Archive: Vision for Renewal

Our Theological Witness

By Mack B. Stokes

My father and mother, Dr. and Mrs. Marion B. Stokes, were missionaries in Korea for 35 years. Early in his ministry my father said, “With God’s help, I am going to make it my main business to save souls.” As a missionary, his primary passion was evangelistic preaching, teaching, earnest prayer, and bringing people together into local churches. To do this he first mastered the Korean language, in which he preached far more freely than in English.

During those 35 years, my father was instrumental in establishing almost 200 local churches. He started a city mission in the heart of Seoul, where people were invited to come off the streets to hear the gospel. Many were converted there, and those converts often became central figures in establishing local churches. But the strongest sources of church growth came from prayer, revival meetings, one-on-one encounters, and the consecrated efforts of Korean men and women who were imbued with the spirit of evangelism.

My three brothers and I entered the ministry of the Methodist Church largely because of this emphasis on vital Christianity and evangelism in our home. The greatest honor I ever received was when, as a high school boy, God called me to preach the gospel of salvation in Jesus Christ.

As a theological professor at Candler School of Theology for 31 years, and later as a bishop, I determined to do three things which I felt were essential to evangelism and world missions.

The first was to recover, in a secular age, the reality of the supernatural realm of God’s grace. This requires defending the faith on a highly intellectual level without neglecting the realities of prayer, grace, faith and love.

The second essential for evangelism was that of recovering the authority and finality of the Bible. I did not feel that this should drive me or my students into the pitfalls of obscurantism. Though I had plunged deeply into philosophical studies under the Boston personalists, Knudson and Brightman, and under Hocking and Whitehead at Harvard, I knew that our preaching had to be based on, informed by, and proclaimed under the authority of the Word of God. No human discoveries would do. No mere good advice or neat little stories would suffice.

The third essential for evangelism is the passion for souls. When I accepted the invitation to join the theological faculty at Candler, God spoke to me in an unmistakable inner voice, “Always see the students and the congregations they will be called to serve.” Without losing sight of the fact that systematic theology is an intellectual discipline of supreme importance and integrity, I wanted my students to see that a major outcome of Christian doctrine is to help us win people to Christ and to build them up in the fellowship of believers.

The passion for souls begins with intercessory prayer. It consists in seeing with Jesus the incalculable preciousness of every human being. Human rights and human dignity are basic. But also the passion for souls means seeing with Jesus that all people are sinners in need of prayer and of God’s redeeming grace in Christ. Once more, this passion for souls means, receiving, through the Holy Spirit, the burning desire to lead people to Christ so they might join other believers in serving, pleasing, and glorifying God forever.

Mack B. Stokes is a retired United Methodist bishop living in Atlanta, Georgia. He held several reaching and administrative positions at Candler School of Theology. He is the author of The Bible in The Wesleyan Heritage, Questions asked by United Methodists, The Holy Spirit In The Wesleyan Heritage, Major United Methodist Beliefs, and Talking With God: A Guide To Prayer.

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