05.04. The Evangelistic Service

4 The Evangelistic Service This is the phase of our subject which personally I should prefer to omit. I freely confess to a fear of the study of methods. I am well aware that such a study is necessary, but I am always a little afraid lest we should attempt to press into some ready-made method, the infinite Spirit of God. “The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth, so is every one that is born of the Spirit.” These words of our Master have very wide application. They indicate the spontaneity of the work of the Spirit. No man can tell whence the wind cometh, or whither it goeth. No man can foretell the line along which the Spirit of God will operate toward the accomplishment of the Divine purpose. It is nevertheless true that no man will make the wind his servant save as he learns the true method of answering its law. The wind bloweth where it will, but if I want the wind to be my servant, and propel my boat across the sea I must know how to construct my boat and my sail to catch the wind. And so while the Spirit of God is the one Worker, without whom nothing can be done along the line of true evangelism, it is nevertheless true that it is important that we should discover those methods with which He works most easily and naturally, and in proportion as we do this we shall be able to co-operate with Him in all His great work and purpose. In dealing with the conduct of an evangelistic service, it must be distinctly understood that I would not attempt to compel every man to use one method, and above all, I would not attempt to suggest that I have discovered the final or best method by which the Spirit may work.

I want to speak first of all of the place of evangelistic services in the course of the regular ministry, and then of the work of evangelism at special seasons in the life of a church or community. The presence in our congregations of those not actually and personally submitted to Christ, must always create the necessity for such service. Nothing can be more paralyzing to the life of a minister himself, or to the congregations that assemble regularly to hear him as he preaches the word, than that he should come to think, or should so preach as to make his people think, that definite decision for Christ is not important in every individual life. There is a very great peril along that line to all of us in the work of the regular ministry. I am very thankful to be able to speak to you from the standpoint of twelve years’ experience in the settled work of the ministry. I know exactly what it is to face a congregation Sabbath after Sabbath. There is nothing more full of delight than that kind of work, but there is a danger that we take too much for granted about the people to whom we preach, and if we are not careful we shall drift into the opinion that because these people are attending services, therefore there is no need for the direct appeal of the evangel to be made to them. We must ever remember that it is necessary that every individual person should come into personal relationship with Jesus Christ. We must remember that no child is born a Christian. That is not for one single moment to enter into any discussion as to the question whether or no the children of Christian people are born within a covenant. I believe they are, but they are not born Christians; and whereas I very strongly hold,—and my own life’s experience is the most remarkable testimony to the truth of the fact,—that where a child is born of Christian parents, and is trained in a Christian home, the actual acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord by that child is likely to be natural and simple, without revulsion, without earthquake shock, soft as the kiss of morning on the brow of Nature, sweet as the passing zephyr over the fields of flowers, yet there must be definite submission, and no child because born of Christian parents, is therefore a Christian. In all our preaching we need to remember that the dear children of our own members, coming with them to worship—and there is no fairer sight to my own eyes than that of seeing father and mother and children sitting before me Sabbath after Sabbath—must each one for himself and herself, at some age of understanding and discretion, yield their own life to Jesus Christ, or else they can never be Christians.

Now with that conviction in the heart of the minister, he will at once see how there must be in his preaching, even though he be a pastor and teacher principally, a desire for the salvation of these, and there must be occasionally some message, some appeal, some opportunity given to those who sit under his ministry, to make an immediate decision and a definite confession of Jesus Christ. No man can have as the burden of his preaching the Lordship of Christ, whether the special quality be that of the prophet, or that of the evangelist, or that of the pastor and teacher, without bringing to the consciences of those who hear him a conviction of sin. In the first of these lectures I laid special emphasis upon the first note of the evangel, the Lordship of Christ. It is the great theme of preaching. It is the message of the prophet to his age. It is the message of the evangelist to the individual. It is the message of the pastor and teacher, to his people. The prophet proclaims that Jesus is Lord over all the affairs of men. The evangelist proclaims that Jesus is Lord in the realm of the salvation of the individual. The pastor and teacher insists upon the Lordship of Christ in the actual life of the believer. And no man can preach that Lordship in all the spaciousness of its meaning, without those who hear him coming into the consciousness of sin.

