Some interesting quotes and facts about preaching:

Inspiration vs. Education in preaching: Baptist minister Joseph Ricker, writing in 1894 on the early history of Baptists in Maine, describes the attitude toward education held by early ministers...and the results:

“God, they said, had called them to preach the gospel, and would, therefore, equip them for the work. They were only to open their mouths and He would fill them. They felt forbidden to meditate beforehand what they should say, for so it was written in the sacred record.

To labor, therefore, for years to prepare to preach, would be worse than useless, it would be a wicked impertinence, a brazen affront to the Lord of the harvest. The King’s business, they said, required haste. Like Jonah, they were commanded to go, and go at once, and preach the preaching that God bid them. There was no alternative, therefore. They did not dare to have their message tampered with, as to form or substance, by profane hands. The people must have it just as it came fresh from the Spirit of God. Until it came thus, as the preacher thought, he was dumb, and must be. Many a time have I known the venerable and saintly ministers of my boyhood days to mount the pulpit, and sit in silence for what seemed a half an hour or more, and wherefore? Simply because the Spirit had not given them their message, and without that the services could not proceed. But the inspiration was tolerably sure to come at length, and then the suspense was over. On rising to his feet amid the hushed stillness of the congregation, the preacher would announce that a text had just then struck his mind upon which we would speak as the Lord might be pleased to give him liberty. However the people might love and revere him, they could but notice that whatever his text, his thoughts were quite certain to move in the same well-worn channel from week to week, and month to month, and year to year, no matter how long his ministry among them might last. Indeed, all he said to them in all those years, could, for substance, easily have compressed into half a dozen sermons.”

From Joseph Ricker, Personal Recollections (Augusta: Burleigh & Flint, 1894).   

A story:

Ricker also tells the story of a group of Baptist ministers, including a college president, who meet together for worship. Believing it was evil to prepare a sermon or preach from notes, they didn't know who should preach, since none of them had been asked to prepare ahead of time. When it came time for the sermon they had a hard time figuring out who should give it:

"The first suggestion was that any one who might be feeling that burden upon his heart should make it known to the company. The suggestion was followed by blank silence. the situation, of course, was a little embarrassing. In order to simplify the problem, it was at length proposed that all who did not feel it to be their duty to preach the sermon should retire from the room. [The college president] seized his hat and was the first to reach the door. Others promptly followed until only two were left in the room, each of whom stoutly insisted that the Lord had committed to him the special message of the hour! Here was a serio-comic outcome. What should be done? There seemed only one safe alternative. Both were allowed to preach!"

Preaching as an Art: Henry Wieman believed that great art had the power to awaken a person from inertia, to cast a person “into the midstream of the powerful currents of creativity whereby the existence of man is transformed toward the greater good.” (242) Preaching can be a great art in this respect: “Great preaching is itself a form of high art of this sort. It is a drama in the form of a person thinking, feeling, acting, speaking, and thus presenting the call of the ultimate commitment by which man is transformed as he cannot transform himself, to be saved from evil and lifted by the power of creativity to a level of existence where the powers of this passing world can no longer fatally wound or finally blind.” Bretall, 1963: 243)