72
February 1929
T h e
K i n g ' s
B u s i n e s s
It is all right to point to our magnificent temples of worship that lift their spires above the city’s noise and strife; it is all right to point to the cross-crowned spires of village and country road; it is all right to point with pride to our renowned preachers and confess to an intel ligence and equipment such as the church of no other age has ever known; it is all right to meet in our mammoth conventions and assemblies and congratulate ourselves on our increasing influence in other respects; but we must not forget, the plain, blunt truth that all this may be true and yet I f ’the 'ehurch does not increase numerically she will dwindle and die. I know that the needs of the church are almost myriad, and I know that so multifarious are the demands made upon her that if she were that dragon fly with 1,000 eyes she could not see them all, and if she were Briareus with his hundred arms she could not reach them all. But at the same time there is serious danger lest in trying to grapple with these the church forget the one supreme thing she has been called to do, and in the successful doing of which the ultimate solution of all these other things must come if it ever comes at all. I do not wish nor have I any desire to underestimate the duty of the church to social conditions and civic prob lems, nor do I forget her tremendous task in the edifying of the saints, but we must first have the saints to be edified, and after all is said, the first and fundamental duty of the church is evangelistic!—the winning of the individual to Christ. III. Program!.. The program is to be found, of course, in evangelism—in! an evangelistic ministry. But let us not think that such a ministry is to be expected only from the pulpit. There are three kinds of evangelism about which we are hearing much in these days, and their importance can not be overemphasized. 1. Personal, or Individual Evangelism. This is really the normal sort. Not every Christian can become a great preacher and preach to a great congregation, but every Christian can become a personal worker, an individual evangelist, and perform a mighty ministry for Christ if his heart is set on doing it. Henry Ward Beecher once said, “The longer I live the more confidence I have in those sermons where one man is the minister and one man is the congregation.” .I f every Protestant preacher in our land would win just one soul a month to Christ there would be brought into the church in one year 1,792,644 souls. Instead of this all the ministers and all the 27,000,000 church-mem bers are doing this blessed service for but a little more than 500,000 souls each year. Oh, if only the Spirit of God could stir us , to a sense of our responsibility, and touch us anew with .the enduement of His’mighty power, and send us out to the task which the church must either accomplish or leave to God’s unfailing sufficiency to ac complish in some other way ! And yet we find ourselves wondering if. God has any other plan for the doing of this work. 2. Parental, or Domestic Evangelism. What this na tion needs to learn is that the battle for its redemption, if it is ever redeemed, must be pushed across the threshold of the American home. You might as Well expect flowers to grow under the snows "of the Klondike as to expect a holy character to grow in ‘the midst of the ' environment found in the
average American home today. And this is true to a large extent, of many of our so-called Christian homes. An earnest-fa.ced young man in Paris, Illinois, said to a friend of mine, “Neither my father nor my mother nor my sister have ever said one word to me about God, or about Christ, or about my soul’s need of a Saviour.” And the father was an elder in the church, the mother a teacher, and the sister the superintendent of the primary department in the Sunday school! 3. Parish, or Visitation Evangelism. This is personal evangelism organized, a jgoing in groups of two through out the community with the express purpose of leading others to Christ and into church-membership. It has been much praised and as much criticized. Its chief dan ger lies in bringing people into church-membership who have never really been converted. Sad examples of this are not wanting. We would not disparage an effort of this kind, but it is exceedingly difficult to avoid the danger just mentioned. Say what you will, the average church-member is not fitted to lead others to Jesus Christ. But if people who themselves really know Christ, who are properly trained to do. this work, and who have a passion for the unsaved, can be found to undertake it, how truly wonderful the results of such a campaign would b e ! It is timely just here to call attention to the main pur pose of this article. That purpose is to stress the im portance of two other forms of evangelism because it is in the successful operation of these that all other forms of evangelistic endeavor, such as have been mentioned, find their real inspiration and their real promise of any large degree of success. There can be little hope for much worthwhile effort along evangelistic lines apart from the preached Word of the living God. Nothing can ever take the place of this, and any attempt at substitution here will prove a danger ous experiment. This is the method ordained of God, and God pity the church in so far as she belittles or neglects it, for here is the main source of all inspiration and spiritual passion for the holy task that is hers by divine commission. 1. The first of these is Pastoral Evangelism. This I consider the most important of all, and this too is the greatest need of the times. Paul told Timothy to “stir up the gift” that was within him. And there is more latent evangelistic ability in most ministers than doubt less they have even thought. When Paul said, “Do the work ,of an evangelist,” he was writing to a pastor. And he was not recommending to him that he leave his pulpit for the more public sort of evangelism it has been the writer’s glorious privilege for so many years to enjoy. What Paul meant was that Timothy should stand at the head of his church and see t°. it that every phase of its varied activity was made a ministry of evangelism for the winning of men to Christ-. And what the church needs today, needs sadly, needs more than anything else, is, as the now glorified Dr. A. C. Dixon once put it, “pastors who have an evangelistic con science, pfeach evangelistic sermons, .pursue eyangelistic methods, and magnify evangelistic experiences.” 2. The second and other form is Professional, or Vo cational Evangelism. What mighty spiritual awakenings have been witnessed in other days through this kind of evangelism! Recent years have witnessed a sag in this particular form of evangelistic work. It is of easy explanation.
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