Now wherever as the result of the preaching of the Lordship of Christ, conviction of sin results in the consciences of those who hear, there at once is created the necessity for the proclamation of the way of salvation, or in other words, there is the opportunity for the evangelistic service.

Therefore I submit that the minister of Jesus Christ ought occasionally to hold meetings where he urges immediate decision, and gives the opportunity for the same. We must not be led astray from the essential work of the Christian ministry by imagining we have some gift which liberates us from responsibility about the decision of the men and women who listen to us. There is no gift that does not include within it something of the evangelistic necessity, of urging the claim of Christ upon individuals. I hold no regular ministry is complete in which there is never an opportunity for immediate decision on the part of those who are brought into contact with the fact of the Lordship of Christ, and who hear the evangel of salvation. As to time and season, my own conviction is that in the work of the regular ministry in the vast majority of cases it is not wise to decide that on every Sunday night there shall be an evangelistic service. There are exceptions to this rule. The local circumstances must always decide. In the Moody church of Chicago, where Sunday by Sunday there is gathered together a promiscuous crowd, no Sabbath evening passes without an evangelistic appeal, and without decisions for Christ. Some persons imagine that because it is done there, it ought to be so everywhere. That by no means follows. Neither do I think it wise to hold an evangelistic service at stated intervals. That is too mechanical an arrangement. The pastor who is living in fellowship with the Spirit of God, and who is seeking to receive his messages direct from God, will discover when the moment has come in which he must declare the evangel, and make his appeal. That is the occasion for the evangelistic service. If I may refer to my own experience as a pastor, I have gone on from Sunday to Sunday, sometimes for one or two months with an evangelistic service after each evening service. On the other hand there have been periods when only once in the month or perhaps twice, such services have been held, and sometimes months would pass with no such service. I never went to my pulpit knowing whether I would have such a service or not. I went with a burden and a message, and having endeavoured to lead and train my church in co-operation with me, they were never surprised if I had an after-meeting. If I did hold one, I found my officers and workers ready to do the necessary work. There are a thousand men who have not the specific gift of the evangelist, who yet are able to do evangelistic work occasionally as opportunity occurs. There are a thousand men who have not the particular quality that draws to their church the promiscuous and large multitude, but who nevertheless, are in the ministry by the gift and appointment of God, and their special work will be that of preaching regularly to a congregation composed very largely of the same people, but into which strangers will constantly be coming. There is no congregation made up of saints, consequently there will be in all congregations an element of those interested but not submitted, and the minister must ever have on his heart the burden of such people. A great many ministers say to me, We don’t feel we can conduct evangelistic services like that. How shall we do it? First of all by the use of your natural endowments. There are men who have remarkable powers of persuasion at an election, who yet say they cannot urge men to decision for Christ. If you have influenced a man to vote as he ought to vote for the good of the country, you should be able to win a man for Christ. A man in the ministry of Jesus Christ, whose heart has been touched with the Spirit of God, must feel the compassion of the heart of Christ towards men, and must feel the winning and drawing power of the Christ over men. If a minister have no compassion for men, no yearning for souls, no knowledge of what it is to travail in birth for the souls of men, he should search his own heart and life, and see what it means, for there must be something wrong between him and his Lord, or that compassion and power of constraint would most certainly be there. As to the conduct of an after-meeting. The first thing necessary is that the minister should preach so as to make one necessary. It is no use conducting an after-meeting after any sort of preaching. If decision has been urged in the preaching, then I cannot help thinking that if in the power of the Spirit an appeal be made for immediate response, it will be realized. Two or three years ago it was my privilege to take part in the simultaneous mission arranged for by the Free Church Council of England. Some people will tell you that mission was a failure. That is only partially true. I am quite prepared to admit that it did not succeed in any large extent, in reaching the vast masses of the unchurched people. There were exceptions of course, but both in London and the provinces there were whole regions, residential regions very often, as well as slum regions, which were hardly touched at all. But the movement was a glorious success in that it aroused in the hearts of hundreds of pastors an interest in evangelistic work, and turned them to evangelism in their own churches. The provincial mission which I conducted was held in the Town Hall of the city. There were united in that mission all the Free Churches. God greatly blessed the services, and many were brought to Christ. The last meeting I held was with the ministers, a conference in which they asked what they could do to take up and carry on the work. I suggested that on the next Sunday night every man, whether he had ever done so before or not, should preach to his own congregation with the distinctive and avowed purpose of persuading many of them whom he loved, but who as yet had not yielded to Christ, to yield to Him at once. To this they agreed, and on that next Sunday night every minister preached to his own people an evangelistic sermon, held an after-meeting, and through all the city men and women were saved. I believe that every minister who would prayerfully hold such a service in his own church, and among his own people, would have actual and definite results.

