THE MINISTER AS AN EVANGELIST – REV. WILLIAM PATTERSON

The work of the Minister, according to the teaching of the New Testament, is threefold.

First, he is to feed the church of God—the babes, with the sincere milk of the Word; and those who are more advanced with the strong meat of its doctrines.

Second, he is to care for those over whom he has been placed as an overseer or under-shepherd. This twofold aspect of the work was very clearly brought out by our Savior, on that early morning when He stood by the Lake of Gennesaret and commanded Peter to feed the sheep and the lambs and to shepherd them. We are all agreed as to the importance of these two departments in connection with the minister’s work; in fact, we can hardly overestimate the impor­tance of building up Christian people in faith and in knowledge, and also in caring for them as the shepherd cares for the sheep, by leading them to the green pas­tures and the quiet waters.

Third, he is commanded to do the work of an Evangelist; in other words, to reach out after the unsaved and to bring into the fold those who are out­side. This part of the work was surely referred to when Christ called the disciples and told them that, if they would follow Him, He would make them “fishers of men;” that as they had in the past drawn the fish out of the sea by the net, they would in the future draw men from the sea of iniquity to the rock of safety.

If we look at our Lord as the great example, we will see that while He was the greatest of all teachers and the one who was preparing His disciples for their life work, yet His great mission to this world was the sav­ing of the lost. His very name meant Savior, and He Himself said that the Father sent Him into the world that the world might be saved through Him, and He informed the murmuring Pharisees that the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost. Paul, speaking of the Savior’s work in after years, said that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; but it is not necessary to multiply pas­sages of scripture, in order to prove that the great mis­sion of the Master was to save the lost.

In commanding the disciples, He told them that as the Father had sent Him into the world, in like man­ner He was sending them. They were to be the sav­iors of men—not in the sense in which He was, by making an atonement for sin, but by telling to the lost ones that an atonement had been made; that God was reconciled and that for them there was redemption if they would turn to the Savior. Again, before He ascended on high after His resurrection, He com­manded His followers to go into all the world and to preach the Gospel to every creature; to preach repentance and the remission of sins in His name, beginning at Jerusalem.

The great work of the church is the evangelizing of the nations and the saving of the lost, through pro­claiming the Gospel of the Son of God. We are not discussing the question of evangelists. Some say they have a place in the New Testament and some say they have not. We know that many of them have been instrumental in accomplishing great good; that God has set His approval on their work and that, to-day, there are multitudes rejoicing in the salvation of Christ through the labors of evangelists. We know on the other hand that some of them, through lack of grace or lack of wisdom, have been the means of breaking up congregations; but what has been said of evan­gelists could be said of ministers with equal truth. Many of them have been wonderfully blessed in advancing the cause of God, but is it not true that some of them have broken up congregations and injured the cause they were representing? The question we are discussing is “The Minister as an Evangelist.”

At the very beginning we are met with the asser­tion that many ministers have not the evangelistic gifts. It is true that some ministers are better adapted for preaching the deep things of God and for edifying the church of God than they are for reaching the unsaved; while others are better adapted for evangelistic work than for the work of teaching and edifying the church; but while this is true, every minister should be able to show the unsaved the way of salvation. If we expect our Sabbath School teachers to bring their scholars to Christ through their teaching, we should expect the ministers to be able to bring sinners to a knowledge of Christ as their Savior through their preaching. It will not do for a minister to say: “I have not the evan­gelistic gift, and therefore the lost are not being saved in my congregation. ” If a minister is not qualified to preach to sinners, he is not qualified to be a minister, and he should never be set apart for that work by a Presbytery, a Council or a Bishop.

What is evangelistic preaching, or what does it mean to do the work of an evangelist? It is not being able to tell anecdotes in an interesting manner, or to clothe stories with beautiful language, but it is the present­ing of the truth to men in such a way that they will see themselves as sinners, and then presenting Christ to them as the Savior of sinners in such a way that they will receive Him as their personal Savior, and thus be saved.

