Self-Abandonment In Soul Winning

No one will ever save another who is not all on fire with unquenchable zeal for lost men and women. That is the absolutely essential quality for successful soul winning. That is the reason why many preachers lack conversions in their work. Young men are being turned out from many of our modern theological schools and entering the ministry lacking this all-consuming passion for souls. I know a man who tells me that although he has been in the ministry for twenty-five years, he cannot trace anything he has done directly to the conversion of a soul. I think an artist ought to paint pictures, and a sculptor to carve statues, and the physician ought to cure sick folks, and the lawyer ought to be able to practice law at the bar, and the preacher ought to be able to win souls to Jesus Christ.

I fear that we are getting a new class of young ministers who are so engrossed with the manifold duties that press upon the average city pastor that they feel they have no time for this work. I am sure they have no earnest, burning zeal for it. We will never be influential in getting anybody into the kingdom through our influence unless we have a zeal that is begotten of the fact that we know without Christ they are lost, and that by Him any man, however sunken in sin he may be, may be saved. We must be impressed with the awful power of sin and the mighty power of the Saviour to save from sin, and when we are impressed with those two facts, and combine with that that we are the divinely appointed agent to bring that lost sinner and that loving Saviour together, then we will get somebody saved.

After a divine passion to get men saved, there must be conjoined with that an utter self-abandon. There must be a willingness for the effacement of all personal pride and personal preferences and personal dignities. In recent years there has died in New York City one who was in some respects the leading Presbyterian minister of the city. Since his death the church papers and even the secular press have been crowded with editorial references to this splendid Christian minister. I knew him well. I loved him dearly. I was associated with him for years in the same town and knew his worth. And yet, in a heart-to-heart talk I had with him, he told me that never in his life had he had the courage after he had preached a sermon to look his congregation in the face, and put squarely up to the individual members of that congregation the question, “Will you now, not tomorrow, or when you get home, but will you now make some evident manifestation of your desire and purpose to lead a Christian life?” He said he had never done it. He didn’t think he could. He said that if he had gotten up and put the question squarely to them, and if there had been no response he would have been so ashamed and humiliated that he would not have dared to look his audience in the face again. He lacked the things of which I speak, utter self-abandon. If we wish to become soul winners we must be willing to appear to be made fools for Christ’s sake.

Then there is the pastor who puts the invitation in such a way that there is no response. One could almost foretell as he gives it that there would be no response, and that he really doesn’t expect any. There are perhaps those in the audience who are just longing to yield, but they do not seem to have the strength to manifest this desire. I believe it is part of the work of the minister to fortify these weak wills. Tell them their time has come. God has spared them to this hour. This is the time of all times for them to yield. This is the hour in which they are going to decide for Christ. Steady them, give them hope and courage. Expect results and you will get results.

And then, when you have done all this, there are times when you will not see results. But you have done the best you could, now leave the results with God. We must have something of the Spirit of our Divine Lord, that brought Him from the throne to the cross, and makes Him love a sinner more than all else beside, and unless we have that passion, we will not win men. Forget our looks, forget our grammar, forget our rhetoric, forget everything and with a holy self-abandon, go about this business as if men were lost forever in a Christless hell unless we can show them the way of life. Do your part and God will take care of the results.

Message from The Third Annual Conference on Summer Evangelism and Open Air Work, The Moody Church, May 31–June 3, 1910. Rev. Charles Bayard Mitchell, D.D. was the pastor of St. James M.E. Church, Chicago.