the preacher. Toward the end of his life and before his ill health confined him to a convalescent home, Taylor occasionally would visit Shaw Divinity School, a seminary not too far from his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. One of his mentees, Dr. Reginald High, was a professor there. (Dr. High visited him weekly and helped care for him in the final years of his life.) On occasion, Taylor would slip in through the back door of the chapel, cane in hand to help him keep his footing, and would take his seat near the back row of the sanctuary in order to listen to that day’s sermon. My hunch is that any preacher who saw him enter the room mid-sermon, and who knew who he was, this Dean of American Preaching, probably felt a slight tightening of the throat and a few extra beads of sweat gathering on the forehead.

Taylor also guest lectured and even listened to student sermons from time to time. On one particular day, when reflecting on a student’s sermon, Taylor told his class: “You do not want to strive to be a great preacher. You do want to strive for people to feel, after you have tried to preach, what a great gospel it is.”[6] Notice where the accent lies: on the greatness of the gospel. The gospel fed Taylor’s relentless desire to grow and refine his craft. The gospel fueled the fire of his life and ministry. At the end of the day, it was the gospel that compelled him.

We have a great gospel! We do not grow as preachers so that people will say what great preachers we are. We grow so that people will see what a great gospel we have. Gardner C. Taylor’s life and ministry remind us of an important and abiding truth. If gospel witness is our primary motivation, then every preacher, regardless of lot or station, race or ethnicity, class or gender, will not only be known for a commitment to preaching, but for a commitment to growing. As the Lord Jesus puts in Luke 12:48, “From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked.”

1. “American Preaching: A Dying Art?,” Time, December 31, 1979.
2. “America’s 15 Greatest Black Preachers,” Ebony, September 1984; “The 15 Greatest Black Preachers,” Ebony, November 1993.
3. “Baylor Names the 12 Most Effective Preachers,” Baylor University Media Communications, February 28, 1996, http://www.baylor.edu/mediacommunications/ news.php?action=story&story=1036.
4. Michael Eric Dyson, “Gardner Taylor: Poet Laureate of the Pulpit,” Christian Century 112, no. 1 (January 4, 1995): 12–16; Henry H. Mitchell, “African American Preaching,” in Concise Encyclopedia of Preaching, ed. William H. Willimon and Richard Lischer (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 372; H. Beecher Hicks Jr., “The Prophet of ‘Jordan’s Mists’,” April 8, 2015, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rev-dr-h-beecher-hicks-jr/the-prophet-of-jordans-mists_b_7024334.html.
5. Interview with Dyson in Dyson, “Gardner Taylor,” 14.
6. Quotation in “Reverend Gardner C. Taylor (PBS Documentary),” Religion & Ethics News Weekly, August 18, 2006, http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/ 2006/08/18/ august-18-2006-reverend-gardner-c-taylor/1786/. Emphasis added.

Jared E. Alcántara is an Associate Professor of Preaching and holds the Paul W. Powell Endowed Chair in Preaching at Truett Seminary in Waco, Texas. His latest book is "The Practices of Christian Preaching: Essentials for Effective Proclamation." Follow him on Twitter or Instagram @jaredealcantara.