Normal Evangelism Failure in Personal Soul-Winning, the Secret of the Breaking Down of Many Churches By DR. W. E. BIEDERWOLF (In “ Evangelism” )
B T IS said of Dr. Lyman Beecher that when he was carrying on his great work in Boston and converts in large numbers were coming into the church he was asked by a brother in the ministry how it was that he was able to do so much. He replied, “ Oh, it is not I that do it; it is my church. I preach on the Sab bath as hard as I can and then I have four hundred church members who go out and preach every day in the week. They are preaching all the time, and that is the way, with God's blessing, that we get along so well.” If there is any one need greater than another in the Church today it is a practice of just that kind— the practice of the individual winning others to Jesus Christ. And it is just in the lack of this that we discover the self-evident secret of our past failure to extend the Kingdom of Christ numerically in any degree commensurate with what we must acknowledge God could have reasonably expected of us. Normal evangelism is individual. It was so in the New Testament day. It is so today. The numerical status of the church in our time furnishes no conclusive evidence that past methods will ever bring the world to Christ. The fact is, we áre not discipling this land at a rate sufficiently rapid to guarantee a Christian' nation to future genera tions. We do not forget that there is a qualitative aspect to the work the church is expected to do, but we must not overlook the fact that if the church shall ever cease to grow numerically, it' will give evidence, by that very fact,
of having lost the one thing which gives quality to its life and without which its spirit will shrivel and die. Some one has said that , if a church is existing only by letters of transfer, it is time the doors were closed and “ Ichabod, the glory of the Lord has departed,” was inscribed across them. “ Let the church cease to evangelize and it will be smitten with death.” This is not an hallucination of short-sighted pessi mism. It is a calm deduction from facts and figures in the candid recogni tion of which lies one of the greatest hopes of amelioration. Let us fairly face the situation and see if the smug self-satisfaction which has been our curse until now will not give way to a new, mighty and endur ing Pentecost which will give to Jesus Christ His rightful place in the life of this nation and of the world. What shall we say when the 25,000,- 000 of Protestant church members made a net loss in 1919 of more than 100,000 souls while our population in creased more than a million? What shall we say when all our Protestant churches are practically at a stand still, even though the world tragedy may in a large measure account for this abnormal condition? This or very lit tle better has been the story for the past two decades and more. It is this that caused me to say that our past methods seem sadly insufficient. But it does look as though the accomplish ment of the desired result would be a comparatively easy thing if every ad herent to the faith of Christ would feel a sense of responsibility, for bringing .into the Kingdom the one who walks
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