05.03. The Evangelist

3 The Evangelist The doctrine of New Testament ministry lies wholly within that of the Church. The ministry serves the Church under the Lordship of Christ. That is not to say that ministers are servants of the Church in the sense of obeying the Church. They do serve the Church but they obey the Lord Christ. From that statement two initial truths are to be deduced and remembered: First, the ministry has no right to lord it over God’s heritage; and secondly, God’s heritage has no right to lord it over the ministry. I have of set purpose used Peter’s phrase. Writing to the elders and the bishops he says, “neither lording it over the charge allotted to you.” The word “charge” there is kleros, the word from which we derive our word clergy. According to Peter, the whole Church was the clergy, and bishops were men who were to serve the clergy, and not lord it over them. Every believer is in the priesthood, and the whole Church is the clergy, and yet within the whole Church there is a distinct ministry. Our present subject is concerned principally with that section of the Christian ministry indicated by the word evangelist. But in order properly to understand the function of the evangelist we must take time to set that particular aspect of the ministry in relation to the whole. There is too often a measure of friction between the evangelist and those who are exercising other gifts of the ministry, and this friction acts in two ways. Pastors and teachers sometimes entertain a feeling almost amounting to contempt for evangelists. The evangelist on the other hand, very often manifests a contempt for pastor and teacher. Now this is all utterly false; contrary to the spirit of the New Testament, contrary to the spirit of love, contrary to the spirit of wisdom, contrary to the Spirit of God. If we may but see the interrelationship of these gifts, that a man is in the ministry, not by his own choice, but by the choice of the Holy Spirit, and that the work of each is not contradictory to the work of the rest, but complementary rather, then we shall be a long way towards understanding the true place of the evangelist, and making for him his proper place in the work of the Church of Jesus Christ.

“He gave some apostles, and some prophets, and some evangelists, and some pastors and teachers, for the perfecting of the saints, for the work of the ministry.” This is the reading of the King James Version, and we have interpreted it as though these gifts were bestowed in order that those receiving them might perfect the saints, and do the work of the ministry. As a matter of fact what the apostle meant was that these gifts are bestowed on men in the Church, in order that they may by their ministry perfect the Church, so that the Church may do the work of the ministry. The fullest fact of ministry includes the whole Church, and the men within it who have received special gifts, have received them in order that they may perfect the Church to its work of ministry. The translation of the Revisers makes this much more clear, “He gave some apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering.”

“He gave some apostles.” The specific work of the apostles was the perfecting of the doctrine, the fundamental basis of teaching. “He gave some, prophets.” The work of the prophet was the perfecting of the forthtelling, the declaration of the truth. “He gave some, evangelists.” The work of the evangelist is the perfecting of the number of the Church by calling men into relationship with Christ. “He gave some, pastors and teachers.” Their work lies wholly within the Church, and is that of perfecting the character of the members of the Church in order that the whole Church may be perfectly equipped for its ministry. These are the true orders of the Christian ministry. These are the fundamental and spiritual orders, and we must recognize them if there is to be any fulfillment of the whole function of our ministry. But now let us enquire how a person in the Church becomes a minister within the Church. Let us turn to Corinthians, in the first letter, chapter twelve. Here we have a chapter that always ought to be read side by side with this fourth chapter of Ephesians, on the subject of Church order. In that chapter you will find that the apostle, beginning a section concerning the spiritualities, deals first with the Lordship of Jesus, and then with the ministry of the Spirit of God, and as a sub-section thereof, with the gifts bestowed by the Spirit. He is dealing with gifts far larger than those of the ministry to which he refers in Ephesians. In the course of his argument he makes a statement of vital importance, that the Spirit bestows these gifts upon “each one severally even as He will.” In Ephesians the same principle is declared, that “He gave some, apostles; He gave some, prophets; He gave some, evangelists; He gave some, pastors and teachers.” The whole emphasis of the truth is that capacity for ministry in any form is a gift, and it is a gift bestowed by the Head of the Church through the Holy Spirit according to His own pleasure. Therefore no man can choose to be a minister of Jesus Christ, as any man may choose the profession of medicine, or of law. No man ever really enters the Christian ministry in the deep spiritual sense of the term, save as he receives a gift from the Head of the Church by the Holy Spirit which perfectly equips him for the work he has to do.