Now as to evangelistic services at special seasons. Such seasons may arise in some individual church, or in some union movement among the churches. I do not propose now to discuss the union movements. I am not discrediting them. I thank God for all of them which are so much blessed in my own country, and in this. For the splendid work being done by Dr. Torrey and Mr. Alexander I thank God perpetually. But what I am principally interested in is a new devotion to evangelistic work in our churches, and consequently I want to confine myself very largely to the special mission of evangelism in the church. In the work of a faithful ministry there will come special seasons when the minister and office bearers alike will have borne in upon them the conviction that the time is ripe for harvest. The movement may begin with some woman who prays, and keeps on praying quietly and alone, making no talk about it, until a conviction that God is beginning to work takes possession of the whole church. That is the occasion for the work of the special evangelist. Very many feel that the minister himself is the true man for the work. It may be so in some instances, but it is more fitting in the majority of cases that the minister should seek for some man to co-operate with him, whose gift is specifically that of the evangelist.

Now as to method and management. When the church is conscious of imminent Divine visitation there must be the most careful and watchful preparation. It should begin in the gathering together of the church for united prayer. I think that when the church is conscious of Divine visitation, of the movement of the Spirit of God, there need be no indecent hurry. Nothing is lost by a time of waiting, during which the church is gathered together for solemn preparation by consecration and intercession. Then there must be systematic preparation as to the needs of the whole neighbourhood. If a church in a district or neighbourhood is going to hold a series of special meetings, that is the moment in which that church stretches out in actual endeavour to reach the whole neighbourhood. Every house in the neighbourhood will receive invitations to the services, and it will be seen that an invitation shall reach every person, not once or twice, but a dozen times before the services begin. That is very detailed and technical I know, but it is along such lines of hard work, and consecrated prayerful preparation that the greatest blessings have come to services held in connection with individual churches.

During the course of the meetings every member of the church should be a worker. It may be urged that that is a counsel of perfection which can never be carried out. At least let it be a counsel of perfection, and let every church attempt to realize it. It may be objected that it is not necessary that every church member should be a worker. And yet nothing is more important. There are many kinds of workers wanted in connection with evangelistic meetings, house-to-house visitors; Christian men and women in the choir to sing the Gospel; Christian men as ushers; specially trained and qualified enquiry room workers; and beyond all these, a band of men and women, who unable to help in any of the ways indicated, shall labour together with the rest, in earnest pleading prayer. The church membership should be called together, and the burden of this matter laid upon them in the spirit of prayer. Then let arrangements be made. Finding out what each is fitted for, allot “to every man his work.” The importance of house-to-house visitation is very great. Let the visitation be courteous and kind, and yet insistent as to the claims of Jesus Christ, devoid of arrogance, but characterized by a winning courteous manner. Let that be done time after time, until it shall be impossible for any human being in the neighbourhood of the church to say “no man careth for my soul. As to the singing. If there is one thing not wanted in evangelistic work it is a number of unconverted men and women to lead the singing. Christian men and women are needed, who in all their singing show the tender and matchless power of Jesus Christ, and they should be gathered out of the church.

