Individual Work for Individuals: A Record of Personal Experiences and Convictions

Not every man can be a great preacher to a great congregation; but every man can speak a timely word to an individual, if, indeed, his heart be set on so doing. And, ordinarily, it is a better work to reach an individual in this way than to endeavor to reach a multitude in the other way.

As a rule, the intensity of the appeal is in inverse proportion to the area covered; in other words, the greater your audience, the smaller the probability of your appeal coming home to a single heart I once heard Henry Ward Beecher say, “The longer I live, the more confidence I have in those sermons preached where one man is the minister and one man is the congregation; where there’s no question as to who is meant when the preacher says, Thou 3 tnbMbuat ttflack

art the man, “Years after this, I heard the Rev. Dn Nevius speak similarly as to the missionary field ui China. He said he wanted no great preachers in his field. That was not the sort of missionaries who were needed in China. If he could find a man iio could talk fiuniliarly, face to fiu:e, with another man, wherever he met him, he had missionary work for that kind of man in China. This is the way to do Christian work in China, or in America. Yet the popular idea of the fiivorable conditions for successful preachii is to have an attractive church building, into which a large congregation shall be gathered, to be preached to by an doquentpreachen And if, indeed, the Great Commission were, “Come ye from all the worid and hear the gospd,” there mtgt seem to be some reason for accepting the popular idea of the conditions of successful preaching as having a sound basis. The <me illustration, out of the gospel days, cited as if in approval of modern methods of preacb*

WOTBi a ViitBtjngy is the appeal of Peter in Jerusalem on the Day of Eentecost when three thousand souls were newly blessed in Christ Yet is that illustration rightly used in support of modern methods of preaching?

That ingathering, on the Day of Pentecost, was not merdy a result of the “sermon” of Peter. John the Baptist had been foretelling the mission of Christ for several years. John’s disciples had repeated and extended his message. Jesus had sent out his twelve apostles to make known his work and the truth, and again he had sent out seventy others also on a similar mission. Christ’s own words had increased the power of the words of John, and of the twelve, and of the seventy. He had told all who be« lieved in him to tarry in Jerusalem until the power from on high hadcome. The time was one of the great festivals of the Jewish Church. All these new signs combined ‘with lessons which had been taught by the Jewish ritual and the words of priest and prophet for centuries. Hence to as-S

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cribe to Peter’s sermon the ingatherings at that time of three thousand persons from among the godly Jews there gathered, would be an absurdity.

But how had Peter and the other apostles been themselves brought in to Christ’s service? Were they won by a preacher appealing to a multitude? That is a point to be considered, when we would know whether Christian work is to be done with the one or with the many. John the Baptist spoke to two of his disciples concerning Jesus, and the two turned and followed Jesus. One of those men was John, the other was Andrew. At once Andrew went and called Simon, who was later known as Peter. Thus it seems that Peter, who is credited with winning three thousand souls by a great sermon, was himself won as an individual by an individual. That is God’s chosen way among men. Then Philip, a fellow-townsman of Andrew and Peter, was won as a follower of Jesus. Next after this Philip summoned Na- 6

Wbyt a Smtstthanad; and the circle of leaders was &irly started by the method of one man being the preacher, and one man being the hearer.

Circumstances in connection with my being won to Christ, and with the very beginning of my Christian life, led me to examine carefully the teachings of Scripture, of history, and of reason, as to the truth in this matter; and this it is that has brought me to the conviction that all these several indications of duty combine to show that appeals to the individual by an individual is the hopeful way of winning the race to Christ In view of this &ct, this kind of effort has been the most prominent feature of my Christian work, in whatever field I have labored, in the half-century since I was in this way led into Christ’s service.

If a preacher has a large congregation to preach to, he can encourage himself with the thought that some one may be helped, even though he never has evidence of the £aucX. If, on the other hand, his work as 7

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an individual is with an individual, he is pretty sure to know whether or not his work is eflective. In such a case his whole congregation is sure to hear him, and, ordinarily, he hears from his whole congregation. He can know the result of his work. But many Christian hunters have the feeling of the small-game hunter who said, “In gunning, I ordinarily prefer to use a handful of small shot; for then I’m likely to hit something. With me a single bullet is apt to scatter.”

Many a man who is eloquent before a large congregation is dumb before a single individual. Such a man often confesses that he is not an effective worker in an “inquiry meeting.” Even in a season of special religious interest he wants to turn the work of conversing with individuals over to somebody else. Yet such a man as Mr. Moody, who thought more of how many individual souls he could reach than of his preaching before any audience,, however large was always desirous of getting through with his preparatory pulpit appeal and of getting at his more important work of pleading with individual souls in the inquiry meeting. And that is the feeling of every earnest evangelist who thinks more of the work of reaping and harvesting than of the work of incessantly sowing broadcast seed that may, or that may not have final fruitage.

Of course, the preference of preachers for a considerable congregation of hearers grows naturally out of their defective training in the theological seminaries, and their life habit in the pulpit They have come to have strong confidence in proportion as they stand in their pulpit barricade and train their sermon columbiads on the gathered hosts before them. But to go out into the open field and engage in a handto-hand struggle with a single individual is quite a dififerent matter. They have had scant training in that sort of conflict; therefore they confess their feeling of unfitness for its entering. Bossuet, the great French 9

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