We are hearing a great deal in these days of the dearth of men entering our theological seminaries. I have been asked if I would not urge upon young men that they should give themselves to the ministry, urge them to adopt the ministry as a calling in life which is high, and holy, and beautiful. And my reply always is, I dare not urge any man. No man can enter the ministry of his own will and choice. The only way in which a man can possibly enter the ministry is when the Holy Spirit of God bestows upon him a gift from the Head of the Church. By that gift he is made a minister of Jesus Christ. Nothing short of that makes a minister, and that being so, nothing can prevent his being a minister, except his own disobedience to the heavenly calling. I would very solemnly urge young men to consider well whether or not they have not had the gift and the calling, and are refusing it. Has there come upon your soul somewhere, somewhen, a burning passion to preach the Word, a great constraint, a sure conviction that you can preach it; and have you allowed some secular calling, some material advantage to persuade you that you can still be a good Christian and make money? It is at the peril of your soul you stay there. If once the gift is bestowed then “woe” is that man if he “preach not the Gospel.

Notice in the next place that these gifts refer to special spiritual qualifications for the doing of special spiritual service. What is a gift bestowed upon a man? What is the gift of the apostle, the gift of the prophet, the gift of the evangelist, the gift of the pastor and teacher? I do not mean what is the specific value or the distinction between these, but what is the underlying quality in each? What is gift? The gifts are certainly not such as may be designated natural endowments. They are spiritual quantities and qualities, bestowed for the doing of spiritual work. A man receives the gift of an apostle. Then in him there is a spiritual force, a spiritual vision, a spiritual fitness that his brethren have not, which fits him for doing a distinctly spiritual work, the work of the apostolate. So with all of them, the gift is a spiritual qualification. But while it is true that the gift is bestowed, and is not merely a natural endowment, it is also perfectly certain that the Spirit of God never bestows a spiritual gift for service except upon men who have natural endowments that will enable them to use it. There is nothing in the economy of God out of joint and out of place. There is perfect harmony between God’s first creation and the bestowment of special spiritual gifts. The new birth does not mean the death of everything essential and noble in the first birth, but its life. So also when God bestows the gift of the apostle, or the prophet, or the evangelist, or the pastor and teacher upon a man, the gift will be bestowed upon men who have natural aptitudes and fitness and endowments for their work. A young man in my church tells me God has called him to preach. Then I immediately give him opportunities to preach. I find him an occasion in the Mission Hall, or in a cottage; and in oversight with me there will be my brethren in the diaconate, and they will hear him, not critically, but with the solicitude of a great and passionate desire to help him. And if after a little while we find that the man has no natural endowment I would say to him in love and in all honesty, My friend, you have evidently made a mistake. God has never called you to preach, or you would be able to preach.

We have been making the terrible mistake of putting a man through the theological seminary, and when he has completed his course we find, and he finds that he is not a preacher, and so he write essays to the end of time. Essays are excellent things, but the writing and reading of them is not preaching. We must find the men with natural endowments and the spiritual gifts. If a man has that twofold equipment, and is responsive to the heavenly vision, you cannot stop him preaching, and you cannot stop his preaching with power. The gift is a spiritual quantity and quality, bestowed upon a man having natural endowments. The gift of the pastor and teacher will be a spiritual quality of appreciation of truth bestowed upon a man who is a born teacher and a born shepherd. The gift of the prophet will be an appreciation of truth in its application to the needs of his age, bestowed upon a man, who if he is not a preacher must be a speaker somewhere or other. It is affirmed that men with absolutely no gift of speech, receiving the spiritual gift have become great preachers. Personally I have never known such a case. I was told in England some years ago by a dear man who held very strongly that all spiritual power in service was spiritual merely, that there was no connection between man’s natural capacity and the spiritual gift, and the instance cited was D. L. Moody, and I was told he had no natural gifts of oratory, that everything he had was the spiritual equipment. I am not undervaluing the spiritual equipment, but if D. L. Moody had gone into politics instead of preaching, you would have found that he would have swayed vast audiences, and that he was a man of natural endowment. A gift is a spiritual quantity and quality bestowed by the Head of the Church at His own will through the Holy Spirit upon those who are naturally endowed to receive it. That is the fundamental truth concerning the vocation and the force and the power of the Christian ministry.

