Servants are addressed in Luke 14, “Go and compel them to come in.” And the point insisted on there is that, when the Jews would not come in, He would have the Gentiles. He first went and took the poor Jews, the poor of the flock, and brought them into His house; but they did not fill it, and then He sends to the Gentiles. He does not speak of whom He sends out.
But I do not think you will ever teach anybody to be a good evangelist; he must have it from God. He must have the love of souls in his heart. If he leans on the Lord, he will win souls.
You cannot have the church without the evangelist. Looked at as an evangelist, you see his point of departure is the church because he is a member. When things were right, the power went from the center and gathered into that center. “The Lord added to the church daily such as should be saved.” All gifts are independent of the church; they are all dependent on Christ. All service is simply to Christ. I quite admit discipline. If a man teaches wrong he must be disciplined; but the service is to Christ. They are all for the Lord, and I believe the Lord would add them to the church if things were in order. The church is what is formed upon earth in which He is to be glorified. It is where He glorifies Himself now in the world, and therefore the evangelist gathers people in. This is all true, but when you take the person of an evangelist or pastor, he is Christ's servant. He is a great deal happier if he goes in fellowship with the assembly, but the fact of evangelizing is not the assembly's act. The assembly will not go on well, unless there is a spirit of evangelizing in it, because the love of Christ will constrain them. I quite admit that which has taken place in connection with revivals: the action which converted and that which gathered have been in a measure disconnected. I see clearly in the operations at the beginning that they went together. The Lord then added to the church daily such as should be saved. This was the regular order of things.
At the beginning there was the church which God had set up and power was there. They commend Paul to God, and he comes back and tells what God has done by his means. There is action and reaction, but now this has all got dislocated. You are in an immense thing called the church. It has no more to do with Christ than the man in the moon, nor so much. Therefore there is this difficulty when a man feels pressed to go and speak to souls, and he does not know there is such a thing as the body of Christ. If a man was a heathen or Jew and became a Christian, he was added to the church, but that is not the case now; and therefore it requires more real power and wisdom to do the work rightly now, and not simple power merely which evangelizes the sinner.
We had most happy exercise of heart about it in —. When they first went out, they did not know anything about the body of Christ. They went and devoted themselves to people that were gathered, some going to the world and some to sects, as they knew no better. The work is going on slower, but a great deal more solidly. They did not cease to evangelize, but it was more connected with Christ outside the world. It told more healthfully. After all there is as much real work done and a better kind of work. A difficulty arises that we are not preaching to heathens. If you go to China or India, the persons converted to Christ come amongst those Christians that are there. If you go and convert a man now, and be belongs to the Independents or Presbyterians or Methodists, he goes on with them. The man belongs to Christ, but the whole thing is lost in a morass. By a clear gospel, the person will get hold of things that will make it impossible to go on as he had been doing; be will be led to consider that to continue as he had been doing will not do. It is one of the reasons that hindered me from preaching in dissenting places, that the gospel I preached would break the whole thing to pieces. How can a man who believes me preaching that by one offering he is perfected forever, go and listen to a man that is dinning about the law every day? If he does, the condition of his soul is lowered. Though I may not have been talking of any particular doctrines or separation from the body to which he belonged—and never would so speak, yet the preaching of a really full gospel would (if received) bring a man necessarily to that center he speaks of.
If you preach a full gospel, it will tell in the way I have said.
