Personal Evangelism for Men

However much emphasis may be placed upon the public preaching of the Gospel, however much importance we may attach to general evangelistic meetings, after all, personal evangelism is the most important part of all our work, and calls at this particular time in the church’s history for special attention. It is not difficult to approach men regarding their relations to Christ and eternity if first there be a consistent life, and then, as has been elsewhere stated, a perfectly natural way of presenting the claims of the Son of God, for in these days no man has a right to be indiflferent to Him who is the central figure of all history, who is God’s revelation to man, and who is man’s best friend in every emergency of his life.

You need not fear rebuff”. I have been for fifteen years interested in the special work for men. Naturally I have spoken to very many about coming to Christ. In all that time I have had but one rebuff. One cold stormy day, up in the northern part of the State of New York, accompanied by one of my church officers, I drove ten miles to ask a gentleman to become a Christian and to unite with the church. Two members of his family expected to identify themselves with us and it seemed an opportune time to approach the husband and father. The thermometer registered twenty degrees below zero, and hterally in an ahnost frozen condition I reached the farmer’s house, met him half way between his barn and his house, and approached him at once stating the object of my visit, “I have come,” I said, “to ask you to be a Christian and to join the church,” and with flushed face and blazing eyes he said, “Well, sir, I want you to attend to your own business, and when I want you to speak to me on this matter, I will send for you, and until I do, please stay away.” Without inviting me into his house, he turned away from me. I stepped into the cutter and drove back ten miles through the storm, reaching my home almost insensible from the cold. My visit seemed a failure.

Ten years afterwards, to the very month and almost to the very day, I was preaching in the First Methodist Church, Saratoga Springs, when a man rose in the audience, saying, “Please pray for me.” When he thought I did not see him, he stepped out into the aisle and began walking towards the front of the church. Then facing the great audience he said, “Ten years ago I insulted this minister when he came to me to ask me to be a Christian. When I entered my house, my daughter, who had heard my remark, threw her arms about my neck and said, ‘Oh, father, will there never be another chance?’ I have prayed God to let me live long enough to confess Christ in this minister’s presence; I do it now, and I bear testimony to this fact that never in all my life was I so profoundly moved as when he spoke to me that winter day.” And so my journey, after all, was not a failure.

I am making no plea for what may seem to be anything like fanaticism, but rather just for consistency on the part of Christian men in their responsibility for other people. A Christian banker in a Pennsylvania city noticed that two young men in the bank, after business hours, were accustomed to the use of profanity. He called them into his office and said, “Gentlemen, I am a Christian, I am responsible for this banking house, and so long as I am, you cannot be profane. What you do outside of the bank I am not able to control, but what you do here I am certainly accountable for. May I ask you,” he said, “where you are living?” and they told him they were living in boarding houses in the city, their homes being elsewhere. “Then may I ask you,” said he, “as your friend, how you spend your evenings, and if your mothers are living?” and that question brought the tears to their eyes. “Now, gentlemen,” said he, “I do not want to appeal to your emotions, but no man can be at his best in these days and disregard the claims of Jesus Christ. The only manly life to live is the Christian life.” Then he dismissed them from his presence. The next morning, one of these young men entered his office to say: “I want to thank you for your conversation. Last night I began to read my bible again and I bowed my knees in prayer.” Such a conversation as this is the thing for which I plead, for this should be the spirit of Christian business men. Thousands of vouns:

men could be kept from wandering and thousands more could be won to Christ.

One reason why we win so few people in these days is because we are. so unbusinesslike in our approach to men. One of the bishops of the Methodist Church told me of a young Methodist minister who, entering upon one of his first charges, with the assistance of one of his official men made a list of business men who ought to be identified with his church. In a perfectly business like manner, he called upon them. He entered one bank, and said to the president: “Sir, I am the pastor of the Methodist Church, and a minister of Jesus Christ. At your convenience, I would like to talk with you about your soul, and I have come to ask you to make an appointment with me.” The hour set was four o’clock the next day. Before the minister had left the banking house after his second visit, he had won the banker to Christ. I am persuaded that this spirit would win in many instances.

One of my friends, beginning a new pastorate, determined to speak personally to every one of his congregation about their soul’s welfare. He approached his organist first and asked him if he were a Christian and, to his amazement, found that he was not, and yet he had been twenty-five years playing the organ in dififerent churches. “Would you mind telling me frankly why you are not?” said my friend, and the answer given with tears was this: “With the exception of my mother, you are the only person in all my life that has ever asked me to be a Christian. I thank you for vour interest, and I will give the subject my attention.” In less than two weeks he was a professed follower of Jesus Christ and a member of the church.

I am sure that many of us are failing in our work just here. We let opportunities for speaking to others slip away from us, and while we are busy with trifling things, souls pass into eternity, alas, unsaved.

As I journeyed on the train the other day, traveling westward, I saw in the section opposite my own a woman who was weeping bitterly. I crossed over to her and said: “I am a minister, and if I can serve you in any way, it would, give me pleasure.” I learned that her husband, from whom she had been separated on a visit, had been suddenly taken ill, and she was hurrying from New York to her Colorado home, hoping to see him before he died. In Chicago she had received the message that he was dead, and she seemed well nigh heart broken. Among other things, I asked her if her husband was a Christian. She told me he was not. Then later she said that formerly he was a member of a church, but in his western home where he had lived twenty-five years he had never united with the church. I asked her if he know any minister intimately, and she said: “Oh, yes, one of them used frequently to visit him. They talked and laughed about various matters, but my husband used to come home very often and say: ‘I wonder why he never asks me to enter his church? I would be so glad if he would.’” And I said to her: “Do you think he would have responded favorably?” and then with a sob she answered: “My husband and I have been ready for years to enter the church, but no one in our western home has ever invited us.” This is a solemn charge to bring against the church, but alas, in too many instances it is a just charge.

