A good number gathered yesterday evening at the John Owen Centre at LTS for the Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones Memorial Lecture. This year the lecturer was LTS Principal-designate Robert Strivens. The meeting was chaired by Mostyn Roberts (Welwyn). Mr Strivens spoke on Lloyd-Jones and evangelistic preaching. He began by observing that we are presently in something of a crisis in this country with regard to evangelism. The problem is not a lack of activity but a lack of very much success.As part of the answer to this problem Mr Strivens made two suggestions as to what is wrong.
1) That there is a serious imbalance with regard to our evangelism
We have so emphasised every member evangelism that we have downgraded the importance of evangelistic preaching from the pulpit. Although his published output does not reflect it Lloyd-Jones was very much an evangelist always preaching evangelistically on a Sunday evening. He did call on his members to evangelise but he also emphasised, as we must, the role of the church's leaders - as is the case in the New Testament.
2) That elements of our evangelistic preaching need attention
He then proceeded to highlight five areas where Lloyd-Jones excelled and where we, perhaps, need to do more work.
1. Lloyd-Jones would give a great deal of attention to the subject of sin and with that the glory of God including his wrath. Men and women need to see why they need to be saved.
2. His great objective was to bring sinners into a right relationship with God. man's essential problem is that he is not right with God and that needs to be put right.
3. The way he structured his evangelistic sermons has something to teach us too. Unlike his sermons on, say, Romans, they do not assume the unbeliever is happy to listen but seek to engage and keep their attention. He would retell the OT stories and use illustrations, even personal ones.
4. His sermons were strong in propositional content. There was plenty of doctrine. So important.
5. He recognised, as we always must, the vital work of the Spirit if people are to be converted.
Some discussion followed, which added little except when one man who had sat under his ministry spoke of his urgency and the burden he had for sinners. That is so very important.
7 comments:
As for the first point, I'm not sure I understand. What was Strivens point on this and was he saying that Lloyd-Jones stressed the importance of the leaders evengelizing over that of the laity?
BTW, I always enjoy reading your blog!
I don't understand what is not to understand. However, many christians today have no concept of what evangelistic preaching is because they never hear it as a regular feature, save perhaps quick 'ABC' at some gospel hog-roast or social function.
It has always been the case that most of the admirers of Lloyd-Jones have never mimicked his practice of regular evangelistic preaching. There is one strong exception that springs to mind, of course, and many believe that particular pastor is antagonistic to MLJ when in fact he holds him in very high regard.
MLJ stressed both personal AND pulpit evangelism. Today there is very little of the latter. It is my conviction that whenever I have the chance I will preach a simple gospel message in one of the two preaching services, and make it known in advance, so that those who would invite people to come along can do so in the confidence that they won't hear a 40 minute rant about tithing or the regulative principle!
We have our evangelistic service in the mornings because that is when our oncers, our nominals and occasional visitors come. Our evening meeting is larger but the numbers are swelled by two-church attending believers and some elderly believers for whom the mornings are too hard to get to.
Great couple of posts!
RR - MLJ emphasised both. RS thought we'd gone lite on the former (Appreciative comments always welcome, thanks).
JH - I must admit that Dr Masters kept coming to mind (though he was not mentioned, of course). It's ironic that PM is thought of as anti-MLJ. To be fair in Wales the saints/sinners pattern is still well observed by Lloyd-Jones men. Like Spurgeon I don't (for various reasons) but it's under constant review.
Spurgeon is a VERY interesting case-study in the saints-sinners preaching debate.
Very few of his sermons I have ready (virtually none in fact) do not contain a strong evangelistic emphasis.
What many people don't know is that he almost preached twice in his services, because he gave an exposition of his consecutive bible readings as well. I believe this was at least 10-20 mins of further preaching.
Nice summary. Evangelistic preaching does seem to be something of a dying art.
The Spurgeon point is a reminder that when we make judgements about the past we need to have all the facts before making assumptions.
The best regular evangelistic preaching in the UK happens in universities and is put on by Christian Unions.
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