What I said was that I never could and never did make one Christian leave the systems. I believe that there are people among the poor Roman Catholics that will go to heaven. But there is one thing wrong, and that is all those divisions; and I defy anybody to show me such a thing in the word of God as what is now called the church. One must come out of confusion. But, further, we are told to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
The gift of a pastor is a rare one. Could anyone exercise the office of a pastor without having a gift, that is, do a pastor's work without being specially gifted? He will do it very badly if he has not got the gift. If he does it really, he has got the gift—he cannot do it really without that. It is possible that I did not quite convey what I meant. In the present state of things is the work of a pastor done in any way by one who has not the gift of a pastor, or can it be? Much depends on the spirit of the thing. You may have him in the place and office, but he cannot do the work of pastor because he has not got the gift. Supposing a person says, I do not profess to have the gift of a pastor, and yet I must look after souls as well as I can? One has no objection to that, for it is brotherly love. If you get a person in brotherly love doing what he can, it is very well: we all ought to care one for another. A very young Christian cannot do as much as an older one, but in a certain sense everybody ought to care for his brother. In verse 16 after the chief positive gifts, evangelists, pastors and teachers, which go on to the end, you get “from whom,” that is, Christ, “the whole body fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth.” That is what you refer to. One has not a specific gift and office, but he does whatever he can do. “Fitly joined together and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying itself in love.” Here then all the members have something or other. They have all their place and service: one may exhort, one may have a little word of wisdom and never appear in public at all. There is that which “every joint supplieth.” It is real and approved of Christ.
It is connected with verse 7 of course: only there lie spreads that out into these gifts of apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers; and then lie goes on to what “every joint supplieth.” You first get the positive gifts. A person may evangelize, though he is not in the office of evangelist; he may take an opportunity of speaking for Christ. Compare Acts 8:44Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word. (Acts 8:4).
I leave every person to his own conscience as to places where he may be free to evangelize. At first I preached in every church or chapel where I was permitted; but I found it was not a good plan. If I saw a man preaching the gospel honestly or fully in the streets and there was opposition, I could identify myself with him without asking who he was or where he came from; but this is a different thing from planning to go out with him. I could not; but I leave every person free. You cannot control any man's conscience; you may advise him. I do not conceal that I am outside the camp. It makes people angry sometimes; but I am deliberately outside the camp, altogether and totally, and I think I know what I am about from scripture. If I go there, I mix myself up with what is in the camp and I give an uncertain sound. My deliberate judgment is that in the present state of the church of God one should be outside these connections. I think it is all going on to judgment as fast as it can, and it is not charity to go on with it so as to enfeeble the testimony. I have seen it going on these forty or fifty years nearly, with persons attempting to go on with it; and I have never seen such persons either grow up into the truth or make others clear in their walk. After an experience of nearly fifty years I am perfectly clear in my judgment about it.
As to how far one could wish God speed to or have fellowship with any work going on outside, if I knew of a person preaching Christ from contention, I would rejoice as the apostle says. I could not go and join with a man that was doing it in contention, yet I am glad he is preaching Christ.
With certain preachers I would not have fellowship for special reasons. It is a matter of discipline. I separate between having fellowship with Christ preached, and co-operating with the men that preach. Do you think I should join with a man that preaches from contention? I am glad he is doing it in one sense, because Christ is made known by it.
In this way I can own all ministry where it is true, apart from recognizing a man in the sense of cooperating. It is the thing that gives a character to the evangelizing itself. My experience is that it is not the way to get souls on. I have seen both done.
I have seen brethren doing it; of course they stand or fall to their own master. I would go with them in preaching the gospel, but not with the camp. I think it is a great thing for our souls to get hold of you cannot expect the newly converted soul to get hold of it at once—that there is this immense system, “the camp,” which is not of God, though there are many people of God in it. Therefore you must leave individuals to judge in each case. But that which associates me with it I cannot do. It would be building again the things I destroyed. If I am to associate myself with it, why did I leave it? I never should attack anybody nor ask anybody to come. I never would and never did; but I am not going to be driven out of what is plain in scripture.
There is no true Christian that has not something or other given him for service in the body, merely perhaps a little bit of wisdom. Everybody has got something for service to the body, as a hand or foot or eye; but not everybody a prominent gift as a pastor or evangelist. Everybody has got something according to the measure of what Christ has given him, and if he goes beyond that measure, it will be mere human action or no good at all.