For my pastor friends:
I wonder how the speaker felt at the end of the service that night. She and a friend had been so moved by an encounter with the Holy Spirit they decided to travel from town to town in western Oklahoma, sharing the Gospel with whoever showed up. They didn’t own a tent like other traveling preachers of the time, so they conducted their meetings under a brush arbor (a temporary shelter made of poles and straw). I wonder if the speaker went home disappointed with the size of the crowd, or the response to the appeal for salvation. I wonder if she struggled with doubt. Maybe she considered giving up her incredibly difficult ministry. She may have felt that all her effort was in vain.
She didn’t know that a young mother, suffering from an incurable illness, was listening that night. She was too weak to sit under the shelter, so she reclined in the backseat of the family car, straining to hear the good news that Jesus loved her. When the speaker asked if anyone wanted to respond to the Gospel the young lady feebly raised her hand in the darkness. No one saw, and no one knew, but that sermon changed everything.
The young lady was my grandmother, and that night she became a Christ-follower. Soon my grandfather also follows Jesus. Eventually he becomes a church planter, his sons become pastors and his daughter marries an evangelist. Directly or indirectly thousands of people eventually hear and respond to the Gospel through my grandmother’s family, and it all began with an anonymous sermon to a small crowd of farmers gathered in red dust of an Oklahoma field. I doubt the preacher of that sermon ever knew its impact.
I don’t know who heard your sermon yesterday. There may have been thousands of engaged listeners, or a handful of half-awake attenders. You may have walked away feeling like you hit a home run, or you might have snuck out the back door feeling like you struck out trying to bunt. What I am sure of, however, is the Gospel does not come back empty. There is no way to gauge the impact of what you preached yesterday. You can’t measure it in attendance, or offerings, or hands raised, or cards turned in. The impact of the Gospel isn’t limited by talent or time. The potential fruit of the seeds you plant is almost incomprehensible.
No one would have looked at the tiny, dying bootlegger’s wife in the back seat of an dirty old Ford that night and thought, “Now there’s a world changer.” And everyone would have been wrong. Someone just like my grandmother may have heard your sermon yesterday. My prayer for you this morning is you will see just a hint of what God will do with the Gospel you preached.
Navigating this new chapter in church history will require balancing the tension between what is necessary from the past and what is needed for future. I’ve spent the last several years thinking about and researching this challenge, and share my insights in my new eBook, The Church Will Thrive. You can get your free copy here.
