The Secret of Soul-Winning by G. B. Thompson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Aug 31, 1911

The Secret of Soul-Winning

By G. B. Thompson

THE preacher is God's spokesman. He is to receive a message from his Master, and as a true watchman, deliver it to the people. This is a responsibility which can be measured only in the light of eternity and the worth of souls purchased by the blood of the Redeemer.

The aim of all preaching should be the salvation of men. We must save them from sin, and deliver them from the bondage and slavery of sin into the glorious liberty of the sons of God. Any preaching which does not aim at this is spiritless, Christless, and of little value. It is not enough to warn men; we must save them from eternal death.

A prophetic spokesman for God says, “Woe to them that are at ease in Zion.” I sometimes fear that this woe is upon us. Where is the zeal proportionate to our message? Considering the awful tidings we hear, we take things too easy. The terrible burden of souls which should rest upon the watchman is not upon us. The following from the servant of the Lord should be prayerfully studied:—

“I looked to see the humility of soul that should ever sit as a fitting garment upon our ministers, but it was not upon them. I looked for the deep love for souls that the Master said they should possess, but they had it not. I listened for the earnest prayers offered with tears and anguish of soul because of the impenitent and unbelieving in their own homes and in the church, but heard them not. I listened for the appeals made in the demonstration of the Spirit, but these were missing. I looked for the burden-bearers, who in such a time as this should be weeping between the porch and the altar, crying, Spare thy people, Lord, and give not thine heritage to reproach; but I heard no such supplications. A few earnest humble ones were seeking the Lord. At some of these meetings one or two ministers felt the burden, and were weighed down as a cart beneath sheaves. But a large majority of the ministers had no more sense of the sacredness of their work than children.”—“Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. V, pages 165, 166.

Does the condition set forth in the foregoing statement still exist? If so, we as ministers have a most serious work before us. The faithful minister is represented as a cart beneath sheaves. This means much more than to preach a few sermons in a scholarly and logical manner. It means to bear a load of responsibility; to carry day by day on our hearts a lost world, whose probation is soon to end. I most sincerely believe that those who do this will be soul-winners.

In order to win souls, we must come close to them; we must love them. The work can not be done by proxy. Mechanical efforts will not answer; there must be the personal touch. It has been well said that we can never do much for the soul of an Italian while regarding him as a “dago,” or for a Jew while nicknaming him a “sheeny.” This illustrates the principle. We must recognize a human brotherhood to all men, and in love reach out the hand of love and helpfulness if we save their souls. A visitor to a pottery observed one of the workmen carefully and at great pains molding a certain piece. Said the visitor, to whom this seemed a slow process, “Is there no tool you can use to facilitate your work?” “No, sir,” said the workman; “we have tried several, but somehow or other in this work we must have the human touch.”

So also in the work of the successful minister, there must be the personal touch. But before men can give this, their own hearts must be touched by the pierced hands of a compassionate, long-suffering Redeemer. Dr. J. H. Jowett truthfully says: “If my compassion be dried up, the people will know my benumbment. My preaching, when I stand in my pulpit, if I be dried up and hard, will fall like showers of gravel, and not like a shower of soft and refreshing rain.” If success has not been attending our labors, it might be well prayerfully to search out the cause, to consider what kind of shower we have been letting fall on poor, lost souls,—whether a shower of gravel or of rain; for surely there is a very wide difference.

To be a true soul-winner, there must be manifested the tenderness of the loving Shepherd. This is expressed so well by Dr. Jowett that I quote his words:—

“May I ask another question? I scarcely know how to phrase this question, but I will put it thus: Is the wooing note present in our ministry? The wooing note? If we do not realize the horrors of bondage with a profound and exquisite sympathy with the bound, the tender notes of the lover and the wooer are not heard in our speech. Is not our preaching too uniformly severe? Is there not too much in our preaching which savors of the judgment-seat, and too little that is fragrant with the winsomeness of the fireside? ‘Out of the throne proceeded thunderings and lightnings’? Ay, but out of the throne proceeded also the river of the water of life, the gracious river of soft, healing, redeeming grace. I express my own fear that the thunderings and lightnings are rather too prominent in our ministry. I do not see and feel enough of the gleaming, gracious river. I think we need more tenderness and less scolding; we need more wooing; we need to drive less, and to constrain more. ‘Compel them to come in.’ I am glad the Revised Version has taken out the word ‘compel,’ and reads, ‘Constrain them to come in.’ Woo them in. Go back to the wooing days; think of all the little devices, all of them legitimate, employed in order to woo the affection of one you love. Think, too, of the little tendernesses paid, of the kindly abounding services rendered, when even the flickering of the response seemed to be a repulse, and how you multiplied your attentions and nursed the gracious awakening. Every great preacher is a wooer. ‘Turning to the Old Testament Scriptures, we might expect the wooing note to be absent. Amos is severe in speech, stern in expostulations, multiplied in denunciations; yet you find that even stern, thundering Amos sometimes lays aside his thunder, and begins to woo. And

as for Hosea, he is a wooer from beginning to end. Turn to Isaiah at the end of the chapter in which there is poured out such denunciation and woe, and note how he lays all this aside, and begins with, ‘Comfort ye, comfort ye.’ Speak right up to the heart of the people; go up, whisper to it, ‘Comfort ye my people.’ He was the great wooer.”

G. B. THOMPSON.