Let us now notice the inter-relation of these gifts. The apostle was the first messenger. The work of the apostle consisted in the proclaiming of truth first, and then in the committal to sacred writings of the truth. It is written in the Acts of the Apostles that the early disciples “continued steadfastly in the apostles’ teaching.” In that phrase we have the indication of one part of the work of the apostolate. I am inclined to say the gift of the apostolate is still conferred under certain circumstances for specific work. At the birth of all great missionary movements there has been an apostle, a first messenger, one with a specific gift to go forth and tell at the beginning the doctrines of the Way.

Then we have the work of the prophet. The peculiar and distinctive note of prophetic utterance is that a man who is a prophet foretells the truth from God without any reference to the pleasure or anger of the people. This is the prophetic note. You find it in the old prophecies. “Whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear.” The prophet is not an evangelist. The prophet does not come down into personal dealing, and constraint of individual lives. The prophet is a man whose voice is lifted in an age, pouring out truth, compelling the age at least to hear it. Whether it will obey or not is not his responsibility. That is the characteristic note of the prophet in all dispensations. And God has never been without prophets in this Christian era. The evangelist is a name signifying a man who tells the glad tidings always with a view to constraining the man who listens by the evangel, to that of which the evangel bears testimony. I am inclined to think that the opportunity of the evangelist is today often made by the prophet; that in prophetic utterances and prophetic ministry there is an arousing of conscience and inquiry, and to that the evangelist comes with his personal and individual message of the Lordship of Christ; the value of His Cross; the virtue of His resurrection; and the glorious victory of His indwelling. And the evangelist is therefore the one who in the name of the Church tells men and women outside how they may come inside, declares the glorious glad news of the infinite Gospel. As in response to the message of the evangel, men crowd to the Christ, owning Him Lord, receiving the value of His death, the virtue of His life, the assurance of victory, then the pastor and teacher begins to teach it them, and train them, and to watch over them. There are two words that mark the work of the pastor and teacher; overseer, and pastor. He is one who watches, and feeds the flock of God. John Milton, when speaking of false pastors, and their failure in the ministry describes them in a most remarkable phrase. He speaks of them as “blind mouths.” And he says, “The hungry sheep look up, and are not fed.” It is a terrible indictment, and that because it is scriptural. It appears a contradiction in terms, “blind mouths.” It is not so, for as Ruskin points out, Milton brought together the two facts in the work of the pastor and teacher. His first work is to watch over the flock, but Milton says he is “blind.” His second work is to feed the sheep, but Milton says instead of doing that he is trying to be fed himself, he is a “mouth.”

Let no evangelist think that the pastor and teacher who year by year patiently feeds the flock is not doing God’s work because he is not doing that of the evangelist. And let no pastor and teacher think that the men passing over the country like a flame of fire, proclaiming salvation and constraining men to acceptance, are sensational merely.

