I met Brother Rick Wyser in May, 1992. He came and preached one of the last chapel services prior to my graduation from Texas Bible College. It was the first time I had ever heard him and still to this day I can remember the message that he preached. It was entitled “The Dullest Word in the Bible” which is duty. I briefly met him then but did not realize that in later years that I would become much more involved with him and his work.
Brother Wyser grew up Baptist but was converted to Pentecost sometime in the 1960’s. He was introduced to Pentecost through his wife’s sister who started attending the church in Alexandria, Louisiana pastored at the time by G. A. Mangun. It was not long before all of Sister Wanda Wyser’s family was in that church and Brother Wyser followed suit.
His educational background has included Texas Bible College, Northwestern, LSU-Alexandria, and a seminary in Andersonville, Georgia. While this was the foundation for Brother Wyser, you will discover that he has put a lot of energy into continuing to develop his ministry with a lot of discipline in study and writing.
The inside track that I had to Brother Wyser developed with a friend of mine who married a girl out of Brother Wyser’s church when he was pastoring in Addison, Illinois. This friend would send me cassette tapes of Brother Wyser and I would listen and find myself very motivated and intrigued by his abilities to preach consistently very solid messages. I received a series on Elijah, another one called “We Must Guard the Gates,” and a host of single messages that were a blessing to me. Finally, one day I decided to give Brother Wyser a call and speak with him. It was a good outing for me because it developed a friendship that has paid some very good dividends to me over the years. I was amazed that being a total stranger that Brother Wyser would talk to me as long as he did. However, I have discovered that if you get him into a conversation about preaching, you are in for a long, lengthy and extremely profitable discussion!
In his early ministry, he spent some time overseas creating some Bible schools in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. During that time he knew he would not be able to take very many resources with him so he settled for three: His Bible, G. Campbell Morgan’s Westminster Pulpit, and Alexander Whyte’s “Characters from the Old and New Testament.” During that time, a little over a year, he read all the way through Morgan’s work twice and developed a lot of seed thoughts by reading Whyte’s character studies. He still finds these two sources as very helpful background materials for his current preaching.
When I asked him about how messages came to him, he told me it was primarily through studying that things came to him. Various places like devotional books, varying articles from multiple sources, and old sermon books are very rich in assisting him. He always has a notebook that he will write down thoughts that he can develop into messages at a later point. He told me that it is very important to write down a single sentence that will crystallize what the message is conveying and then build supporting thoughts around that single sentence.
He actually learned how to build sermons from an old classic work by Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon wrote “Lectures to My Students” (which I have read several times and highly recommend) which actually teaches one how to put together three messages at one time. Brother Wyser said he sort of accidentally found this book but after reading it, he applied the study method taught by Spurgeon to his own life of study and preparation.
Brother Wyser when he was pastoring would study for three messages at one time. He would work with gathering material for the message and as he worked it would grow. When all was finally compiled, he would then take it and divide it up into three distinct messages and add fitting illustrations that worked well with what he was preaching. He began with a rough outline and then honed it down to a finished outline and finally a manuscript of the actually preaching notes. He told me it was very important to make sure that you have good transition points in the message so that the whole thing does not become disjointed and unrelated to listening ears. He also told me that by working with three messages at once there is an ability to seek out and find illustrations that can really set up the sermon. One of the benefits of working with three sermons at once is that one will have one “hard” week of study followed by two “soft” weeks of study. For those who are pastors, you can relate very well to the importance of this idea because of the variability that comes with our schedules.
When he read the “Lectures” by Spurgeon, he told me that he started buying up the small collected volumes of Spurgeon’s sermons and reading them. Although he could not remember the names of the books, I am thinking it was those little paperback volumes published by Baker Books that would have titles like “Twelve Sermons on Decision,” “Twelve Sermons on the Tears of Christ,” and “Twelve Sermons on the Miracles” that were popular back in the seventies. A lot of these books are still available but you have to find on-line, used book outlets as they have become the primary sources to look to.
I asked him about some of the favorite sermons that he had preached over the years which was a little difficult for him to narrow down. He has somewhere around 2000 sermons that he has put together over the years. He has presently published 8 years worth of messages through Bible Preaching Resources which is available for purchase. I have been receiving his material for all eight years and have to say that there are some very good things in these volumes.
So with all of this wealth of material, he did pick out a few of his favorites:
The Dullest Word in the Bible—Duty
A series called “The Vital Virtues”—His favorite is a message on the vital virtue of steadfastness.
Here Lie the Bones—On influence.
A Personal God.
God’s Own Master—Love.