Then as to the stewards and ushers. Are we not sometimes a little in danger of forgetting the importance of them? The way a man is met at the door and shown to his chair, may decide him for or against God. The way a man is welcomed or repulsed may attract him to Christ or drive him from Christ. In all such special services there should be the greatest care taken that those attending should be welcomed by those who manifest the love of Christ. You may have all your angular, peculiar, crochetty sidesmen when the church only is there, but you want the men of gracious strength, and tender heart, and loving welcome, and genial face, and sweet Christian life to welcome men into the house of God when you are going to urge them to decision for Jesus Christ. And finally the enquiry room workers. Let me utter here a solemn word of warning. Make your enquiry room secure against the intrusion of any person unknown. Let anybody have the right to enter the enquiry room, and all the fads and fanatics of the district will be there first. I was jealously, zealously careful to guard my enquiry room against the intrusion of any person not known to myself. That means there must be preparation by the minister of his workers, and there ought to be an enquiry room class in which he shall meet a chosen band and instruct them in the method of dealing with souls. These need appointing and arranging for with great wisdom and care.

If the membership is not exhausted by these appointments, then all the rest can pray. I am greatly impressed today as I meet with men whom God is using, and find their experience coinciding so closely with my own. I crave today more than I ever did in my life, with a greater longing than I ever felt, to know that men and women are praying for me. In New York recently three men came to me, and these three men looked into my face and said, “For five years we three have prayed for you every day by solemn covenant.” I cannot tell you what it meant to me. If our evangelistic work is going to be a success we must get our people regularly and systematically to pray. Epaphras agonized in prayer. Now it is not given to everyone to spend long hours in prayer. Thank God for the men and women who can do it. God does not mean everybody should do that. But we can form the habit of prayer, so that we can pray here, there, anywhere, everywhere. Let the members band themselves together to pray. It has often been pointed out that it is a remarkable thing that when Paul preached on Mar’s Hill, there were few if any converts, but when Peter preached on the day of Pentecost thousands were swept into the Kingdom of God; and it is an interesting question why in the one case so few, and in the other so many were attracted and influenced. No one would like to suggest that Peter was more abandoned to God than Paul. Peter preached in the midst of a company of praying men and women, and Paul did not. And account for it as you will, go into the mystery and philosophy of it as you will, the fact remains that the Holy Spirit of God works more easily in the atmosphere of praying men and women than without them.

Then the combined business acumen of the church members should be consecrated to this work. Oh, when will all the business ability in the church be consecrated to the work of the Church? Some men think that they need their business ability for their business, and that it is enough to give a check to the church. If a man is offering for sale something that he wants to make profit out of for himself, he will push it in front of your eyes wherever you go. I cannot travel any distance without seeing the virtues of some soap extolled under my eyes wherever I look. If I could only get hold of the business acumen, and turn it into account for the kingdom of God.

I don’t quite like the comparison, but I am going to use it. When the Church begins to run the business of Jesus Christ like the world runs the business of selling soap, we shall do something. I will tell you a story out of my own experience. I went at one time to conduct a series of special services in a district in England. I was to be there for two weeks. One of the officers wrote to me just before I went, and he said, “Our chapel has been renovated, and very beautifully renovated, and we are afraid the crowds may spoil it, and we are going to have the services only for one week.” Oh, the shame of it! The preservation of paint of more importance than the salvation of souls! Let the business men of the Church recognize that they are in business partnership with Jesus Christ, and let them apply all the push and go which they use in their own business to the business of the Kingdom. That should be so always, but specially in the time of the special mission. Such preparation is mechanical, but it is the mechanism through which the Holy Spirit of God may do His work. The work of the evangelistic mission in our churches first demands all our consecrated endeavour. If we attempt to do it in any other way, we shall fail as we deserve to do. If for instance we say we will hold some special services, and then issue two hundred and fifty bills, four inches square, and open the doors and imagine we have done everything, we are demonstrating our unbelief in our own enterprise, and the world is very apt to measure the importance of those things by the standard of the Church’s estimate of their value.

We must put into the work of saving men and women sinew and brain, and muscle, and blood, and then we shall begin to move the world.