If we glance back at the history of the church we shall see that this has been done by men who are not designated as evangelists. John the Baptist, for example, was an evangelistic preacher, for he was calling men to repentance; and on the Day of Pente­cost Peter’s sermon was evangelistic. He did two things in that sermon—he convinced the multitudes that they were sinners, that they had with wicked hands crucified the Son of God; and when they came to see themselves as sinners, lost and condemned, Peter presented unto them the way of salvation through Christ. Three thousand of them believed his words and were baptized. Surely this was an evan­gelistic sermon, and, if we follow through the Acts of the Apostles, we will discover that not only Philip, who was called an evangelist, but that the Apostles and teachers as well were evangelistic preachers and were instrumental in bringing men into the Kingdom of God.

If we come down to the days of the reformers we will find that men like Luther and Knox were evan­gelistic in their preaching, for they preached justifica­tion by faith. Coming down further in the history of the Church, we see men like Rutherford and McCheyne, who were wonderfully gifted for edifying Christians; yet these men were great evangelists, for through them many were brought to a saving knowl­edge of the truth. Again, Chalmers, while he was a great philosopher and wonderful theologian, was also an evangelistic preacher, and the same could be said of Jonathan Edwards, under whose preaching men trembled and cried out: “What must we do to be saved?” then, if we turn to Spurgeon, we will meet a man who was a preacher to preachers, and yet one of the greatest evangelists of the century; for his taber­nacle was spoken of as a “soul trap,” a place where so many sinners were caught and brought out of the darkness of sin into the light of God.

Dr. John Hall, of New York, was also evangelistic, and presented the truth in as forcible and clear a man­ner as any evangelist ever did. On one occasion, when the audience were going out of the church on Fifth Avenue, a man was heard to say, “The old man gives a fellow no chance to dodge”—in other words, Dr. Hall closed up every false way of escape with such thoroughness that the sinner could see no way of refuge save in Christ.

The question now comes, are the ministers of this country and of this age doing the work of evangelists, and, if they are, how shall we account for over fifteen hundred congregations in one denomination reporting no additions to the church by profession of faith dur­ing the year, and over nineteen hundred in another denomination who could not say they had been instru­mental in saving any during the twelve months of the year? This is a terrible state of affairs. Can it be that ministers are leaving the work of soul-saving to those who are called evangelists? The evangelist should be to the minister and congregation what the Sabbath School is to the home—or what it should be to the home. But if the Sabbath School takes the place of the home, it fails to accomplish its mission, and that is not the fault of the Sabbath School. If the evangelist is taking the place of the minister in his work as a soul-winner, he is not fulfilling his mission, and the fault is not his, but the minister’s.

It may be that this is true to a certain extent, and that ministers do not look for or expect conversions except when they are having what are called “special meetings.’’ The minister should expect conversions at every service where the unsaved are present. Do not let us blame the evangelists unless we are sure that they are to blame, and that we, as ministers, have done our duty in this respect. There is still a little bit of the old Adam left in us which leads us to roll the blame over on others, or try, like the young lawyer, to justify ourselves.

I hear a great deal of discussion in this country about the evening service. The question is, how are we to reach the people, and how are we to get them to come out to the evening service? I do not wonder that the evening congregations in many churches are very small when I see advertised the subjects upon which the ministers preach. So many of these sub­jects are sensational trash or semi-religious topics. Some ministers seem to think that if they are to draw a congregation, they must discuss some political or scientific subject, but they never made a greater mistake, for there is nothing that will draw an audience and interest an audience like the evangelistic truth contained in the Scriptures. A woman who was speaking to a minister concerning the crowds of people who went to hear him, said: “It must be the Lord who is bringing them, for it is not the singing, and I am sure it is not the preaching.” It was rather a strange way of putting the case, and yet it was true, for singing will not fill an empty church; that is, the classic singing we hear so much about will not. It has been tried in this country and it has failed. There are churches which pay a great deal of money for sing­ing, and yet the pews are not crowded; neither is it the preaching which will draw, apart from the truth of God, for we have many preachers who are bright scholars, cultured men, gifted and fluent speakers, and yet their churches are far from full.

On the other hand, there are churches where the ministers could not be called scholarly, or eloquent, and where the singing is not by any means classic, and yet they have large congregations; and men are being saved week after week because the Gospel is preached in sincerity, in simplicity, and with power.

