Yesterday I wrote about the death of a man who for the first 12 years of my Christian life was a mentor, friend and leader amongst our Baptist Churches in Scotland. Andrew Macrae was an inspirational, visionary leader and preacher on a Europe wide scale, who went on to take these same gifts into the academic world of theological education for mission in North America. I mention him on this blog again because he first pointed me to a certain kind of Christian reading that set my mind in a particular direction. As I began to take up night school and day release to gain qualifications for University, and as I began to prepare myself to meet the formidable Ministerial Recognition Committte, he lent me three books to read which have remained important milestones on my journey towards learning and growing in the knowledge of Christ. Life has moved on. The three books are now dated, though one of them remains in print. All three were books of substance, and my reading of them acted like the turning of an intellectual ignition key. I'll return to these three books below.
On Sunday speaking with one of our church members who like me reads for fun, as work, and just for the love of reading anyway and anywhere and anytime. The first two books I read as a new Christian were The Cross and the Switchblade, and Tortured for Christ. In conversation about such things she immediately said snap, these were amongst the first books she remembers reading as a young Christian. Both are books of testimony, written from the more extreme edges of Christian experience and conversion. One the story of an urban minister and the story of his work in New York city, in the violent world of drugs, street gangs and disillusioned lostness hungering for belonging and significance. One of the gang leaders, Nicky Cruz, was converted and so began a work of mission amongst the other gang members.
The second is the story of a Romanian pastor, imprisoned for his work in the underground church during the Communist era. Richard Wurmbrand is unsparing in his description of deprivation, beatings, secret police, informers and the machinations of a State which saw Christian faithfulness as a serious threat to State security in the paranoid world of the Cold War. I went on to read other books of testimony and the costs and consequences of Christian witness in dangerous places; but I also started to widen my reading to include authors like Watchman Nee, Roy Hession, and Andrew Murray. I'm not sure anyone still reads them, or would even recognise the names today.
It was into those early months of reading that Andrew Macrae dropped three of his own books, lending them to me to help me get some idea of what theological reading might do for me. The first was Mere Christianity, C S Lewis's classic apologetic for the Christian faith. The book has been a phenomenon amongst Christians of all shades and ages, but especially popular amongst evangelicals for two or three generations. I read it as the eye-opener it is. To my young mind Lewis produced knock down arguments, made faith sound and read as reasonable as expecting sunrise tomorrow; he opened my mind to the scale and subtlety of Christian faith. It was thoughtful theology and yet it was an interesting, hard to put down read.
The second book was by the great Scottish scholar preacher, James S Stewart, A Faith to Proclaim. This is a book about preaching, about a faith worth preaching, and preaching worthy of faith in a Saviour who takes upon himself the universe changing work of forgiveness, reconciliation and renewal. I read it like a revelation. I had never heard preaching till I was sixteen; and exposure was limited to my own church and a few other occasions. But Stewart was writing about the highest calling to which the human voice is called, the thrilling responsibility of expounding and exegeting the love of God in Christ crucified and risen. This book made you want to preach, and at the same time warned that preaching requires your hardest work, your deepest thought, your prayerful dependence on God, and all of this in the service of a Gospel that saves the world.
The third book was T C Hammond's classic, In Understanding Be Men. In the nearly 50 years since I first worked through this book, I have read thousands of books of theology. But this book was foundational for three reasons. It was methodical in going through the classic doctrines of orthodox Christian faith. Each section was broken into pragraphs and had whole lines of biblical references to anchor thought into biblical text. There were suggestions for further reading, and to this day the bibliographic pointers of books I read remain amongst the most valuable features in a book. All in all this small handbook, one of the triumphs of the early Inter Varsity Press, introduced me to theology proper and set me on a road that would lead up the mountain ranges of Christian theology, history and biblical studies.
Three books, borrowed for a few months, and each of them an impulse towards training my own mind towards the things that matter in ministry. Amongst my debts to Andrew Macrae, is the discovery of Christian thoughtfulness in the service of others. Those books explored the inexplicable mystery of God's call to preach and the never to be forgotten privilege that such a call is. And they instilled a love of learning as one essential element in those called to ministry, and to a discipleship that requires understanding of people, of Gospel, of world and of Bible, and a lifelong commitment to bring all four of these into conversation whose centre is Christ.
Thanks for these memories. The Cross and the Switchblade was one that I read also.
Posted by: Bob MacDonald | November 02, 2016 at 02:01 PM