“Whatever happened to repentance?” Frederica Mathewes-Green asked in Christianity Today (2/4/02). “We live in a time when it’s hard to talk about Christian faith at all, much less about awkward topics like repentance … Try telling a person who’s been discipled by modern advertising that he’s a sinner.”
No one has ever liked being called a sinner, she said, but the great revivals in history began when people were convicted of their sin. Mathewes-Green is right—we need a way to help today’s listeners to confess and turn from their sins.
Martin Luther, John Wesley, and Dwight L. Moody in their respective centuries found ways to communicate the doctrines of sin and repentance to reluctant people. They transformed churches, universities, and nations with their message.
Their approaches can help us.
Luther’s sin detector
Martin Luther knew the power of simplicity. He used simple tracts, art, drawings, and even cartoons.
Luther also put together a teaching device that he called a small catechism. Once widely used, the catechism has been gradually abandoned. But our post-Christian culture is beginning to resemble Luther’s-biblical illiteracy and confusion over who God is and what constitutes sin.
Whereas the Victorians were supremely aware of their sins, today’s culture rejects sin and denies guilt.
Luther’s catechism included the Ten Commandments, the Apostle’s Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and instruction on sacraments. The Commandments in particular were the mirror into which many people looked and realized, Oh, look how I have offended God. I’ve sinned.
In the church plant I’ve recently taken part in, we teach a catechism similar to Luther’s. For the children who later walk away from their parents’ faith, or for adults who need to renew their own, the catechism they learn here prods their spirits like the prodigal son’s memories of home. We deliberately sow this catechism as the seed of future repentance.
I was at Bodleian Library in Oxford, England, researching to write a biography of C.S. Lewis’s wife. A woman asked me, “What are you studying that for?”
“I’m a mid-life convert to Christianity,” I said. “Lewis and his wife were also mid-life converts, and his writings had an impact on bringing me to my faith.”
I asked her if she was a believer.
“Oh, no.”
“Have you had any exposure to the faith?”
“I was raised a Methodist, but I have nothing to do with it anymore.”
“Since you grew up in the Methodist church,” I said, “you must be familiar with the Ten Commandments.” I was using Luther’s principle of the catechism as a mirror. “Ma’am,”—and I don’t know why I picked this commandment—”have you ever committed adultery?” She was shaken. “Don’t answer that question. But if you have, because you’re created in the image of God, I can’t help but believe you’re dealing with some deep guilt.”
Then I said, “The beautiful thing about my Savior, is that he can clean you and bring you back to God.”
It’s much easier to talk about sin with someone who was taught a catechism earlier. She looked at me stunned. Her eyes began to tear, and she said, “I need to think about that.”
Wesley’s confessional
When John Wesley looked across Great Britain’s Anglican Church in the 1700s , he saw a dead formalism. Pastors had about as much zeal as a dead ‘possum. Why?
Wesley’s genius was realizing that when people came to Christ, they needed to change and grow, not merely stand on the terms of a contract. In other words, they may have been converted, but their lives were not transformed. They were baptized, confirmed, and churched on Sunday. Yet they lived like hellions the rest of the time. Wesley concluded that the people of the church needed to be regularly confronted and challenged to confess their sins and repent.
Wesley realized that the Great Commission is not to make converts; it’s to make disciples. As he preached, people gave their lives to Christ in droves. And then Wesley did something we often do today-he put them into small groups.
The purpose of Wesley’s small groups was not simply encouragement and Bible study, but to provide a safe place for confession and accountability, an intimate environment for transformation into Christlikeness.
In 1995, God brought revival to Wheaton College. It broke out in a student-led Sunday night service. Confession and repentance continued Sunday night and every night through Thursday. Eight or nine hundred students got right with God that week.
During one of those evenings, a student stood and confessed that she’d lost her virginity the summer before. She was carrying terrible guilt, and she just wanted to confess her sin. The man sitting next to me elbowed me and said, “Prof, get this thing shut down. This is terrible. She didn’t sin publicly. She shouldn’t be confessing publicly. If that was my daughter, I’d feel terrible.”
I said, “You’re right. She didn’t sin publicly. But she’s having to confess here because . …” I paused, “because I’ve preached in your church, and it’s not a safe place to confess sin or to be held in loving accountability.”
That night’s events and conversations were the seeds that inspired my wife and me and some friends to plant a church. And every Sunday after the service we provide trained prayer and communion ministers, so people have a safe place to confess sin.
We don’t forgive their sins, but we tell them, “Jesus Christ forgives your sins and cleanses you from all unrighteousness.” And then we try to follow up with them next week. “How are you doing on this? Staying clean on this thing?”
Moody’s listening team
Despite the flood of conversions under his preaching, Dwight L. Moody kept his focus on the individual. At the end of the service he would say, “If anyone here has questions or they would like prayer, I’ll be in another room and we can pray for you.”
Moody would go to that other room where he had trained workers waiting. He told those workers, “When someone comes up, I want you to look at her. I want you to listen her. I want you to pray, listen to the Holy Spirit, and ask him to help you listen to her. As you’re working with her, another person might come up, too, and be looking at her watch. But don’t worry about her. Take the first person seriously and keep working with her.”
As soon as the people were heard and prayed with, Moody made sure they were connected with local pastors and lay leaders who would continue that kind of listening.
At a conference on the eastern seaboard, I was challenged to ignore the multitudes and focus on one person.
I had just read an intriguing, little, second-hand book written for Catholic priests who were going to hear confessions. The book focused on listening to people while seeking the Spirit to hear what they’re not saying-like Moody instructed his trainees. The book contended that some people don’t know what they want to say or ask, but as we seek the Spirit, he can work in the unseen things of their hearts.
The night of the conference, the preacher concluded his message by asking people who desired to pray to come forward. As soon as he said it, people streamed forward. So many came forward, he said, “I want the ministry team to come up and help me pray.”
I went up to the altar rail, and a man in a sports coat and tie knelt down. “How can I pray for you?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” said.
I had just read that little book a few hours before. I prayed, Lord, show me what I might do with this man. Show me how to pray for him. I put my arm around him, and I began to pray. I just started praying in a way that I felt led.
He began to weep uncontrollably. “How did you know how to pray for me?”
“I didn’t,” I said. “The Lord knows your need. He told me how to pray for you.” This man wept and wept. I didn’t minister to anyone else that night. For five more days at the conference I got together with him regularly. And for six years, every year at that conference, we met and we talked. And he has grown in the Lord.
As Moody had taught, “Listen well. Take this soul seriously. And listen to the Holy Spirit as you do.”
In her article Mathewes-Green wrote, “The more we see the depth of our sin, the more we realize the height of God’s love.” This vision of sin and love transformed the life of my friend from the conference. Luther, Wesley, and Moody can help us offer the same vision to our churches.
Lyle Dorsett is professor of Christian ministries and evangelism at Wheaton College and pastor of Church of the Great Shepherd in Glen Ellyn, Illinois.
Copyright © 2002 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.