I take it for granted that those who shall read these pages are anxious to be instrumental in bringing sin­ners to a knowledge of the Savior, and I shall now refer to what I consider a few essentials in the accom­plishing of this. First of all, we must have power with men if we are to reach and win them, and in order to have this power we must be right with God. I believe that there are many ministers and Christian workers whose names are in the Book of Life, and yet who have no power because there is something wrong in their lives. It is probable that Jacob was a child of God from the night when he first met the Lord at Bethel; yet for twenty years, as far as we can gather, his life was powerless and fruitless. But when he met with the angel who changed his name from Jacob to Israel, he was informed that he would have power with men because he had power with God; and that power made itself manifest on the following day, when the wrath of his brother, Esau, was turned away.

David was a man who had power with God and power with men; yet he lost that power through sin and, in Psalm 51, he is praying for a restoration of the joy of salvation for cleansing; and he adds that, as a result, sinners will be converted unto God. It has pleased God to save sinners by what may be called the foolishness of preaching. God is reaching the unsaved through those already redeemed—through His Church, which is the one and only divine institution in the world. Men and women who have put their confi­dence in Him are the channels through which His sal­vation is to reach all who are outside the Kingdom of God, and, if there is anything wrong with that channel, to that extent the work of saving the world will be affected.

We may take an illustration to make this more plain. Suppose we have a great reservoir full of water, on a hill, and a city in the valley, and pipes connecting the reservoir with the homes of the people. The water which they receive from the reservoir will come through these pipes as the channels. Something may happen to the pipes—they may be frozen by the cold atmosphere surrounding them or they may become choked with sand or earth getting into them; in either case the water will cease to flow and the inhabitants will suffer. The same may happen to those who are the channels conveying the love and forgiveness of God to the sinners who are unsaved. Christians may become so cold and so indifferent or they may become so engrossed with science or philosophy or the things of the world that they may cease to be the channels through which God’s forgiveness will reach men; and as the water-pipes to which we have referred cannot thaw themselves nor cleanse themselves, neither can men who have got into this state restore themselves to a state of usefulness. The power to do this must come from without; and so we find David calling upon God to cleanse him and to stay him with His free spirit so that sinners might be converted.

The first essential, then, is to see that we are right with God—that we are in perfect fellowship with Him —and then we can be the channels through which He can reach the ungodly and the sinful.

Another essential in this work is love. In speaking of the gifts which were given to men in i Cor., chapter 12, Paul exhorted them to choose the best gifts; and then he went on, in chapter 13, to show them the more excellent way. There he speaks of love as the great­est and most enduring of all the gifts; and without it, he says, a man is as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal. We will never reach men nor be instrumental in saving them unless we love them; and the more of Christ we have in our hearts, the more compassion we will have for the lost.

How many wonderful pictures of Christ are pre­sented to us in the Gospels. At one time we see Him looking with compassion upon the multitudes because they are as sheep without a shepherd; at another time we see Him beholding the great city through His tears, and hear Him cry out, “O Jerusalem, Jerusa­lem, how oft would I have gathered thee, but ye would not.” If we look at Paul, His greatest Apostle, we will see this same truth made manifest. Before his conversion he hated men and consented to the stoning of Stephen; after his conversion, he said that his heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel was that they might be saved. Though these very people were persecuting him, He could say with all his soul: “Grace be with all them that love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth.” But, in addition to this love for the saints, he had a passion for the souls of the lost. When our hearts become full of love to Christ, they will go out in compassion and in love to the lost sheep who have wandered from the fold and, like the faithful shepherd, we will be anxious to go after them, though the night be dark and though difficulties lie in the way. The work will be a pleasure if our hearts are in it, and we will be anxious to bring back those who have gone astray; but without this love the work of the minister is the greatest drudgery and the fruits will never be made manifest.