Oh this great Church of Jesus Christ, if we could only realize it, with its great gifts; the apostle, the first messenger to the new region; the prophet, the perpetual voice proclaiming truth, the evangelist, the perpetual voice calling men to the Christ, the pastor and teacher, instructing, leading, guiding, and culturing the saints. But I must leave that larger outlook. I have at least said enough to show the place of the evangelist, and to show there is no antagonism between the work of the different orders. I once heard W. L. Watkinson, one of the most wonderful preachers in England today, with a marvelous gift of sanctified satire, say in a great congregation of ministers, “The pity is we do not understand each other.” He continued, “I go to one man in the regular pastorate, and I say to him, ‘What do you think of these special men’ and he replies with a curl of his lip, ‘Sensation.’ ” And then I come to a special man and I say to him, “What do you think of that quiet man down there’ and he says, ‘Oh, stagnation!’ ” And that tells the truth of the attitude too often indulged in against each other. In the light of this great truth of the complementary nature of the gifts we ought to recognize the fact that every man in the ministry, while he will have one specific gift above all others, will yet have sympathy with all the rest, for I still believe that the Holy Spirit confers gifts of this order upon the Church, giving some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers. Happy indeed is that church whose ecclesiastical order will allow it to make room for a man to exercise the gift God has bestowed, and unhappy is that Church who wants each of its ministers to be something of a prophet, and something of an evangelist, and something of a pastor and teacher, and thus making him something of each, makes him the whole of nothing. We want room for the orderliness of the Spirit of God in our ecclesiastical arrangements. But now where this is established, and we see the interrelation of these gifts, and how there is no conflict but perfect harmony where the whole Church and ministry is under the dominance of the Spirit, we may turn to the specific gift of the evangelist. In the New Testament only two men are definitely spoken of as evangelists. Philip is called an evangelist, and in the final charge of Paul to Timothy, he says “Fulfill thy ministry, do the work of an evangelist.” It is at least significant that the two men who are called evangelists are in entirely different circumstances, and suggests as I think, the two types of the evangelist. Philip was a man at large. He was not definitely in charge of any Church, nor was he, as I believe, set apart by any apostolic function to his work. He was an evangelist, prepared by the impartation of a qualification for telling the Gospel, to tell the Gospel. He moves from place to place. He goes to Samaria, then he speaks to the individual eunuch, and is caught away to Azotus. Then we find him moving up through Caesarea, at last settling down, his children coming up after him, and uttering the same great Gospel. That is one evangelist as I see him in the Acts of the Apostles. The other is a man, who is in oversight of the Church at Ephesus, placed in oversight through certain difficulties arising there, and the letter of the apostle is written to instruct him in his work. I am inclined to think that the more special work of Timothy was that of the evangelist, moving from place to place. But Paul saw the necessity of a certain oversight at Ephesus, and sent him there. And he writes to him of his charge, the church; and instructs him as to how he shall take oversight; but the last thing the apostle urges is that he shall not forget that though he is now in oversight of the church through certain ecclesiastical difficulties, he is to fulfill his ministry, and do the work of an evangelist. It is at least significant that these two men are described by the term evangelist, the one moving from place to place, and the other settled in oversight of a church.

Having simply referred to that by way of illustration, in order that we may understand that the evangelist may be a man called to move from point to point, or he may be a man placed by God in the oversight of a church, I want to speak of this gift itself. I have said of all these gifts that they are spiritual quantities and qualities. There is no specific description in the New Testament of either of these gifts bestowed. We may however safely argue from the work the nature of the gift. A man who receives the gift of the evangelist is one to whom there is given a clear understanding of the evangel, a great passion in his heart results from the clear vision, a great optimism fills his soul, born of his confidence in the power of Christ to save every man; and growing out of that passion and that confidence a great constraint seizes him to tell somebody, to tell everybody the glad news of salvation by Jesus Christ. Those peculiar qualities are not found in all men called to the ministry. Every man will have sympathy along these lines. There are however other forms of spiritual gifts, as we have seen. But where this is the all-consuming fire, there you have an evangelist.

