The old gray-haired Bapto-Appalachian-American preacher invoked the good name of Preacher Prince Moore the other day. He is now in the great cloud of witnesses.
Prince Moore will always be one of my models for excellence in preaching. He was not a great orator. One can be a great orator and a poor preacher.
I will never forget the way he began his sermon the first time he preached for us at Unity Baptist Church in Dalton, Georgia, saying, “I came to bless you and I pray that my efforts will do you some good.” Forty years later, that sentence, and the humble, gracious way he said it, still stands as the most powerful first sentence I have ever heard any preacher utter.
Prince Moore taught me to love a gospel song I once despised: “We’ll Understand It Better By and By.” I used to protest, “No, we won’t! The Bible doesn’t promise that God will ever answer all questions! The promise is that God himself will wipe away all tears!”
That’s true, of course, but Prince Moore taught me to pay attention to the phrase, “We will tell the story how we’ve overcome.” Understanding comes from sharing our stories.
The brother could tell a story. Our girls cared little for history in school, but they sat spellbound as Moore told stories with the recurring theme of “how the Lord brought us through that time.”
Born in 1906, he had known all four of his grandparents and one of his great-grandmothers who were formerly enslaved. In a world without radio, television or internet, and very little in the way of reading material, he was marinated in the stories of parents, grandparents and his great-grandmother.
His family often hosted visiting preachers. His task was to take care of the preacher’s horse and secure it in the barn. Then, he would listen to the conversations of the preacher and the adults in the family.
When he told our girls “how the Lord brought us through that time,” he never told them they were not part of the “us.” Our girls assumed they were.
Prince Moore didn’t need to “hoop and holler” to speak as one having authority and not as the scribes.
More than thirty years after his death, I cannot read Philippians 4:6-7 without hearing his voice quote it flawlessly from the King James Version. He quoted it in every conversation I had with him. It was the text for his life.
In the fall of 1989, I was called as pastor of Woolford Memorial Baptist Church in Baltimore. The day before the movers came, I went to see Prince Moore. We talked for a long time.
As I began to leave, the handshake turned into an embrace. He said, “Before you go, I need to pray for you.” I will forever cherish the gift I received through the laying on of his hands.
Lamar Wadsworth is an old gray-haired Bapto-Appalachian-American preacher living near Rockmart GA where he was born and raised. A graduate of Jacksonville State University and The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, he has served churches in Alabama, Kentucky, Georgia, and Maryland.
