The "Call to Minister" Can Be an Objective/Subjective Thing to Us Preachers. And it Was Life Changing for John Broadus! Check Out His Testimony!

A Devotional Reading

From the Desk of Dr. John Albert Broadus

One of the Four Founders of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

For the Twenty Eighth Day of the March 2025

Personal Testimony Concerning His Call to Preach [1]

In August, 1846, while pursuing the agency for Columbia College, he [A. M. Poindexter] attended the Potomac [Baptist] Association—or was it not called the Salem Union? —at Upperville, Fauquier County, and preached two sermons, which are vividly remembered by at least one person who was present, and which may be referred to as illustrating the usefulness of many kinds which Dr. Poindexter always connected with agency work. A youth[2] who had been teaching school in that vicinity two or three years, had just been released in order to enter the University of Virginia and study medicine. For three years a professed Christian, he had often thought about the question of becoming a minister, but considered himself to have finally decided that it was his duty. On Sunday, Dr. Poindexter preached upon “Glorying in the Cross.” The young man had often heard with enthusiasm and delight such truly eloquent preachers as Barnett Grimsley, Cumberland George, and Henry W. Dodge; but he thought, that Sunday at Upperville, that he had never before imagined what preaching might be, never before conceived the half of the grandeur and glory that gathers sublime around the Cross of Christ.. .

            The next morning Doctor Poindexter was requested to preach at eleven o’clock in the church, the Association adjourning to hear him. The sermon was one which he often preached in the journeyings of later years on the Parable of the Talents. Impressing the duty of Christian beneficence, he adopted a plan which will be remembered by many as characteristic. He mastered the complete sympathy of many hearers, the prosperous farmers of that beautiful region, by arguing long and earnestly that it was right for the Christian to gather property to provide well for his family. Excellent brethren were charmed. No preacher had ever before so fully justified the toil and sacrifices by which they had been steadily growing rich. They looked across the house into the faces of delighted friends. They smiled and winked and nodded to each other in every direction. But when the preacher had gained their full sympathy, the sudden appeal, he made to consecrate their wealth to the highest ends of existence, to the good of mankind and the glory of Christ, was a torrent, a tornado that swept everything before it. Presently, he spoke of consecrating one’s mental gifts and possible attainments to the work of the ministry. He seemed to clear up all difficulties pertaining to the subject; He swept away all the disguise of self-delusion, all the excuses of fancied humility; he held up the thought that the greatest sacrifices and toils possible to a minister’s lifetime would be a hundred-fold repaid if he should be the instrument of saving one soul. Doubtless the sermon had many more important results which have fallen in the way of being recorded; but when intermission came, the young man who has been mentioned sought out his pastor, and with a choking voice said: “Brother Grimsley, the question is decided; I must try to be a preacher.” For the decision of that hour, he is directly indebted under God to A. M. Poindexter; and amid a thousand imperfections and shortcomings, that work of the ministry has been the joy of his life.

[1] John A. Broadus, Sermons and Addresses, (Philadelphia: H. M. Wharton, 1886), 397-399.

[2] This is Broadus’s reference to himself.