How would you answer the question "What factors will be most influential in giving absolute priority ... to total evangelism?"
A pastor, responding to a questionnaire regarding the Thousand Days of Reaping challenge, wrote a very interesting reply: "The only real effective tool is trained laymen," he said. "The goal is not to win souls, but to train soul winners."
My first reaction was to exclaim, "Since when is it not our goal as gospel ministers to win souls?" A few days later, on a westbound jet, I came to understand better what that pastor meant—and to agree with him. The Christian man across the aisle was university-trained in city manage ment, I learned as we fell into conversa tion, but two years ago he left all the frustrations of his career to take up selling Shaklee products. (Shaklee is a home products company much like Amway, Avon, and Fuller Brush, specializing in vitamins, detergents, and home cleaning agents.) For two hours this man held me almost spellbound, demonstrating how the sales outreach of his company worked. The most important thing I learned was that it is not his primary responsibility to sell Shaklee products! He trains and recruits people who do! I asked him why he didn't sell Shaklee products himself, and he replied that he most certainly does. He is, in fact, an expert and continually sells from his home, but his real success both financially and in company growth depends wholly upon his influence in recruiting persons who want a business of their own and in training them to be successful. The company is so arranged that a portion of the success of these individuals becomes his, and thus by diligent recruiting and training he is building an empire that grows larger and larger, until at length he can be wealthy and independent.
Before our conversation ended, I saw two crucial principles: (1) this man was a master of the art of selling the product and (2) he is successful in recruiting and training others, reproducing in them his own success formula.
Our good pastor wrote: "The goal is not to win souls, but to train soul winners." Yet to charge him with recommending that it is not our business as ministers to win souls is to misrepresent him. If anything, pastors and administrators must be super soul winners, and then capably transmit these skills, this consecration and concern, and success to church members who can go forth and multiply the harvest! This pastor understands the inspired blueprint given by Ellen White in Gospel Workers: "In laboring where there are already some in the faith, the minister should at first seek not so much to convert unbelievers, as to train the church members for acceptable cooperation. Let him labor for them individually, endeavoring to arouse them to seek for a deeper experience themselves, and to work for others. When they are prepared to sustain the minister by their prayers and labors, greater success will attend his efforts."—Page 196. "Let min isters teach church members that in order to grow in spirituality, they must carry the burden that the Lord has laid upon them—the burden of leading souls into the truth. Those who are not fulfilling their responsibility should be visited, prayed with, labored for. Do not lead people to depend upon you as ministers; teach them rather that they are to use their talents in giving the truth to those around them. In thus working they will have the coopera tion of heavenly angels, and will obtain an experience that will increase their faith, and give them a strong hold on God."— Ibid., p. 200.—W.B.Q.