Granted that a man has the gift, on what line is he to be trained for the exercise thereof? He must be trained in theory and in practice, and the training of theory and practice must go side by side during the whole time of his preparation for the exercise of his gift. Wherever possible I would give a man the profoundest and fullest academic training possible, but I would put each theological seminary in, or not far from a great city, and I would send the theological students down into the slums to teach and to preach. There are men advising us to save men by education, and the latest thing I hear suggested is salvation by psychology. This kind of suggestion is however, always confined to theory and does not get beyond the book in which it is discussed. A good many books issue from the press which would never see the light if while the man was thinking out his problem he had to go into the slum district or suburban quarter for the definite business of saving men. A man must be trained, but the man who has this passion must exercise it, he must use it. A man who has this constraint must not be hindered from going out to exercise the gift, or else the gift within him will burn down to cinders and ashes.

While exercising his gift, let him be trained in every way. The evangelist ought to be a man, a whole man, a man who is to be a perfect instrument for that perfect Gospel he is called to preach. He is to train physically, to train mentally, and above everything else, to train spiritually. We have no right to think that while all the other vocations of life, of the lawyer, of the doctor, of the business man, demand preparatory hard work and training, that we can successfully put untrained men into the work of the ministry.

If God takes hold of a man He has called to the work, and it is really impossible for him to obtain training, and he becomes a veritable flame of fire, that is no reason why other men should shirk training, and slip carelessly into the work of the evangelist. The very magnificence of your Gospel, the very majesty of your work demands that you should take time, take your whole being, and attempt to make it a fit instrument for the proclamation of the great Gospel. I would like to say a good deal about physical training. If a man is going to preach this evangel, he has no right to trifle with his physical powers. My body is to be the temple of the Holy Ghost, Who through me, will proclaim this evangel, and I am to see to it so far as I am able, that in all its powers it is an instrument fit for the Master’s work. And so with the mind. Ignorance is not a qualification for evangelism. My dear young brother, are you looking forward to an evangelistic ministry? Then I plead with you, gird up the loins of your mind, and obtain all the knowledge possible. No single branch of knowledge is out of place to the man who is going to do the work of an evangelist. You may gather illustrations from all sciences, from all literature, and if you are only living close to the centre, and close to Christ, you will see light gleaming and breaking everywhere. Don’t hurry through training in order to do this work, but while the training goes on, let there be exercise all the while, and through the process you will gain in strength, and become presently an evangelist proclaiming the message with the vigour of physical strength, with the acumen of mental equipment, and with the dynamic of spiritual force. Such are the men for whom the world waits at this moment, for the preaching of this great Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Then if this is the gift and the training of the evangelist, what is his work? The evangelist is to go forth and preach the Lordship of Christ, preach Him as Lord until men in the presence of His Lordship become conscious of their own failure. Then begins the great commission of declaring to them that by His Cross salvation has come to them, that all they are not, they may be, and all they are, they need not be, that the things they would not be but are, can be cancelled in blood, the things they would be, but are not, they may be by life in the Spirit. Oh this is a great message, the evangel of the Cross. But is the proclamation all? By no means! The evangelist must constrain men to obey. There must be that wonderful wooing note that breaks men’s hearts, and sweeps them to Christ. That is the final and most remarkable note of the real evangelist, by which he constrains men. Not merely the declaration of the evangel, not merely the announcement of the Lordship of Christ, and the declaration of the Cross, but the ability to take hold of men, and compel them to Christ. Of course some worldly critic will call this personal magnetism. That however is not all the truth. It is the constraint of the personality of Christ through the personality of the consecrated men which wins.

Think of the great evangelists, stern men very often, and yet their sternness always melted into tears. Every great evangelist has been of that nature. The late Robert W. Dale of Birmingham, England, greatest of our theologians said to me, sitting in his study one day, “I think I have only known one evangelist that I felt had the right to speak of a lost soul.” And I said, “Who was it?” He replied, “It was D. L. Moody, and it was because he never spoke of the possibility of a man being lost without tears in his voice.” He turned from fiery denunciation of sin into quiet plaintive tearful heart-broken constraint. It is the great equipment. It is the great secret.