There are many ways by means of which we could win men to Christ.

First. Speak to them personally. One good rule ^)

is this: Whenever you have an impression that you ought to speak to any one about his soul, go at once to follow your leading. As a rule, it is true that when God moves you to go, he is moving another to receive you. “A word fitly spoken is like apples of gold in pitchers of silver,”

Second. If you are unable to speak, then write a letter praying its truth home as you write and committing it to God that He may work through it. Not long ago I met, personally, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of one of our western states, and learned from his own lips, and later from the minister who had been instrumental in his conversion, the story of his coming to Christ. He was a brilliant lawyer, but unsaved, and the minister became greatly concerned for him. He was afraid to speak to him because of his prominent position, so he wrote a letter to him, but before he could mail it his courage failed him, and he tore it up. Then his wife came to the rescue, and said: “Write another letter and we will pray earnestly about it.” The letter was written and a little booklet, by Mr. Spurgeon, was slipped into it. The letter was carried to the Chief Justice, and they waited eagerly for a reply. Soon it came in the Justices own handwriting: ‘’My dear Sir: Your kind letter and the little book have been received and read. I have been waiting for this message for fifteen years, and I write to tell you that because of your appeal I have given myself to Jesus Christ.” No more devoted loyal Christian have I met in many a day than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of this western state.

Third. If you would win a soul to Christ, whether you speak or write, by all means pray. We have come to a tirrie when we are quite disposed to think ot prayer as spent force. In a great city, the other day, my own faith was mightily strengthened in prayer. A man came to speak to me, boasting of his infidelity. His remarks were so blasphemous that I threatened to leave him, and with a half spoken apology he told me that his boy was dangerously ill. I think it the conviction that God was going to use that for his conversion. At a noonday business meeting following my interview, the following request was placed in my hands: “Kindly at noon to-day have your Christian hearers join with you in prayer for the sick son of an unbelieving father who cannot pray, and makes the request at the asking of a prayerful Christian wife.” This son was dying of pleuro-pneumonia. When the father had left the home in the morning, the case seemed hopeless. Just before noon the physician gave up all hope. His temperature was beyond the danger point and, humanly speaking, he was practically hopeless. Between twelve and half past twelve o’clock, seven hundred men bowed in prayer, and Major James H. Cole rose to voice our petitions. He prayed as I never heard him pray before. It seemed as if the windows to Heaven were truly open above us. Here is the answer to his prayer: Between half past twelve and one o’clock the boy’s condition suddenly changed, his temperature miraculously dropped to normal, and when the physician came expecting to find him dead, he had passed the danger point and his recovery was made by leaps and bounds. The following Sunday that father stood in a meeting for men, saying, with great emotion: “I have been an unbeliever and have blasphemed God, but to-day I desire to say that I want to know the God that has answered your prayers for my boy, and so far as I know the way, I will yield myself to Him.” Step by step he has come out into an ever brightening Christian experience.

Does it not seem easy to be a soul winner? It is not simply given to those who are rich or wise or great in the estimation of men, but the work is for every one who will truly live Christ and honestly feel a burden of responsibility for others.

While preaching in New York recently, my attention was repeatedly drawn to a gentleman, who, with his wife, was present at almost every service. I learned afterwards that the wife was a Christian, and that this husband was an honest inquirer. The last evening but one of the meetings, I was preaching on the text, “Except a man be born again,” and at the close of the service this gentleman deliberately rose and clearly and definitely accepted Christ as a

Savior. The next afternoon I was preaching in a neighboring church. Just as I was passing out of the service, I was asked to stop and meet a little boy. I noticed that he was lame, and his face bore not only the marks of suffering, but had that peculiar expression which belongs to one who is almost nearer Heaven than earth. Some illness had made it necessary to amputate one of his legs, and leaning on his crutches, he said to me: “I am so glad that my father came to Christ,” and then the minister told me the story of the gentleman whose decision had been made the night before. When the meetings began, this little boy had insisted that his mother should see to it that his father was present at every service. Said he: “I cannot go, I know, but while you are with him in the meeting, I will pray.” Each night when the parents entered the door, the child’s first inquiry would be as to the father’s acceptance of Christ. One evening it was raining furiously in the city, and the father had determined to stay at home, but at the boy’s urgent plea he went to the church, with the result that I have mentioned previously, namely, his conversion. That night, when they came home, the boy said to him: “You need not tell me, for I know what you have done.” Said the little fellow to me: “I never would have given him up so long as I lived.” When the father came to bid me good-bye at the last service, he said: “I want to thank you for your words spoken to me in the sermon, but I am compelled to say that the earnest prayer and the unwavering faith of my lame boy forced me to do what I did, and I never can express my pleasure at the result of this new stand which I have taken,”

So you see it is not necessary that we should be great or strong to be winners of souls if our lives are right and our prayers are as they should be. We can win to the Savior those for whom we are concerned, and that is not only joy here, but throughout eternity.

If I could know that word or deed
Of mine had helped a soul in need,
Had given comfort, eased the smart
Of some poor, tortured, aching heart,
With what rare joy my heart would glow.
If I could know! If I could know!

If one should whisper in my ear,

“Your words have made me stronger, sir.

To fight this evil thing within.

That leads me often into sin” —

Life’s darkened ways would brighter grow,

If I could know! If I could know!

Each day I ask the Lord to bless
Some act of mine to fruitfulness.
And though I know not how or where
He sends the answer to my prayer,
When I into His presence go.
Then I shall know! Then I shall know!