Finally I want to say something as to the actual conduct of an evangelistic service, whether it be the occasional service in the regular work of the pastorate, or whether in the special series. In an evangelistic service the whole conduct of the service must be conducive to the one business of winning men. I begin with the smaller matters first. The physical conditions must be remembered. The building in which the evangelistic service is to be held must be one in which it is possible for people to be physically comfortable.

There was a good man in Sheffield, England, named Tom Graham, remarkable in his success in winning souls, who used to say something not elegant in expression, but perpetually true, “I never knew a man saved with cold feet.” It is of prime importance that we attend to the physical conditions. The building must be such as people can at least be comfortable in, and by being comfortable forget the physical and attend to the spiritual. As long as a man is conscious of the physical it is very hard for him to attend to the spiritual. The building must be properly warmed and ventilated. The physical conditions must be of the best. The next point of importance is that those who enter the building to an evangelistic service should be welcomed. The caretaker and the ushers must be chosen with great care if this is to be so. Then accommodation must be provided, and so far as possible those coming must be courteously seated, and attended to. We must in love make men feel that they are more welcome to this service than they ever were in a saloon or theatre.

Then further in the evangelistic service the general tone of the proceedings should be carefully guarded. There should be an absence of merely stilted dignity on the part of the minister and the office bearers of the church. D. L. Moody once said that dignity was not one of the fruits of the Spirit anyhow. If a poor man comes into the church and is patronized, the chances of winning him are greatly reduced. And yet the tone should not only be free from stilted dignity, it should be free from all undue frivolity. Nothing should be done by speaker, singer, or anyone else for the sake of simply raising a laugh. I am sorry for the man who lacks a sense of humour, but humour should be the play of summer lightning, clearing the air, and not the degradation of the pulpit into an entertainment, in which the main object is to make people laugh. The tone should be that of a reverent gladness, the hymns pulsating with hope, the attitude of every man taking part in the work that of one who believes in God, and in the possibilities of the man that has come in. Reverent and hopeful in all things let the true evangelistic service be. And once again. The whole of the service in the hands of the evangelist should conduce to the one matter in hand, of winning men for Christ, the singing, the Scripture, and prayer, and the sermon. I do not believe that it is wise in an evangelistic service that the evangelist should hand the conduct of the singing over to any second man. In the actual service he should select his own hymns, such as will lead up to his subject, and such as will appeal to the people on the line thereof. I would have half an hour’s singing before the service proper begins, under the charge of the director, but the moment I come to the platform as the evangelist, I want to select my own hymns. I don’t want a hymn sung absolutely out of harmony with anything I am going to say. There needs to be this harmony. So also with the matter of the Scripture reading. So also with the prayer prayed. An evangelist will be very careful about whom he asks to pray. It is a great mistake to take hold of the Rev. Mr. So and So, who does not believe in evangelistic meetings, and get him to lead in prayer in order to enlist his sympathy. I don’t want to do him good just now. I am after this sinner here, and I want the man to pray who knows the way into the secret place, who knows how to get at the heart of God. All these things are important. I do not think we can afford to miss a single detail. And as to the sermon. In an evangelistic service it must be one aimed at the capture of the will for Jesus Christ. Different congregations will demand different methods. One method of presenting truth will appeal to one class of the community, and quite another method will be necessary for another class. Thomas Chapness says that the most remarkable text on how to be a soul winner is the text, “I will make you fishers of men.” I once heard him speak on that text, and in the course of his sermon he said, ‘A fisher is very careful about his bait. If I want to catch a codfish, I fling them out a bait as big as a clock weight, and they swallow it. But if I am going for salmon I have a fly, and whip the stream with delicacy and art.’ There are some preachers who will appeal along the line of the intellect and reason. There are men caught on the flood tide of emotion. But back of the intellect and emotion is the citadel, the will, and it is for that the preacher strives. Whether he captures the will through the intellect or through the emotion depends upon the persons addressed and on the preacher; but the supreme business is to appeal to the will, and to bring it into submission to the Lordship of Christ. The business of the evangelist is to get a verdict for Jesus Christ there and then. To the realization of that everything else must therefore be subservient in the sermon. The preacher’s literary reputation, the preacher’s rhetorical reputation, yes, the preacher’s theological reputation. The evangelist in the preaching of the evangelistic sermon will not be principally occupied with literary form, or rhetorical expression, or even of theology as such. His business will be to get that man for Christ, and when that is remembered, the sermon will get its true tone, its true quality.

