Brothers, preach for immediate conversions!

One of the most potentially toxic cocktails found in the evangelical church today is the recently-minted Calvinist pastor who grew up in an Arminian-revivalistic context. Sickened by far too many emotionally-manipulative altar calls with their hot, poorly-ventilated sanctuaries, dim lighting, swooning organ music, and endless calls for just one more verse of ‘Just As I Am’, this pastor begins jettisoning everything which smacks of manipulation. Altar calls, ‘decision cards’, spiritual birth certificates, and all attempts at emotional arm-twisting are consigned to outer darkness.

But then the pendulum begins to swing too far. In their zeal without knowledge, this immature Calvinistic pastor keeps going, beyond the bounds of biblical teaching or historic Calvinism. Their confident affirming of Jesus’ sincere love for every person without exception notably diminishes, while admonishing sinners to repent and believe is done so only with great hesitation. Worst of all, passionate preaching for immediate conversions slowly dies, replaced by stuffy lectures which sound very much like the reading aloud of a 17^th-century biblical commentary. I know this temptation exists and is strong in some, for I am partially describing myself.

In this confused and muddled milieu, the example of George Whitefield is a jarring bolt of sanity-restoration and biblical balance. For in George Whitefield, like the Apostle Paul and like his later protégé Charles Spurgeon, we have a passionate Calvinistic evangelist, a Calvinist who preached for and hoped for immediate conversions, for sinners to repent and believe then-and-there, on-the-spot, without years of spiritual meandering, misty-minded uncertainty, or endless introspection. Emulating Whitefield’s model of preaching for immediate conversions will make us evangelical and evangelistic Calvinists, and help demolish the misnomer that Calvinism kills evangelism.

This is a constant emphasis of Whitefield’s, and could be identified in nearly every one of his sermons. But for brevity’s sake, consider just one example. And fellow pastors, as you read this, ask yourself, “Am I fired by the same passion for sinners to then-and-there come to Christ?” In a sermon on Matthew 11:28, entitled ‘Christ the only Rest for the Weary and Heavy-Laden’, preached at Kennington-Common in 1740 (when he was just 26!), Whitefield pled:

Let me beseech you to come unto Christ, and he will give you rest… Go to him this night; here is an invitation to all you who are weary souls… do not delay; one moment may be dangerous: death may take you off suddenly. You know not but that a fit of the apoplexy may hurry you from time into eternity… Come, come unto him. If your souls were not immortal, and you in danger of losing them, I would not thus speak unto you; but the love of your souls constrains me to speak: methinks this would constrain me to speak unto you forever. Come then by faith, and lay hold of the Lord Jesus; though he be in heaven, he now calleth thee. Come, all ye drunkards, swearers, Sabbath-breakers, adulterers, fornicators; come, all ye scoffers, harlots, thieves, and murderers, and Jesus Christ will save you; he will give you rest, if you are weary of your sins. O come lay hold upon him. Had I less love for your souls, I might speak less; but that love of God, which is shed abroad in my heart, will not permit me to leave you, till I see whether you will come to Christ or no. O for your life receive him, for fear he may never call you any more. Behold, the Bridegroom cometh; it may be this night the cry may be made. Now would you hear this, if you were sure to die before the morning light?

Does this sound anything like how you call sinners to trust Jesus? Do you preach as “a dying man to dying men”, begging them to flee from the wrath to come? Or do you address people in a manner more sophisticated, distinguished, tempered, and nuanced, and yet leaving sinners confused and comfortable in their sins, not realizing they teeter on the brink of hell?

Brothers and sisters, long for, hope for, pray for, and speak for immediate conversions! Every talk should be delivered with the expectation that the sovereign God will use his people’s weak proclamation of the gospel to give dead sinners new life that very day. Like Spurgeon did, intentionally model your evangelistic messages on that of George Whitefield’s. For with George Whitefield, there may be no better example outside the Bible of passionate preaching for immediate conversions.

The title and form of this essay were inspired by John Piper’s excellent book Brothers, We Are Not Professionals (B&H, Nashville, 2002). An earlier version of this essay appeared in the July 2014 issue of Credo Magazine.