Issue 18 The Political IssueBlog | The late greats Colin Morris
The late greats Colin Morris
Author: Andy PeckPost Date: 02.03.19
‘There is more chance of splitting the atom with a feather duster than preaching an adequate sermon. Why? Because preaching is the attempt to communicate by the crude, inexact medium of words the essence of the ultimate Mystery – God.’1 That, according to Colin Morris, is the awesome task with which the pulpit practitioner engages; but it was typical of his love of paradox that he found in the same high view of preaching its mandate and its model. ‘As a preacher you have the most awesome of models, God himself. The preacher imitates a talkative God.’2
Talkative’ is an appropriate description of Morris’ preaching: the key word, in his view, was communication. The preacher endeavours to communicate because God is communicating with God’s world and the sermon is one of the means by which God has chosen to do that. ‘A down to earth Lancastrian’,3 Morris was called to the Methodist ministry while undertaking his national service. He was recognised as someone with considerable academic gifts and was awarded an Oxford Scholarship; he claimed that there he discovered that he was ‘the antithesis of the scholar... a propagandist.’4
‘A prophet’ was a more common description of Morris’ ministry.5 That prophetic ministry was first apparent when he served the Methodist Missionary Society in what was then Northern Rhodesia, during the tumultuous years that led to the creation of the nation of Zambia. Morris was instrumental in those developments as a close friend and associate of Kenneth Kaunda. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the United Church of Zambia, becoming its first President in 1965.