Another essential to success is obedience, and it is a proof of love, for Christ said: “If ye love me keep my commandments.” Now, I believe that some of us are failing in the work because we have not obeyed the voice of God in all things, and there is nothing that will take the place of obedience. If we go back to the history of the Old Testament, we shall discover that the failure of Saul was due to his disobeying the voice of the Lord. He had everything in his favor at the start, yet he made shipwreck of himself and of the nation, and we know, from Samuel’s message to him, that all his failure was brought about through his disobeying the voice of the Lord. On the other hand, if we look at David, who seemingly had everything against him at the start, we see that he overcame all difficulties, gathered together the scattered fragments of the nation, established a throne so great and so glorious that the Son of God was spoken of as the Son of David, and the key to David’s success we find in the prayer, “Show me Thy way, O Lord.’’ He had his failings, and some of his sins were great and grievous, but all his strength and all the success he ever attained lay in his obedi­ence to the voice of God.

Take as another example the prophet Jonah. He was commanded to go to Nineveh and preach to the people, but for reasons known to himself and only guessed at by us, he turned his back upon the great city and made for Tarshish. While in the path of disobedience he was unhappy himself and brought sorrow to the sailors and great loss to those who had sent their merchandise on the vessel in which he took passage; but just as soon as he got into the path of obedience and went to the city as he was commanded, he was instrumental in bringing the whole city to repentance and in turn­ing away the wrath of an angry God.

If we turn to Saul or Paul, the greatest Apostle of New Testament times, we get the key to his wonder­ful success in the second question which he asked the Lord, when he said: “What wilt Thou have me to do?’’ If we follow him all through his missionary journeys, we will see that his desire to obey the divine will makes itself manifest continually. If God tells him to leave Asia he will go, no matter what the result may be; if God tells him to enter into Europe he will go, no matter what the difficulties may be which stand in the way. Like a faithful soldier, he was continually awaiting the command of his captain, and his delight was to obey.

If God sends any of us to a certain field, and if, for reasons known to ourselves, we refuse to go, we need not expect to be instrumental in saving the lost. God has a plan for every man and a field for every worker; if we are where He wants us to be, and are doing the work that He wants us to do, success will surely crown our efforts. To obey is better than sacrifice and, if we commit our ways to Him, He surely will direct our steps. If we are anxious to do His will, we will hear a voice saying: “This is the way; walk ye in it.’’ Whether the field be large or small, whether the work be popular or obscure, if we are in the place where He has put us we can look to Him for the power and the help without which our efforts would be in vain.

Another essential for soul-saving is wisdom, or tact. When the Savior was sending His disciples out He told them to be wise as serpents. In trying to reach men we must know how to deal with them. Looking at some of the figures which our Savior used will help us to understand it more fully. He spoke of Himself as the physician and, in a certain sense, His disciples and followers are physicians for the healing of the souls of men. Now, it is not only necessary for a physician to understand the remedy, but he must also understand the patients and diseases for which these remedies are intended; because what would give heal­ing to one might bring death to another; so he must make a diagnosis of the cases, and treat the man accordingly. It is so in dealing with men spiritually; it is not enough for us to know the Word of God and to be thoroughly acquainted with its doctrines, but we must know something of the spiritual condition of the people with whom we are dealing. Understand, there is no use talking to a man who has had no sense of sin about the salvation from sin. He does not want a Savior because he has never felt his need. We often err by bringing men to Mt. Calvary who have never seen Mt. Sinai. The first thing to do with a man who has never seen himself as a sinner is to convince him, by the use of God’s Word, that he is lost, and then salvation will have some meaning for him; or, when we have a man who is being crushed through a sense of his sins and who is almost in despair, it would not do to bring that man the passages of scripture that speak about the wrath of God. We must reveal to him the remedy, and show him God as a refuge for those who are in trouble.

Then we are spoken of as “fishers of men,” and, if the figure means anything, it means that wisdom and skill are necessary to accomplish this work. A fisher­man must in some way come in contact with the fish before he can catch them. He must go to where they are, or else get them to come where he is. He must study their ways so as to know how best to catch them. There are two kinds of fishermen who never catch any fish—one class take nothing with them but the hook, and the fish look at it and pass on; another class take no hook, but a considerable amount of bait. As a general thing the latter have a large following. The fish enjoy and appreciate such men; they swallow their bait and go their way, and the fisherman congratulates himself upon seeing so many fish in the clear stream that go after his bait, but he has not made a catch. How often this is done by ministers! Some present the truth in such a bald bare way that men keep clear of them. Others give the people nothing but bait, stories, anecdotes and a lot of stuff that people seem to be pleased with, but there is no divine hook, and the preacher fails to save men. The true method is to have the hook and the bait, to be all things to all men, like the Apostle Paul, that we may gain some. It is true that the wise fisherman, having everything that is necessary, may fail to catch all the fish in the stream; and it is just as true that the wise or faithful minister may fail to reach all the unsaved in the com­munity, but surely it is equally true that as the fisher­man cannot catch any fish without complying with certain laws and fulfilling certain conditions, neither can the minister reach men if he violates the laws according to which the Spirit of God works in the con­viction and salvation of men. God has promised wis­dom to those who ask, and if we are wise to win souls the reward will be glorious; for “we shall shine as the stars forever and ever.”

