One of the lesser-known, yet great evangelists/pastors of the 19th century was Sam Jones (1846-1906). An evangelical Methodist, Jones saw 5,000 people come to faith in Christ during his first five years as a pastor. Later, during a 24-month period, there were 20,000 conversions under his ministry!
“In no place where I have ever preached has the building or tent been sufficient to hold the multitude who attempted to get in.”
Concerning his early years in ministry, he wrote: “It was more than three years before [I was consistently bold enough to] preach the truth in such a way as to leave no doubt that I meant him [people in his congregation]. In other words, in the fourth year of my ministry I began to preach to my people just as I thought about my people.”
When God uses you to point fingers, what usually happens? Criticism!
Regarding his ministry in general, Jones wrote: “Of course, in all these years of my life as a pastor, I was the object of a great deal of criticism. If no truth furnished others material with which they could assault, there was no lie that earth or hell could concoct that they would not take and circulate against me — some very ridiculous lies, some venomous lies, some very lying lies. O, how I have looked at my wife sometimes and seen resentment written upon every feature of her face; for instance, when she read the well-credited story of how I abandoned my ‘first wife’ and how I was unkind to my ‘second wife.’ They have reported me drunk on a hundred different occasions; they have reported me as a wife-beater; and rumors that I afterwards thought the devil himself must have felt ashamed of, they have circulated against me.
“There can be no movement without friction, no battle without an issue, no issue without the drawing of lines. When the line is drawn then comes the tug of war… Where is there a successful man in any calling of life who has not been either swallowed by a whale or nibbled almost to death by minnows?”
Conflict, controversy, slander follow those who stand for truth, especially the earnest, committed Christian! There was a common theme to Jesus’ ministry in Galilee — conflict! It began in Nazareth, was briefly stalled, then resumed at Capernaum with the healing of a paralytic — and never ceased.
Serving 30-plus years as a pastor, I met my share of opposition! In fact, I recently pulled out one of my journals, looking for the date of our son Chris’ baptism — and began reading some of my journal entries from that time period. Honestly, my stomach began to churn as I read of one problem after another — and nearly all of them from either church leadership or disgruntled parishioners!
The lesson? Determine you are going to do your best to serve the King, to walk close to Him, and conflict is sure to come!
Ah, yes, that is so often the case — but the reward of knowing why you were doing it, Who you were serving — these reasons can take some of the sting away, particularly long after the fact!
Now I realize that some of you reading this are right now in the midst of a gut-wrenching, emotionally depleting situation; things hurt right now. My word of encouragement for you is simply this: “From God’s perspective your current conflict is not permanent, preeminent, or perplexing — it is a critical component in His plan for your maturing in Christ.”
As the great abolitionist Frederick Douglass (c.1818-1895) put it: “Without a struggle, there can be no progress.”