My friend and Pastor, Jeremy Walker, has a new book coming out soon. It is entitled The Brokenhearted Evangelist (details here), and Jeremy has kindly agreed to answer some questions about the book.
Can you give a summary of your new book, The Brokenhearted Evangelist? What is it about?
The new book is really a cry of the heart to the people of God to embrace our privilege and responsibility to be witnesses to Christ in a fallen world. Taking as its starting point David’s contrite declaration in the thirteenth verse of Psalm 51 – “Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners shall be converted to you” – it is an attempt to encourage God’s people to take up that gospel duty. In five chapters, I consider the willingness, effectiveness, commitment, focus and fruitfulness of the saints in this regard.
Who do you hope will read this book, and what effect do you hope that it will have on them?
Frankly, I hope that any Christian might read this book and profit, but perhaps especially those who have a God-given desire to be useful in winning souls but who are not sure where to begin or what to do, those who think that the work of evangelism is for a privileged and/or insane few, those who feel discouraged about their capacity for such work, and those who are perhaps inclined to pour cold water on such ventures (either in principle or in practice), or who think it is just not their business.
As for its effect, in the preface I have written that “it is my heartfelt contention that the truths we believe ought to make the people of God brokenhearted evangelists. My prayer for this book is that the Lord Christ would make its author and its readers truly understand the gospel duty that God has laid upon His church and therefore make us willing to perform the work we have been given to do.”
Why do you think that this book needed to be written? Why were you the person to write it?
I think this book needed to be written because there are too many churches and Christians whose creed is orthodox but whose practice is shabby in this regard. Perhaps that is because of ignorance or fear rather than faithlessness, but I am still concerned that too often we fail to translate our faith into life: the truth does not galvanize the people of God in the way that it should. I don’t think it is fair to say that we have been fiddling while Rome burns, as it were, but I think that many otherwise faithful churches need to recover this element of our life and witness as the people of God. If we have light, we ought to have corresponding heat.
As for my writing it, I think in some respects I would rather not have done so, because I feel myself exposed by the very things that I have written. It is a topic that I think we need to address and that has been addressed in some ways, but perhaps we are suspicious of some of the people who are addressing it or suspicious of elements introduced alongside of it (sometimes rightly). I hope that a friendly admonition and exhortation might be effective. Besides, if it is true, it might as well come from me as from anyone else.
Where did the idea for the book come from?
Several years ago I was preaching through Psalm 51 and this verse opened up in the preaching of it. I think that was a reflection of my own heart burden concerning these things, but I trust it was also the present help of the Holy Spirit. With a similar weight of compulsion, shortly after I completed that series I sat down and began to write up and flesh out the material, and found the same sense of development in the writing process. But it was a long time before I had the opportunity to give it a wider readership.
Are there other books that you can recommend which would complement The Brokenhearted Evangelist?
Spurgeon’s The Soul Winner would be high on my list (indeed, just about anything Spurgeon writes to pastors and other ‘soul-winners’ would be useful, as would his published sermons and faithful biographies of the man). Horatius Bonar’s Words to Winners of Souls is good. John Bunyan’s works contain some superb examples of the spirit I am hoping to encourage, not least his treatises Come and Welcome to Jesus and The Jerusalem Sinner Saved. I think the lives, letters, sermons and works of Particular Baptists like Andrew Fuller, John Sutcliff, Samuel Pearce, John Ryland Jr. and William Carey are extremely helpful in this regard. Good biographies of George Whitefield or other Calvinistic Methodists like Daniel Rowland, as well as their letters and sermons, would stir the soul. I should also mention a book called The Prayer of a Broken Heart by Robert Candlish. I discovered it while I was writing The Brokenhearted Evangelist and found that it substantially chimed with my approach: at less than 100 pages, it succinctly puts the verse I deal with in the context of the whole psalm more effectively than I could do in the book itself. Time to stop with the list, except to say that the way this theme is dealt with by gracious and gifted men in so many different periods and places says something of its significance.
Are there particular errors and dangers in this area that you think we need to be aware of?
One concern would be sending everyone on a false guilt trip. It is very easy to write on this topic in a way that gives the impression that anyone who does not drop everything else and head out on to the street as a frontline evangelist is somehow a second-rate Christian. That is not the case, and I hope I have made plain that the ways in which and means by which individual Christians and particular churches embrace this duty are varied, though the duty lies upon all in accordance with our calling, circumstances, gifts and graces.
Another danger lies in making evangelism the be-all-and-end-all of the church’s existence. We too easily overlook the significance of our gospel witness as a key element in the life of the church, but it is almost as easy to reduce the whole function of the church to evangelising, which is to skew the Biblical notion of “making disciples” toward the initial entry into God’s kingdom and away from increasing maturity once in the kingdom. A healthy church will seek to embrace its whole duty in Biblical balance and tension, seeking to glorify God in all things, overlooking and denying none in its proper place.
What effect has writing this book had on you? How has it affected your head, heart and hands?
It has reminded me of my responsibilities all over again. I can honestly say that I believe that I have had to answer every question and consider every exhortation and make every assessment – often to my shame – that I put to any reader. I hope that it goes on making my particular role and responsibility in this regard clear in my mind, warm in my heart, and often in my hands.
What is the relationship between your work as an author, and your role as a pastor?
My work as an author (though I am afraid that this seems to dignify my efforts too much!) is the overflow of the work of the ministry and my role as a pastor particularly. The pastoral sphere is my priority: God has called me to shepherd his flock in a particular place, and any writing I do must be a servant to that end, and must not compromise it: when there is not enough time, the writing must be one of the first things to give way. While I accept that Christ will hold me to account for the employment of any gifts he has given me, my primary responsibility is, under God, for the souls of those in my charge (Heb 13.17).
Sometimes the writing is a help to my own soul, a way of clarifying my understanding, deepening my appreciation, or developing a theme: as such, it helps me to be a more effective gospel minister. Some of it is the outworking of particular sermons or series that I hope were of particular profit to the local church, and which may be a means of doing good to the wider church. I think that this is part of my responsibility as a pastor, and a way of investing the blessings that I and the local church receive. Not least, I hope that the people I love and serve will read and head the message of the books and other things that I write.
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