You have nothing to do but save souls. Therefore spend and be spent in this work. And go always not only to those who want you, but to those that want you most. Observe: It is not your business to preach so many times, and to take care of this or that society: but to save as many souls as you can: to bring as many sinners as you possibly can to repentance, and with all your power to build them up in that holiness without which they cannot see the Lord.”
John Wesley
I'm reading a book called "The Passion for Souls" by Oswald Smith and although only a couple of chapters in I am loving it! He quoted the above quote and went on to show how so many preachers preach with no fruit. Wesley reminds us that we are to win souls, not just preach.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Wesley on soul winning
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The statement “we are to save souls” raises a few questions: is “saving souls, winning souls” really the most decisive, the most intriguing, the authentic, the central aspect in the goal of our vocation? Can “we” save souls? Is the gospel merely about “saving souls?” Rather than indulging in the reductionism of Wesley – we are to save and can save souls – we need to return to a comprehensive understanding of the evangel. Our theology of evangelistic ministry must be rooted in a biblical theology of mission and, above all, dominated and shaped by the gospel we seek to proclaim It is not us that has a mission of salvation to fulfil to the world: it is the mission of the Son and the Spirit through the Father that includes us. In the New Testament mission is “witness” rather than “saving souls”. What do you think?
yes soul winning is the "most decisive, the most intriguing, the authentic, the central aspect in the goal of our vocation?" Well, it should be. Jesus came to Earth to save it...
As for Gods mission vs ours, we choose to follow God and His mission which He includes us in so when we say this is our mission its our mission becasue its His mission. we're not making up the misison...
Witness, yeah good term. But whats the point if people arent repenting? Thats what wesley is saying. If you dont have that aim then you could be talking heaps with little to no effect. What is better, people repenting of their sin in response to our preaching and testifying and trying to get them saved, or them not becasue we didnt go hard enough and them going through life without God?
A theology you seem to be leaning towards takes all responsibility away for the salvation of our neighbours, totally devoid of love and compassion in turn that we may be airy fairy and be happy on our own and unconfrontational. (feel free to say what you really mean though...)
Heres a few passages for you...
"Be merciful to those who doubt; snatch others from the fire and save them; to others show mercy, mixed with fear—hating even the clothing stained by corrupted flesh." (Jude 22-23)
"remember this: Whoever turns a sinner from the error of his way will save him from death and cover over a multitude of sins." James 5:20
Its not good to over-theologise and lose your heart in the process...
I would agree with anon and go further to say that Plato and Western individualism have led us to reduce the Gospel to personal salvation for individual souls. Plato’s emphasis on the good soul trapped in an evil body has led many Christians to focus almost exclusively on saving individual souls so they can go to heaven. Something of this Platonist emphasis is evident in Wesley. If saving the soul is all the gospel is concerned about, then caring for creation, working for justice now, reforming society etc are a wasted effort. But if the gospel is the good news of the redemptive reign of God where everything, not just the soul, is being restored to wholeness, then the Kingdom has already begun and will be consummated when Christ returns to give us resurrected bodies in the new heaven and new earth.
"Witness" I would suggest is the defining term of the mission community and Christian in Luke/Acts and John. God uses the witnesses' personal experience of Jesus before and after his death and resurrection to draw others into the relationship of faith in Jesus. God makes that possible through the gift of the Holy Spirit, which grants to the witnesses' testimony its persuasive and inviting power. Thus God's Spirit employs the evidence presented by the eyewitnesses to induce faith in the risen Christ as God's Messiah and to draw people into the community of witness as Christ's servants. If we understand mission as witness and seek to be guided by the biblical language of witness, the missiological structured theology of evangelism will have to include these emphases: Witness is theocentric, Christocentric, pneumatological, historical, eschatological, ecclesiological, multicultural and ecumenical. WJE
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