This is the first instalment of my book serialisation, full details of which can be found here.
There is a famous quote by the Baptist preacher CH Spurgeon. At least, famous to me! He says:
If sinners be damned, at least let them leap to Hell over our dead bodies. And if they perish, let them perish with our arms wrapped about their knees, imploring them to stay. If Hell must be filled, let it be filled in the teeth of our exertions, and let not one go unwarned and unprayed for.[1]
Let’s leap forward to the 21st Century and, to our shame, this does not sound like a description of modern British Evangelicalism. Rather than the teeth of our exertions, our approach to mission and evangelism has become largely toothless. Instead of imploring people to stay, we let them waltz to Hell because to go and warn them feels like more effort than it’s worth.
We in the Western World have acclimatised to our culture and regularly worship at the altar of personal comfort. Not only are many of us unwilling to move to areas of great gospel need because it is too uncomfortable to do so, we often aren’t very good at sharing the gospel with our friends and neighbours in the comfortable communities we have chosen to live in en masse. We feel evangelism is just too awkward and socially unacceptable for us to bear. Given that we often feel this way even in the communities that we deem comfortable, full of people just like us, what hope do we have of ever reaching those in less comfortable areas? Far from our arms wrapped about people’s knees, imploring them to stay, we are buying many of them a one-way ticket to Hell because it is simply easier for us to let them go.
In the widely used Christianity Explored course, Rico Tice posed a challenging question. When we are stood before the Lord on the last day, what will we say to our friends and neighbours who – denied entry to Heaven – look to us and ask, ‘why didn’t you say anything?’ Will your answer be, as Tice suggests, ‘it wasn’t culturally appropriate?’ Let us now imagine that scene, not with a few friends and neighbours, but an entire town or borough of people heading for a lost eternity. What will we say to the Lord then? ‘I didn’t really like the schools’ or ‘the café culture wasn’t up to much’?
It is my hope that this little book might help us recapture something of Spurgeon’s vision for reaching the lost. I hope even more that it might lead us to seriously consider supporting and moving to communities that we as an Evangelical movement have largely ignored. I want us to grasp why it is important for us to go, where it is important for us to go and why we often won’t go. I want us to be realistic about both the challenges and joys of going to where many Evangelicals fear to tread.
[1] Spurgeon, CH, ‘The wailing of Risca’, Spurgeon’s Sermons, Volume 7, (Christian Classic Ethereal Library, 1860), accessed via https://www.ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons07.ii.html