Inter-Varsity Press

Contents

1. The treasure and the passion

2. God is not monolithic

3. Fumbling first efforts

4. What good news?

5. Church alive

6. University outreach

7. Careless talk

8. All change!

9. Reason to believe

10. Whatever happened to sin?

11. The cross revisited

12. Preaching for a verdict

13. Our responsibility – and God’s

Chapter 1

The treasure and the passion

This morning I read these words from the Bible:

His word is in my heart like a fire,

a fire shut up in my bones.

I am weary of holding it in;

indeed, I cannot.

(Jeremiah 20:9)

And I knew then what I must do. I had been approached by the publishers to write a book on ‘reflections of a lifelong evangelist’, and I had been wondering whether or not to do it. I would hesitate no longer.

As by definition this is to be a personal book, recording my own reflections on the subject of evangelism, perhaps I should begin by saying that I am not altogether happy with the name ‘evangelist’. It is at once too misleading and too restrictive.

Misleading because the word can mean so many things to different people. A fanatic with a one-track mind. A shallow, narrow-minded enthusiast, quite possibly on the make. A person obsessed with the Bible, a book written at least two millennia ago. An illiberal bore, out to change other people’s opinions. An obscurantist with outdated views on absolute truth. And no doubt you can add to those impressions. They make it abundantly clear that there is no one single received understanding of what is meant by an evangelist. It is a misleading word.

The term is restrictive too. It does not tell you who I am: a husband, father, grandfather and sports enthusiast. I am both an academic and a pastor, both driven and lazy, both humble and proud, both sociable and reclusive. I am a mixture. We all are. But at the core of that confused muddle which is myself, there is a passion burning. It has been burning away since my late teens, sometimes brightly, sometimes smouldering dully. It is simply this: I have found treasure – by no skill of my own – and I want to share it as widely as I can.

The imagery is not mine. I found it in a short parable of Jesus Christ. He tells of a farm labourer, ploughing away in his field, no doubt bored and with little expectancy. Perhaps he was thinking of his lunch. He might even have been thinking ahead to some sort of a crop months later. And then suddenly his ploughshare strikes an obstacle. He bends down to see what it is. It turns out to be a casket, containing buried treasure. Imagine his delight as he holds up the pearls and rubies to the sunlight, and as he savours the heavy gold coins in his hands. He has found treasure, and he is willing to sell everything he has in order to become the owner of that field – and of that treasure (Matthew 13:44–45).

Jesus matched this arresting story with a companion piece that was at once very similar and very different. It told of a pearl fancier who travelled in search of the very best pearls in the world. And one day he came across a pearl which eclipsed every other one he had ever seen. He quite simply had to acquire that pearl. So he sold everything to get it.

Both stories tell of an amazing discovery. Both tell of the lengths individuals were prepared to go to in order to gain the treasure and the pearl. But whereas one was searching for it diligently, the other came across it by accident. It is not hard to see that Jesus Christ is the treasure in both short stories. He is that pearl of great price. He is so attractive that it is worth dropping every goal in order to get in touch with him. And whereas some people have been searching for that fulfilment all their lives, others come across it by accident.

I was in the latter category. I was a happy teenager, content with my home, my academic success, my sporting prowess and my friendships. And I stumbled across the greatest friendship of all: that with Jesus Christ. He is the treasure that I have come to value above all else. I was not an emotional cripple looking for a crutch. I was not a romantic looking for a cause. I was not at the bottom of the pile hoping for a leg-up. I was not looking for anything in particular in fact. But I found treasure. That treasure has utterly transformed my life, my goals, my lifestyle. And that is the source of my passion, to share the treasure with others.

Before anyone dismisses this as religious nonsense, let me emphasize that religion is not the treasure. Religion has been responsible for many of the ills of humankind, as atheists are not slow to point out. Nor is churchgoing the treasure. Churchgoing can be deadly boring, as I found out for myself over a period of a good few years. Ceremonies are not the treasure. I was baptized as an infant and confirmed as a teenager, but that made no difference to my lifestyle. It was certainly not treasure. Neither was ethical behaviour. That was frankly boring as well. Who likes the goody-goody?

None of these things was the treasure. Jesus was.

Let me tell you how I discovered him, or rather how he laid hold of me. I was a teenager at Clifton College in Bristol, and was invited by a friend to a surreptitious meeting in the school cricket pavilion one Sunday afternoon. There I found some forty boys, listening attentively to the Professor of Surgery at Bristol University, who also I discovered edited the British Medical Journal. He was talking about Jesus Christ. And to my astonishment he spoke with quiet conviction that Jesus was alive, and that it was possible to know him! This was revolutionary to me. I knew a fair amount about Jesus. He had been the background warmth to my growing up. I had read the Gospels, and had even won a prize on them. But nobody had ever told me that Jesus was still alive, and could make a real difference to our lives. Yet here was this highly intelligent scientist, who not only believed it and lived in the light of it, but thought it sufficiently important to give up his valuable time on a Sunday afternoon to instruct a bunch of schoolboys on it!

