What to Expect Furthermore, our Lord thinned the crowd by His preaching. After He had fed the five thousand with loaves and fishes, they followed Him to make Him King. But He gave them the great sermon on the bread and the blood (John 6) and throughout that chapter every few verses record that more and more of His listeners fell away. They wanted His fish but not His flesh. In Luke 14 we read that great multitudes went with Him but He turned and gave them the three “ cannots” of discipleship. That kind of preaching would thin any crowd. It is a wonder that He had any followers at all. He knew the peril of a cheap mass movement and He deliberately preached cross-bearing, forsaking all else, loving Him to the degree that all other loves would be as hate in comparison, letting the dead bury their dead. To His prize prospect, the rich ruler, He made the terms so radical that the young man went away. And when such prospects went away our Lord let them go. He never lowered His terms to win a promising disciple. This approach, with the crowd or with the individual, is unheard-of today. A prominent religious group ad vised its radio and television speakers: “Admonitions and training of Christians on cross-bearing, forsaking all else, sacrifices and service, usually cause the listener to turn the dial. As apostles, can we not extend an in vitation in effect, ‘Come and enjoy our privileges, meet good friends, see what God can do for you’?” This new pitch is a far cry from the way the Saviour went about it. We are out to win and hold the crowd by any means whatever. And if we get a few adherents, we drag out the old argument that the end justifies the means. We would do evil that good might come. If a cocktail party and dance followed by a religious service would yield a convert, I verily believe that some would be for making that a regular procedure. Our Lord was not out to build up a crowd. He was not out to thin the crowd. He was out to gather a few disciples who meant business and His kind of preaching sifted the mixed multitude and produced a Master’s minority. We had better forget the experts and take a page from His Book. Rome founded colonies. Communism begins with cells. Christianity began with a church and the nucleus of that church was a handful of disciples. Our Lord spent most of His time not with the throng but with the twelve. The church at Pentecost began with one hundred and twenty. True, they soon had about three thousand addi tions but that was a result and not a goal as with us. Our trouble is that as soon as we gain a crowd, we are carried away with our size and everything is geared to bigness. Soon the crowd becomes unwieldy and, since matters are usually decided by vote nowadays and not by the Holy Spirit, the pattern is set by a worldly ma jority and not by the dedicated few. The saddest day for the church was when Constantine became a member
and opened the doors to a flood of pagans. We have never recovered from that disaster nor have we totally abandoned his program. Always the Faithful Remnant With our extensive drive for the multitudes there must be the intensive development of a minority or we shall be overwhelmed by our own numbers. As it is now, we cannot get to the goal for stumbling over our own team. We furnish our own greatest interference. It has been said that the greatest mission field today is the membership of the average church. One religious leader has said recently that two-thirds of our church members show no evidence of having been bom again. Our Lord’s program as to crowds is still our pattern. Promoters are apt to mistake motion for progress, ac tivity for spirituality. We Americans think in big fig ures but it is hard to find American standards in the New Testament. Communism has borrowed a page from the technique of the early church and the children of this world—and of the devil—are wiser in their genera tion than the children of light. Communism does not depend on the mass but on the dedicated few. We Chris tians have forgotten our blueprints and are trying to accomplish by a host what will be done by a handful. What we call mobilization is often mob-ilization. Gid eon’s thirty-two thousand is not routing the Midianites these days. We are cumbered, as he was, with the cowards and the careless and we need to recruit a spear head of the consecrated and the competent. While we are going after the thousands we had better rally a Gideon’s three hundred. We need the extensive movement to reach the masses, whether mass evangelism, church soul-winning drives on a massive scale, radio and televi sion preaching to circle the globe. But unless in the crowds we gather we train a redemptive band of Chris tians who are disciples and witnesses as well as believers, we shall be smothered in our own statistics. Dr. Phillips says that the modern church is so prosperous that it is fat and out of breath and so organized that it is muscle- bound. True revival must begin as our Lord began, not with a crowd but with a few. Dr. Torrey used to say that re vival begins with a few church members getting thor oughly right with God themselves. Mr. Moody said that it starts as one starts a fire, with the kindling first and we add the “ big wood” later. Most church members do not respond en masse to a call to repentance. But even in this Laodicean age, some will hear our Lord at the door, will open their hearts and sup with Him in blessed fellowship. Then they will go out, not as a self-righteous clique, but as flaming witnesses to win their indifferent brothers in the church and lost sinners in the world. They will meet the shepherdless multitude not in con formity, condescension or criticisms but with compas sion. Only as we follow the pattern of Christ can we meet the problem of the crowds.
A P R IL, 1964
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