This isn't about my boss, by the way...

I've been enjoying Charles Spurgeon's Lectures to My Students which, though dated in some of its references, has valuable insights for young pastors. Here's one of many quotables, featuring the usual Spurgeon wit:

"There are brethren in the ministry whose speech is intolerable; either they dun you to death, or else they send you to sleep. No chloroform can ever equal their discourse in sleep-giving properties. No human being, unless gifted with infinite patience, could long endure to listen to them, and nature does well to give the victim deliverance through sleep. I heard a man say, the other day, that a certain preacher had no more gifts for the ministry than an oyster, and in my own judgment this was a slander on the oyster, for that worthy bivalve shows great discretion in his openings, and he also knows when to close. If some men were sentenced to hear their own sermons, it would be a righteous judgment upon them; but they would soon cry out with Cain, 'My punishment is greater than I can bear.' "