If all this be true, what manner of man is the evangelist to be in his own character? First of all he must himself be a credential of the Gospel he preaches. It is no use my preaching the Lordship of Christ unless I am loyal to Him. I may eloquently describe His Kingship, I may with acumen defend Him against the attacks of others; but if my life is not loyal, my eloquence is sounding brass, a tinkling cymbal, a blasphemy and an impertinence. And the man who preaches the Cross must be a crucified man. You may preach the Cross and it is nothing but a Roman gibbet unless you preach it from yourself. It is the crucified man that can preach the Cross. Said Thomas “Except I shall see in His hands the print of the nails … I will not believe.” Dr. Parker of London said that what Thomas said of Christ, the world is saying about the Church. And the world is saying to every preacher: Unless I see in your hands the print of the nails I will not believe. It is true. It is the man who is at the end of himself, who has got to the end of reputation, and the end of earthly ambition, the man who has died with Christ, he it is that can preach the Cross of Christ. And yet more. Not only loyal to His Lordship, and not only realizing the power of His Cross, but revealing the glory of His resurrection in a life rising above the things of this life, triumphing every day; not merely the man of the Cross, but the man of the Easter morning. Are you, dear brother mine, preacher of the evangel, are you an Easter morning man? It is not the Cross only. It is the Cross and resurrection. Have you come to resurrection by the way of the Cross? Is the radiance of its glory on your brow? Is the song of an assured victory in your heart? If you are doubting, you cannot inspire faith. If you are not sure how this thing is going to turn out, no one will be persuaded. You must be the man of certainty, a man on the resurrection side of the grave, the old life behind. You remember the old story of a boy flying his kite. He could not see it. A gentleman passing said to him, “What are you doing?” “Flying my kite.” “Oh but,” he said, “you cannot see it.” “No, but I feel its pull.” It is the man who feels the pull of the unseen things that is going to preach this Gospel, and the only man who does that will be the man who by the way of the Cross, has come out into the resurrection life. And consequently the evangelist is a man not only preaching the possibility of victory by the indwelling Christ, he is in himself truly optimistic in the power of personal realization of victory. Pessimism paralyzes power in evangelistic preaching; but this great optimism of the indwelling of Christ is a perpetual power. And all this means the necessity for unceasing vigilance. The man who is to be an evangelist, the voice of the Church, proclaiming the glad news, how zealously and jealously he must guard the gift committed to him. What personal examination and correction are necessary if this work is to be perfectly done. Oh the subtle and insidious foes of the minister, sloth, ambition, pride, distraction, these are the things that spoil us. My brothers, how we must guard against them. How the evangelist needs to live in perpetual fellowship with God. How he needs earnestly to devote himself to the hardworking, brain-sweating study of his message. And how the evangelist needs to be perpetually on the watch for souls.

Let me gather up and conclude. Sympathy with the evangelist is in every man gifted by the Spirit, though all may not have the specific gift. The varieties create the harmonies. Harmony is a concord of differences. So whether you have that specific gift or no, you have sympathy with it if you are Christ’s own minister. At least keep that sympathy alive and warm. Don‘t let anything freeze it out, paralyze it. My special word is to you, my brothers, perhaps to a few only, whom God has called to this special work. Let your spirit be carefully guarded. And yet more strongly let me say that you as a witness in the Church, having the gift of the evangelist, ought to be able to inspire everyone you meet, men and women in your Church, with the sympathy and passion that consumes you. That is your first and greatest work even as an evangelist. And as there is no calling more wonderful than that of the evangelist, therefore none demands more in cost and in toil. And now this final word to those in whose hearts there burns the sympathy. By your prayer, by your co-operation, by your determined attempt to sweep everything out of the highway, help these men who are called and gifted for the proclamation of the message. And if in the pastor of your church you have discovered a man in whose heart there is this great passion and constraint, driving him to win souls, oh, I beseech you, don’t hinder him, don‘t bind him, don’t prevent him, don’t demand that he shall put that which is a gift of evangelism into its wrong use of taking care of you, but rather in your co-operation with him, catch the same spirit, carry on the same great glorious work. Thus all of us in measure, while some by specific equipment, may be evangelists of the Cross.