We Must Not Persuade the Will

I have recently been taking an introduction to philosophy class offered online by MIT[1]. The first unit of the class looks at the arguments for and against the existence of God, and addresses what is known as Pascal's Wager. Pascal reasoned that it was in the best interest of men to believe in God because if you believe and God is real, you go to eternal heaven, but if you don't believe and God is real you go to hell. If God is real you have everything to gain and nothing to lose in believing and nothing to gain and everything to lose by not believing. If God is not real, you have lost nothing for believing. 

Now, I see many flaws in Pascal's wager. But the argument the course eventually presents is that a man cannot will to believe. The instructor says that we cannot turn believing on and off like a light switch. I find this remark intriguing on several levels:

It answers to the Bible truth that no man comes to God except that he is drawn by the Holy Spirit.

Faith is not a life choice. It is a calling of God. It is not revealed by flesh and blood but by the Heavenly Father

It also speaks to the work of the soul winner.

The word faith carries with it the idea of persuasion. A person believes in Christ because he is persuaded by another who already believes in Christ. Paul "so spake" that a great number came to believe or to be persuaded. But that persuasion must be something different than the transmission of facts and evidences; what the philosophers call epistemology. It is from the heart to the heart. Rather, the Bible teaches, it is from faith to faith. That is why the Bible is not a book of mere facts and proof. A man who looked at epistemological evidence and became persuaded would only be persuaded academically. God's target is not the head. It is the seat of faith for which He shoots, what the Bible refers to as our bowels. 

The soul winner must never allow himself to be trapped into a discussion targeted at the head. Even if he wins the persuasion he will have accomplished nothing. It's why philosophers love to analyze the argument of Pascal's wager but never really consider whether God is it not. The soul winner must learn to target his whole conversation on his faith and transfer that to the faith of another. 

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

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[1] https://www.edx.org/course/mit/24-00x/introduction-philosophy-god/888

Successful People Cannot Be Accessible People

That was the lesson of a event blog from Michael Hyatt, the successful Ex-CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishing[1][2]  and now successful author, blogger and Consultant to the masses of Christian writing on the internet. The plain fact is that the more successful a person becomes the fewer people that person can make himself available to. 

And it makes sense. Suppose a man's position gives him ten persons who look directly up to him. He is able to communicate to ten very personally very often. He can know them closely, know their families, know where they live. They can know the same about him. But as numbers grow he can only retain so much information. Sooner or later it is impossible for him to remember every persons address and he eventually cannot have close conversations with every person. 

One pastor I know visited every family in his church after every time he went out door knocking. It was his way to make them a part of his efforts, to hold himself accountable and to encourage the members to do door knocking evangelism themselves. He now has a congregation of many hundreds. He couldn't possibly report to each of them each time he is finished with door knocking. 

Another pastor tells how when his church was under one hundred, he knew every person by name and knew where every one of them lived. When the church reached five hundred he still knew them all by name but not where they all lived. When the church reached one thousand he knew recognized their faces and could remember many of their names. When the congregation reached five thousand he would see someone look at him in the store and wonder if he was a member of his church. 

When I worked as the Executive Vice President of Heartland Baptist Bible College a friend of mine called Pastor Sam Davison's office. He told Pastor Davison's secretary that he was a friend of mine. According to my friend, the secretary responded, "If you were Brother McKenzie, you could speak to Pastor Davison right now. But since you aren't you can't." She wasn't being rude. The fact is that if every person who ever wanted to speak to Pastor Davison[3] got to do so whenever they wanted he could never have gotten time to study and quietly walk with the Lord. 

But here is the problem. Whoever decided that a pastor should ever be so successful he can't be accessible? Certain men have developed ministries that are so large they could not possibly pastor the whole so they hire under shepherds to work for them. These under shepherds essentially pastor these sub-flocks within the larger church but they are not answerable to the Lord; they answer to the senior pastor. The larger ministry is a micro denomination even if the church claims to be independent. The members of the church who are not directly under the senior pastor are placed in the distinct disadvantage of not having a shepherd who answers to Jesus. 

A pastor ought to be accessible. The only way for that to happen is for us to stop trying to build empires and focus on planting local churches whose target is to please The Lord and minister to His children. 

Marvin McKenzie

In the field

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[1] http://michaelhyatt.com/about

[2] http://michaelhyatt.com/leadership-success-accessibility.html

[3] To be fair I would go on record as observing that Pastor Davison worked very hard at being accessible.