Another essential in this work is realizing the value of a soul and what it means for a soul to be saved or to be lost. Our Savior informed us that there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents. This joy is not among the angels, but in their presence; and it must mean that the joy is in the Father’s heart, as the joy was in the shepherd’s heart when he found the sheep and in the woman’s heart when she found the coin and in the father’s heart when the lost son was found. God doesn’t rejoice over trifles, and we see the other side of this when we look at the tears of Christ over the doomed city; and we may rest assured that Christ never wept over trifles. We have God the Father rejoicing over a sinner being saved; we have God the Son weeping over sinners who are perishing; we have God giving His Son to save sin­ners ; we have Christ bearing the agony of Gethsemane and the shame of Calvary that the lost might be saved. Surely this ought to convince us of the value of a soul in the sight of God, and, if once we realize this, we shall then have a passion for souls, but we shall never be satisfied with our efforts so long as the unsaved are around us or in our congregations. This thought will help us in preparing our sermons; it will help us in delivering the sermons; it will give us a goal to strive after; it will enable us to reach the highest and truest result—the bringing of these men to the feet of the Savior.

Now, a word about methods. I have tried as a pas­tor to do the work of an evangelist for fourteen years in one congregation. As a general rule, the morning sermons were more for building up Christians, and the evening sermons were intended to reach sinners. Of course there were exceptions, because there are the unsaved who come to the morning services, and there are many Christians who come to the evening services, and this has to be taken into account; but, as a general rule, I think it is well to have most of the preaching in the morning for the Christians, and most of the preaching in the evening with a view to reaching the unsaved. I have never resorted to any sensational methods, never advertised subjects, but preached the Gospel in its simplicity as I knew it and as I believed it, and those in connection with the church to which I refer would bear me testimony that during the fourteenth year of my ministry the audiences were larger, and more people were unable to gain admittance to the evening serv­ices during that winter than ever before. During these years 2,750 people united with that congrega­tion, of which number 1,449 united by profession of faith, and a large number, during these years, who were converted at the regular services, united with other churches. This was the regular work of a min­ister who at the same time was trying to do the work of an evangelist.

I have been frequently told that methods which are successful in Toronto might not be successful in other cities; but I have tried the same style of preach­ing in the city of Boston in the month of August and in the month of January with the same results which I had in Toronto, and at the present time I am trying the same methods in the city of Philadelphia, with the same results which I had in Toronto. I make this personal reference for the purpose of showing that I am not talking theory, but in this article speaking of things of which I know.

When a student at college, I believed in the power of the Gospel to attract men and to save men. I went out of college more than fourteen years ago into the ministry, and I am now more thoroughly convinced than ever that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation. If it is presented in sincerity and in sim­plicity it will interest the people; and it is our business as ministers not only to study the Word of God, but to prepare and to deliver our sermons in such a way that people will be interested and that sinners will be saved. I fully realize the meaning of what our Lord said to the disciples in the fifteenth chapter of John, “Without me ye can do nothing,” but I am sure that if we are doing our best in His name and in His cause that He will own our efforts.

The question now comes, are we doing our best, or are we offering to Him our second best? Are we rest­ing satisfied if the finances and other things in con­nection with the congregation are satisfactory, while all around us the souls of men are dying and the Mas­ter is calling for us, not only to build up His people in faith, but to do the work of an evangelist? Surely, if He died that men might be saved, we should put forth every effort to make known unto men the way of life through the crucified, the risen and the exalted Redeemer.