This set me thinking. If this professor and the group of boys into which I had unwittingly tumbled were correct, then they had made the most important discovery of all time. If they were wrong, then I need not trouble myself further with Christianity. It would prove to be merely a matter of following the ideals and teaching of a revered but dead teacher, and that should not make any serious impact on my life.

I resolved to find out whether or not they were right. So I set out to do two things. I would regularly attend the meeting of these Jesus enthusiasts and see what I made of the teaching. And I would watch their way of life with some care, to see if their profession of faith made any difference. The question of whether Jesus was really risen and relevant was the most important issue one could consider. It was quite literally the key to the meaning of existence. I was determined not to be taken for a ride. I needed to examine it carefully for myself.

So I watched the members of this meeting over the course of the next nine months or so. I was impressed by the way they conducted themselves. I was equally impressed by the teaching given at these meetings: so clear, so biblical, so sensible and accessible. It was worlds away from the content of school chapel which, in those far-off days, we were obliged to attend daily. I could no longer resist the claim that Jesus was alive. From an investigator I had over those months turned into a seeker. I was now convinced that this stuff was true. I realized that it was all to do with Jesus. But to me he was still the stained-glass-window Jesus, the Stranger of Galilee encased in dusty books of the New Testament. And I was fed up with religion. I was hungry for reality.

So one Sunday I went up to Richard Gorrie, the mature senior boy who led the meeting. He was only nineteen, but had a wisdom beyond his years. I asked him a dumb question. He saw through me, and I think he must have recognized that I was ready to embark on the adventure of faith. We went to the upstairs storey in that cricket pavilion, and he led me to Christ. I found treasure!

I cannot recall all the details of that Sunday afternoon. But the main outlines are burnt into my memory. As we sat together on a bench, I can see in my mind’s eye the cricket bats and pads, the spikes in the boots and the divots of dried turf on the heavily scored floor. I remember him gently pointing out to me how I had offended God by my way of life. I could not argue. He had, only the term before, been obliged as head boy to give me a richly deserved punishment for illegal entry into his house at the school. I knew my life was a mess. I could not keep my language clean for more than a sentence or two. I was violent with other people. My friends and I made gunpowder to explode in inappropriate places, and burnt down huts in order to obtain the necessary carbon. Yes, I knew I could not look a holy God in the face. I did not need to have that truth rubbed in.

But then Richard showed me something that I had never seen before. He showed me that Jesus Christ had done all that was necessary to bring me back to God. On the cross he had taken responsibility for all the dark side of my life. I already believed in a vague way that Christ had died for the sins of the world. After all, it came across in almost every service I attended. But it had never meant anything much to me. That afternoon I saw that he had died for me personally, bearing responsibility for all my failures and deliberate wrong actions. It was the evil in me, and in others, that had held him on that cruel cross. He had gone there willingly, out of his great love.

I recall that Richard gave me a graphic illustration of the difference Calvary had made. He used the prophecy of Isaiah 53, and illustrated the phrase ‘We all, like sheep, have gone astray’ by placing a black object between his left hand and the light. That represented the responsibility for my misdeeds resting on me, cutting me off from the light and the warmth of God’s holy love. ‘Each of us has turned to his own way,’ the verse continued. I could not quarrel with that. I knew it was true. ‘And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all,’ continued my friend, transferring the dark load to his other hand, which stood for Christ dying on the cross. Of course, this released the left hand, which represented me. No longer did there need to be a ‘cloud of unknowing’ to separate me from God. In that ancient prophecy, pointing so clearly to the cross, I saw for the first time in my life that Christ had carried away my burden of evil; he had taken personal responsibility for all my offences. The whole revolting lot was poured on his sinless head, and he accepted it voluntarily so that I could go free.

I am not ashamed to admit that such sacrificial love broke me down. I thought I was tough. But I wept.

And that was not all. My second shock that afternoon was occasioned by Richard’s gentle question: whether or not I believed that Jesus Christ had risen from the grave. That was the question, of course, which had started my search. By now I was satisfied that it was true, and told Richard as much. He then faced me with a crunch question: ‘Very well, if so, what are you going to do about him?’ I began dimly to see that I was faced by a massive choice. Either I could walk away from the one who had loved me and given himself for me, or I could yield my whole life, my future, to this risen Christ.

There was no middle way. I was on the horns of a dilemma. I had to choose. …