A few weeks back, someone posted this quote in a theology forum I sometimes frequent. I’m told it’s from The Golden Path by John R. Rice:
“God’s ministers sometimes feel that they should first teach Christians the Bible and Christian living and later hope they will win souls, but they do not make as good Christians of young converts as the pastors and evangelists make who teach people to win souls as the main Christian duty. For God Himself presses on the soul winner to be clean. He ‘purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.’ All over America, some Bible teachers and pastors teach Christians a code of conduct without soul winning, and make Pharisees – don’ters.
But when God’s Spirit puts the inward urge in a Christian that he must “by all means save some,” there is a real striving for spiritual holiness, a consecration of life and talents that rules cannot make.“
Now thus far, I love this. While I think it’s possible to overemphasize anything, including the duty to evangelize, in general I favor an approach to discipleship that majors on putting people into play, and handling the rest of it along the way. I particularly like the language of “don’ters.” I’ve seen that problem firsthand, been part of it in my youth, and I’m very grateful to have been rescued from it.
Dr. Rice continues:
“Everywhere I go as an evangelist, I find pastors shocked, grieved, troubled and struggling because of the drift of their people away from clean, holy living, their entanglements in the world’s amusements and pleasures and aims. Even in the most fundamental churches, I find the young people going continually away from the standards the church has set in many, many cases. But I find that trouble among churches fundamentally sound in doctrine is far more prevalent where there is not a strong soul-winning program in the church. In those great churches over America (and I am acquainted with many of them) where the whole program of the church is centered around soul winning, I find there is a holy enthusiasm for Christian living. Christians who earnestly labor at soul winning feel they are citizens of a heavenly country, that they are not supposed to be like the people of this world. They are trying to snatch people from fire, and they tend to hate the garments spotted by the flesh.
I have been bombarded with thousands of letters from Christians, particularly young Christians, asking, “What is wrong with dancing? What is wrong with moderate drinking? And why not join in with other moral, good people in lodges and secret orders?” But I have found in literally hundreds of cases that Christians who set out to win souls decide for themselves, from an inner compulsion by the Spirit of God, that this or that worldly thing is not for them the way of happiness and the way of blessing. God Himself has pledged to help to purge and cleanse the life of a Christian to win souls! Oh, there are blessings a soul winner has beyond those of any other Christian.“
Dr. Rice’s application is questionable, but the underlying sentiment is exactly correct. Concern for the lost will determine how you handle peripheral matters. It is precisely in ministering to the lost that I found myself having a Bud with the construction crew that worked on my building (and nothing less would have driven me to drink tasteless rice beer). I’ve brewed beer for Jesus’ sake too; we did a couple community beer-brewing nights where we “cast [our] bread upon the waters” the way they did 5,000 years ago. As promised, it returned after many days, and the better for the aging. Of course, if I were a host with a residential rehab for guys in recovery, I’d probably be a teetotaler, and for exactly the same reason — Christlike concern for the people God put in front of me. (And that sort of thing is kind of the least of it. I’ve been places that would scare the hide right off your average seminary-trained pastorling — I know, because I was one! — places “good” people don’t go, but I was following Jesus, and that’s where I ended up. The key to those environments is to do what Jesus did: listen to the Spirit. He won’t steer you into sin.
Occupy yourself with the people Jesus was occupied with, and you too may find that He calls you to have a Dos Equis with the boys, accept the invitation to a dance, or join the Elks. Which is to say, Jesus might call you to do what He Himself did — go where the people in need are, even if “good” people don’t go there, for the same reasons that Jesus went those places.
Jesus never joined in anybody’s sin in order to “reach” them, but He was constantly joining in whatever they were doing. Zacchaeus lived at his house; Jesus joined him there. Somebody at Cana had a wedding and served wine; Jesus joined them (and provided a rather large amount of the wine, come to think of it). Tax collectors and sinners (and their contemporary equivalents) eat; Jesus joined them in it. The town hussy was drawing water at the well; Jesus asked her for some. All of which, if you apply your theology even a little, is a natural extension of the Incarnation.
There’s a school of thought in ministry that Christians ought to be distinguished from their worldly counterparts by their don’ts: the neighborhoods they don’t go to, the invitations they don’t accept, the occasions they don’t attend, the people they don’t spend time with. Practically speaking, that kind of life is a denial of the Incarnation. It is a refusal to follow Jesus and behave as He behaved.
I want to be clear here: I’m not saying that you have to hang out on skid row to follow Jesus. I don’t have any idea where Jesus is calling you to go. Remember, Jesus didn’t spend all His time with the hookers and drunks; He dined with Simon the Pharisee and worshiped at the Temple too. But I’ve been walking with Jesus a long time, and I’m pretty sure He’s going to call you to go to places where you’re going to be very uncomfortable, places where you’ll be tempted to make an excuse and not go. This is going to happen because Jesus is making you like Him, and He was equally willing to hang out at a country club luncheon or around a burn barrel in an alley on the bad side of town. He went where His Father sent him, empowered by the Spirit who rested on Him. You are directed by the same Father and empowered by the same Spirit — do you really think you won’t end up in similar places?
Jesus joined us as one of us in our world in order to draw us into His. When Jesus shows up in a place, He’s bearing the Spirit. He’s different from everybody else, and so should you be, but for the right reasons. It’s not about your clothes or where you go or who you go with; it’s about the Spirit that indwells you. If you’re not being a light, then it doesn’t matter that you got invited into the room. But it doesn’t matter that you’re “being a a light” if you’re in an empty room — you might as well be under a basket, or buried in the backyard.
So be like Jesus — provide wine to the wedding, eat with Zacchaeus, have a private chat with that girl at the well. Be “a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” Because He would. Joining in what people are doing in order to gain them is literally the basis for His whole earthly ministry. It should be the basis for yours too.
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