The Old Story—A message of his personal testimony.
Don’t Call It A List—From Romans 16, he preaches about the people who are named there and how important it was for their fellowship in the church to help it to continue on successfully. Every person in a church has significance that that fellowship is a reality and not just a bypassing thought of God.
In addition to his sermons, he has a number of Bible studies that are more geared toward series. He did the Elijah series that was a lengthy study (about a quarter) in Addison. Also, a series on Revelation and he worked through the book of Romans 2-3 times when he was in Addison. He also told me about a series of messages from the Song of Solomon that I found very interesting. It was entitled “The Divine Crescendo” and it focused on the escalating relationship that a saint has with God. He keyed in on “Set Me,” “Know Me,” “Hear Me,” and five other elements on the Song. This series is available through BPR. Another series came from the Beatitudes. He entitled it “Don’t Become a Victim” and worked through each one with a bent toward allowing your life to flourish for God despite what surroundings and circumstances that life will present.
When I asked him about authors, he was a very open about sharing those he had personally found to be useful.
R. G. Lee—Full of prose with good flowing thoughts. He purchased everything R.G. Lee wrote which was multiple sermon collections.
Joel Gregory—Very good with expository outlines that can help a preacher flesh out a message.
John Phillips—The “Exploring” series are also very good simply because of the way that Phillips works with his outlines.
Alan Redpath—The classic is “The Making of a Man of God” which is about the life of David. I personally think this book should be required reading for anyone who is going into the ministry. He also mentioned his volume on 1st Corinthians as being very good, entitled “The Royal Route to Heaven.” Redpath also has a series on faith that it is out of print.
G. H. Morrison—Everything he has written is beneficial. “The Wind on the Heath,” “Highways of the Heart,” “The Wings of the Morning,” and “The Weaving of the Glory.” AMG Publishers also has a number of Morrison’s works in hardbound editions that are worthy of your time.
Peter Marshall—The former chaplain to the Senate has some good devotional messages.
George Swann—Out of print but some very good sermons were written by this preacher.
Old Keswick Series—These will be extremely hard to come by but they have some excellent material in them. Most of these books are 75—100 years old.
Wilbur Chapman—An evangelist who has some very good material. A primary speaker at the Winona Lake conferences.
William Albert Munsey—Some very good sermons on eternity.
C.M. Ward—The Revivaltime series are very good if you can get them.
George D. Watson—An old Methodist writer. Available through Schmul Publishers which is reprinting a lot of the old holiness writings that are hardly available in our modern times. Brother Wyser said that Marvin Hicks put him on Watson’s trail years ago.
Arthur Pink—Good for Bible study but very strongly Calvinistic in his approach.
The Layman’s Bible Commentary.
S.D. Gordon—His “Quiet Talks” series are very good. On prayer, power, etc. Brother Wyser gleaned a lot of from Gordon in his early years of preaching to help him to put together sermons.
T. DeWitt Talmage—Very good devotional writer. Called the “American Spurgeon.”
A. W. Tozer—Very good series of sermons on the Holy Ghost.
Jack Schuller—Has a good book called Schuller’s Short Sermons. This will probably be extremely hard to find. Brother Wyser has a set of tapes of this preacher from many years ago that he enjoyed listening to. He thought this man came from an old style Methodist background.
One of the things that Brother Wyser has turned his focus toward in the last 10 years is to assist preachers to become better at their preaching. I have hosted several of his workshops here in Dothan. The first one was “The Six Should Be’s of Preaching” and we had 50+ attendees. The second one was about illustrations and we had 30+ men to attend. There have been several districts that have sponsored his preaching workshops which are a multi-day affair. In Dothan, we did a Thursday night, Friday night, and half-a-day on Saturday and it worked out very well.
The available seminars are:
The Six Should Be’s of Preaching.
So What? (An acronym that explores different areas of preaching.)
On Illustrations (This one is very intense but it gives multiple sources to find good illustrations.)
On Ethics—Encompasses the ethics of preparation for preaching.
Three Ways to Dispense Water—Working with preaching in three ways; topical, textual, and expository.
Expository Preaching
In addition a new development is the Life Catalyst series on the family, marriage, parenting, anger management, depression, self-destructive behavior, and other youth oriented services.
If you ever get the chance to meet Brother Wyser, I can promise you it will be a good investment of your time as he is very interested in helping men become better preachers.
The other posts related to this one are as follow:
The Discipline of Study.
Jeff Arnold.
Scott Graham.
Ben Weeks.
Jason Calhoun.
Doug White.
J. H. Osborne.
John Carroll.
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