Widening the Scope
There is great danger of our making the scope of evangelism too narrow for there are those who seem to think that we are only evangelistic when we are preaching after the manner of the evangelist and crying out to men to repent and turn to God. They evidently believe that our entire obligation has been met when the attention of the lost has been compelled, when they have been influenced to decide for Christ and are finally led into the membership of the Church. This is a dangerous tendency and in the estimation of many people militates against the entire evangelistic effort. The present day evangelism is to lose no emphasis at these points, for except we repent we shall all likewise perish, and if we willfully forsake the Church there can be no promise either of fruitfulness or of a joyous Christian experience, but the scope of evangelism is wider than that and comprehends strength of character and the attempt at least to 57 reproduce the Spirit of Christ in the world. It is a call to men to live in such fellowship with him that the world taking knowledge of them shall know that they have been with Jesus.
Not long ago I wrote to one of the most successful pastors in the country asking if he could give me some evangelistic suggestions which might be helpful to the Church at large, and among other things, he wrote as follows:
“The only suggestion that I could think of making with regard to the line of thought to be followed, is that in my judgment, the scope of evangelistic preaching should be considerably widened. In our effort to bring people to the point of decision, and to narrow down the whole matter to a single issue, we preachers have too much lost sight of the ethics of the kingdom. We confine ourselves to a few doctrines like that of sin, repentance, faith and confession, preached very much in the abstract, and have little to say about the duties which should distinguish the Christian life. What little we have to say about these duties is generally connected with warnings against worldliness, and by worldliness we generally mean card-playing, theatre-going, and dancing, leaving out the weightier matters of avarice, injustice, untruth, and various other things to which selfishness leads.
“We take our cue too much from the Epistles and not enough from the Gospels, forgetting that the Epistles were written to bodies of people who were already Christian, and that they do not present the Gospel which the Apostles preached for evangelistic purposes. In fact, I think we have very little preaching of the Gospel of the Kingdom as Jesus preached it, and as his Apostles preached it, in our evangelistic efforts. It seems to me that we should hold up before the people, the full-rounded idea of the Kingdom, with its individual and social relations as the essential thing, and then set forth Christ as the only Door of Entrance.
“Of course Christian ethics lie back of what we call our evangelistic preaching in the minds of the preachers, but I think it very important that they should be brought out and put into the minds of the hearers. The failure to do this is the cause of the unreality of much of the preaching and Christian living of our time. I have thought a good deal upon this matter of late years. So much in fact, that I have come to distrust very deeply, the results of the ordinary evangelistic preaching of our day. It does not go deep enough into the life of our people. There is not enough said about social injustice. People think that they can accept Christ and become Christians, without practicing the elementary principles of his ethics, and in my judgment there is nothing that will restore to the Church her strong hold upon the masses of the people, particularly upon the men, but a robust preaching of the Christian life as Jesus preached it.”
While we may not be prepared to accept all that he has suggested, yet we must acknowledge the force of his message.
Evangelistic preaching must have a far wider scope than simply a call to repentance or an invitation to come to Christ. This is only the beginning.
It involves the stimulation of the Christian and also the building up of his character. In other words it is the winning of a soul and the training of that soul to be like Christ. As a matter of fact it is a summons to the whole Church to reproduction so far as possible of the life of the Son of God.
“In reply to a criticism that Christianity was a failure, a writer in the Atlantic Monthly some years ago, retorted that it was not a failure, for it had never been tried. Can it be fairly said that a physician’s treatment has been tried when one-half of it has been neglected? Only one-half of Christ’s Gospel has been preached, and Christianity has been only one-half accepted, only one-half applied.”
“Truth is a sphere; and though it has opposite poles, it is still one. But men can see only a hemisphere at a time; hence the many and longlived disputes over half truths. One sees only the ideal; another, only the real. One fixes attention on the inward; another on the outward. One would save the soul; another strives for the body. One says, change the man’s inner life, and he will change his surroundings; another says, transform environment and you will transform character. And while they bring railing accusations against each other, the world waits and suffers.
“Both parties to the unending dispute are right and both are wrong. Each is right in the half truth which he accepts, and each is wrong in the half truth which he rejects. Why not put the two hemispheres together, and let the world roll on? This is precisely what the true doctrine of the kingdom does. In it the spiritual and physical, the ideal and the real, the inward and the outward, the soul and the body, are not set over against one another as if unrelated and even antagonistic. They are seen to be parts of one whole, wonderfully interrelated, and each profoundly influencing the other.
“One of the most serious mistakes of the Church has been to ignore the physical — a mistake she would never have made if she had followed the example of her Master. Devoting herself exclusively to the spiritual, she is like a mother who in her anxiety to save her child’s soul neglects his food, clothing, exercise and cleanliness, with the result that there is not left much of a soul to save.”
Men may call the question, “What would Jesus do? “impracticable if they choose, but present day evangelism will emphasize it more and more, however it must be distinctly understood that his life may not be reproduced in the energy of the flesh, it is only as we have Christ in us that we are able to live as he would have us, it is only as we are willing instruments of the Holy Spirit of God that we may impress others with 1 «The Next Great Awakening.”
the reality of our faith and of our Saviour in whom it is centred.
We may make fine distinctions as to dispensational truth in which I confess I believe with all my heart, but this wicked world waits for the manifestation of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, in home life, in Church activities, and in the business world, and will be satisfied with nothing less.
Evangelistic eflTort which stops short of the training and culture of the one saved is not such preaching and service as could merit the divine approval.
Preaching a doctrine of holiness which leads men into the clouds of mysticism and deceives them with a useless sentimentality is not Scriptural, and has no power with men and women, who, sick of sin live on the earth surrounded by all its temptations and subject to the most of its trials.
In Colossians the first chapter, the ninth and tenth verses, we read, “For this cause we also since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to desire that ye might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding. That ye might walk worthy of the Lord, unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.” And in this prayer Paul prays that all Colosse might have wisdom and understanding. The first is general knowledge, the second is spiritual perception, and he tells how both may be acquired.
The first by meditation on God’s Word;
The second by listening to his spirit, but the purpose of this prayer is also given.
It was not a mere form or sentiment, but an earnest, longing desire expressed only as Paul could put it.
Here it is for “the end of preaching is practice,” “that ye might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.” It is no use, as we said just now, to know without doing, we must do what we know. And what a standard he presents — “worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing! “That is wonderful. Some people say you cannot please God at all. The apostle says our walk ought to be” unto all pleasing.” There is no room there for displeasing. There is the aim anyhow, there is the possibility of pleasing God. Do not let your standard of holy living sink lower than that. The apostle says we may please God. Have we got to that stage? I think we should not be content with less. Have you the Enoch testimony that you please God? Have you ever had it? It is possible whatever else may not be, for it is in the Book. “Walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God.” “Fruitful in every good work,” that does not mean, as some one has said, that everybody is to do everything, it means you are not to be too particular, not to pick and choose. Some people, for instance, are “too respectable to give away tracts,” they will do something but not that, they don’t like work which humbles them; like servants in India who will do nothing that breaks their caste, so that you are obliged to have half a dozen servants to do the work of one. That is not the Christian’s example, he must be ready for every good work, whatever the Lord the King shall appoint May that spirit of willingness be given us, and the apostle’s prayer for Colosse be abundantly answered for you and me.”
“The Pattern Prayer Book.”