He Looked for Someone to Help
THE evangelist must be prepared for certain times of feelings of utter aloneness. Not merely when you travel and long for home, but even in your work there are periods of destitute loneliness. It may strike you when you are out visiting and glance up at the moon and wish you could be with your family, but you must be out till late each night seeking the lost. Or it may come over you when some one gruffly repulses your endeavors to help and to save him. You will feel tempted to leave man to his fate and walk out of your Garden of Gethsemane.
But no, you must be willing to suffer on. He looked for someone to help "and lo, there was no man." There are times when your burdened heart must carry a terrible load for those who care not for themselves. That total aloneness will strike you when you make a call for surrender standing be tween the living and the dead. At that point no human in this world can intervene to help you. You will feel utterly cut off from foe and friend. Only God can help (but He is in the cloud or shadows). Calls for decision will tear your heart.
Remember, no soul is born into the kingdom without labor and pain. You do not climb Mount Zion until you have first walked in the valley or suffered on the hillslope garden Gethsemane. Every evangelist must experience and bear that aloneness until one day he can lay down the burden and hear the "well done."
Hot and Cold Applications
Learn to endure failure and success. You simply must be on guard against the extremes of depression over apparent failure in one series or over jubilant elation from apparent outstanding success in another series. Level off. Your nerves cannot long afford these extremes. Depression will eventually overtake you.
Be humbly thankful when God grants success. Be humbly submissive when at times failure seems your lot. You did your best. It is the same God helping you in both series.
Be aware that He is far more interested in the success of soul winning than we can be. So trust Him in the valley as well as on the mountaintop. A moody evangelist is a depression to men, a disappointment to God, a joy to the devil, and a headache to his wife.
Be an enthusiast--ever optimistic that the failure will be better. You must have a bubbling heart, cold-resistant enthusiasm, and abounding energy.
Take Time to Not Do Anything
Strange advice for a would-be future evangelist? No, not at all. You must take time to relax. It may be hiking, swimming, or boating, but whatever it is take time off. Take time to be with your wife and children. They have a right to some of your life and you need to be with them. On a day's outing leave your worries and cares behind. They'll all be there when you get back, so why worry? Take the day off and enjoy life doing anything or just plain doing nothing just enjoying yourself, your wife, your children, and God's nature. Enjoy life now—today. You'll be a better evangelist tomorrow.
Stand on Your Own Feet
An evangelist cannot be swayed by every breeze that blows. Few people receive as much free advice. Everyone knows how it should be done. If you pay too much attention to every suggestion and to every criticism you'll lose your daring stamina for militant evangelism.
Weigh suggestions and criticisms and if you hear the same ones several times, perhaps you'd better alter your course a little; but if you zigzag to accommodate every one's ideas you'll be a long time reaching your destination and grow dizzy getting there.
Preach your way, Be yourself. Plenty of people will tell you what to preach about and what not to mention, but don't be too wishy-washy. An evangelist must present in his public addresses more than pablum, blue skies, butterflies, and psychology. He is a watchman on the walls of Zion, and with vigor, power, and enthusiasm must give warnings and reproofs as well as com fort and solace. You must search for a proper balance.
Always do the best you can under God.. and be ever alert for new and progressive ideas.
Get Ready, Get Set
What shall I do now in preparation for my future as an evangelist? That's a fair question. And now some simple suggestions.
Get all you can out of your present schooling. Some of it may seem impractical but it's part of the polishing and preparation for life and service. So finish the prescribed courses. Be practical, ever down to earth in your search for help and in your preparation.
Credit or no credit, take typing. (Fine if you add a little shorthand.) Learn lettering and poster-making. Study electronics at least enough to know how to operate a public address system. Study auto mechanics. It will save you money and your wife will feel like she is married to a man.
Get lots of exercise, build up a strong body. You'll need it for loading and unloading your evangelistic van and setting up your auditorium or mobile home. You'll need a strong back as well as a strong mind. Learn something about electricity. You'll need this knowledge in many ways through out your evangelistic life. Everything but your wife, these days, runs by electricity or gasoline engine. Be practical.