One other word. The true evangelist will be very careful to avoid the possibility of a passion for numbered results spoiling his message. I sometimes fear lest the desire to have large statistical returns may tend to make a man make the way of salvation unduly easy. I think there is a danger. We have been preaching ‘Believe,’ and we have not sufficiently said ‘Repent,’ ‘repent,’ ‘repent,’ and we have still to preach this truth, that unless a man will turn to God from idols, then his faith though he boast of it, is dead and worthless. There is no question of precedence. The quality of faith must be that of repentence, and the dynamic of repentance must be that of faith, and when we urge upon men that they believe on the Lord Jesus, we must say that belief means submission to the Lordship, and that means turning from every other lord that has held dominion over the soul. We must not lower the claim of truth as presented to the people. Therefore the evangelistic sermon must be as carefully prepared as any other sermon. We cannot dare to imagine that we have the right to face a great crowd of people, and declare the evangel unless we have taken solemn time to know the evangel, its terms, its content, and its message to men. When some of our best trained men, the most highly equipped mentally turn to aggressive evangelism, then we shall have the most successful evangelists. A word about the after-meeting. I feel very strongly that the best method of conducting an after-meeting is that of making it an after-meeting rather than a continuance of the first meeting. That runs counter to many ideas. Let every man be fully persuaded in his own mind. Personally I do not like an after-meeting at which any are unwillingly present. I ask that all those who would like to stay behind do so. I never make an appeal (or very rarely under pressure of circumstances) until I have given an opportunity to everybody to go who desires to do so. It is sometimes said that by such means we miss so many men upon whom the Spirit of God has put His constraint. I do not believe it, and I would rather have a dozen people constrained, convicted, and converted, than a hundred caught in some emotional movement, in which movement there was no real depth of conviction and result. The after-meeting is to give men and women an opportunity to decide for Christ and confess Him immediately and openly. Here occurs the place for enquiry room work. There is no sacramental virtue in an enquiry room. The enquiry room is simply for enquiring souls to come that they may be intelligently dealt with about the spiritual perplexities. And that makes necessary the training of enquiry room workers. You cannot deal intelligently and correctly with a hundred at once. Every case has an individual problem, and there are two words that cover the ground of such work, and these are the words diagnosis and direction. By diagnosis I mean that the intelligent enquiry room worker will take hold of the case and find out where the particular difficulty is. It is not at all wise to say, ‘All you have to do is to believe.’ The difficulty in each case must be discovered, and there needs careful, spiritual, proper training, in order that it may be done. When the difficulty is found out, then there must be the quiet clear pointing of that soul to Christ. Then whether in the after-meeting or in the enquiry room, there is a point where preacher or worker must stand aside, and leave the soul with God alone. I have seen people go with their Bible to an enquirer, and say, ‘Now do you see that verse?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘Well, can you read that verse?’ ‘Oh, yes.’ ‘Read that verse.’ And that person will read that verse, and then the worker says ‘Now do you believe that?’ ‘Yes, I believe that.’ ‘Then you are saved.’ Now we have no business to tell any man he is saved. There is a point where we have to stand aside and let God and the man deal alone with each other. We can help, lead, point, counsel, warn, plead, but at last regeneration is the coming of God to the soul that comes to Him, and we have to draw aside and leave the individual to God.

I close as I began. I do not like lectures on methods, and I pray you, receive what I have said only as I have attempted to show principles, and not as I have attempted to lay down rules. But the great and supreme matter is this, that every church of Jesus Christ ought to have in it evangelistic work going on regularly or periodically, and add to its membership by such as are led to Christ individually and directly.