There is a time and a place for everything it is true, but I don’t think that was what the author was getting at.
I think what he was condemning was not that this pastor avoided heavy proselytising, but that the message he gave was not in any way uniquely Christian AT ALL.
I believe that Richard Nixon right now is with Pat again, because I believe that in heaven we will know each other. The Bible says, "For to me to live is Christ and to die is gain." There's a gaining about death. For the believer, the brutal fact of death has been conquered by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. For the person who has turned from sin and has received Christ as Lord and Saviour, death is not the end. For the believer, there's hope beyond the grave. There's a future life.
Yesterday, as his body was escorted to the plane for its final journey here, the band played and the familiar strains of a hymn he especially loved -- maybe the hymn that he loved the most were played: Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found, was blind but now I see. Through many dangers, toils and snares, I've already come. 'Tis grace that brought me safe thus far, for grace will take me home.
That hymn was written 200 years ago by an Englishman named John Newton. He was a cruel man, a captain of a slave ship. But one night in a fierce storm, he turned to God and committed his life to Christ. Newton not only became a preacher of the gospel, but he influenced William Wilberforce and others in Parliament to bring an end to the slave trade. John Newton came to know the miracle of God's amazing grace, and it changed his life. And it changed our lives as well.