In life you'll deal more with spark plugs, fuses, and plumbers' friends than you will with Shakespeare, Socrates, and Sophocles. You should know these men, sure. But they'll never help you fix a clogged drain. Read a lot and learn to read fast. Sift rapidly so you don't waste excessive time, and once you get out of school don't feel you've got to read every book someone urges upon you.
Collect
Collect ideas. Why is one speaker interesting and another a sleeping pill? Analyze what kind of speaker you want to be, then be it! In other words, be alert now to good and bad approaches in practical, interest-holding public speaking.
Collect illustrations. Live ones from life and from the living not canned ones in books of illustrations. Be alert; there are illustrations all around you everywhere in nature, in reading, in everyday life.
Collect handbills. Collect advertising. Some of it is good. Some of it is poor. (I can help you with a supply of the latter!) Collect sermons by other evangelists. This is one of the most important suggestions of all. As you read and study other men's sermons their ideas will spark your thinking. Gather all of this material you can living sermons by active evangelists. Just reading such sermons will fire your own soul, for there is a great difference between didactic scholarly preaching or pastoral presentations, and a flaming, vibrant evangelistic message that must and does stir the hearts of young and old.
Start Evangelistic Preaching Now
Yes, now. Get a tent; get a hall now. Hold a series. You may not win one convert. But you will have accomplished a great deal. You will have built sermons; you will have begun to learn to visit; you will have begun to learn what you don't know; you will have broken the ice.
Never feel that you were not called to be an evangelist just because your first few series seem to be failures. Keep on. Charge them up to experience. Put more fire and zeal into your next series. Forge ahead. Take the initiative in battling with the devil. Be bold for God and refuse to give up. Remember, you must be willing to fail if you ever expect to succeed.
Visit every evangelistic series possible; travel far to visit another speaker's series; watch for do's and don'ts and miscellaneous catchy ideas. Ever be a collector. Never feel you have attained, but keep experimenting with new ideas and plans. Often things that "simply won't work" do work. If you have a good idea, launch out with it. Dare to try!
"And Just How Do I---"
Yes, I know what you are going to say "get called to be an evangelist?"
You don't. Turn back to the June issue and read page one of this article again. No committee votes a man to become an evangelist. One simply cannot be voted into the evangelistic role. Evangelists are sometimes called by committees, but they are already evangelists.
Very, very few start right out in full-time evangelism. After your internship you will have a small church or district of your own. Now is your chance.
Do you still want to be an evangelist? Then be one! Don't wait for the committee to vote for Brother ______ to hold a series. You take the initiative. Don't wait for a large budget, a Bible instructor, and a song leader. Those don't come along until later in life.
Launch out--in a hall, in an old tent, anywhere. But preach, preach, preach! If no hall, go out by the River Jordan and preach out your heart. Somebody will come to hear you. I know Jesus will.
Keep at it, ever at it. "Woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel!" Successful or not, I must preach. This gospel of the kingdom shall be PREACHED in all the world. Then be an evangelist, forever preaching. And someday if you work your heart out winning souls and seeking the lost the brethren will decide, "Let's put him out in the field to help some of our other men in their soul-winning program!"
Go Ye
Here comes your wife bringing the morning mail. A letter from the conference president:
"DEAR TOM AND SALLY:
"Yesterday the conference committee was giving consideration to the various problems of our field. We feel a definite need of a more vigorous and direct soul-winning endeavor in our conference.
"The brethren have voted to ask you to engage in full-time evangelistic work. We are hoping that this challenge will appeal to you and that you will give it your prayerful consideration. . . .
"Signed _______"
There you are now. Out on your own a full-time evangelist at last! Some night I want to drop in on your meetings to pick up new ideas and get new inspiration.
One day the work will be done. I long for that day. I am getting a little tired, for I have been actively engaged in the Lord's work for forty-one years, and I long to go home. I'm so glad to welcome you to the evangelistic field. Let's hasten the finishing of the work for "the night cometh, when no man can work."
