The practice of friendship; studies in personal evangelism with men of the United States army and navy in American training camps

Front matter

(SITie, PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP

STEWART -WRIGHT

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT.

Preface

This book is based upon experiences in the work of the Army Young Men's Christian Association at Plattsburg, from May 10 to August 15, 1917, with the First Reserve Officers' Training School ; and at Camp Devens, from August 28, 1917, to July 15, 1918, with the 76th Division of the National Army. Professor Wright was Director of Religious Work at both camps. Of the three men who have been his associates, two — Elmore M. McKee and George Stewart Jr. — resigned to enlist in the Army, the former in August, 191 7, the latter in November of the same year. Rev. William D. Barnes joined the staff at Devens in November, 1917, and he and Professor Wright are at present in charge of the work there.

The chapters on the Hospital and on Troop Trains were written by Lieutenant McKee and Secretary Barnes respectively. The rest of the book is the joint product of Professor Wright and Lieutenant Stewart.

Camp Devens, Mass., August 31, 1918.

Part I. Personal Evangelism Through The Practice Of Friendship — Guiding

PRINCIPLES.

PAGE

I. Personal Evangelism — A Definition 3

II. The Nature of the Evangel for Men of the Army

and Navy 11

1. It must not dodge the issue of the compatibility

of Christianity with righteous war .... 11

III. The Nature of the Evangel for Men of the Army

and Navy (continued) 2J

2. It must not be a reduced Christianity .... 27

IV. The Program of the Evangel 4 1

V. Characteristics of the Men to Whom We Are to

Minister 48

VI. What Is a Point of Contact? 55

VII. How to Begin and of What to Beware .... 58

VIII. Expert Friendship the Key to Method in Personal

Evangelism 61

IX. The Goal of Expert Friendship 70

Part II. The Practice Of Friendship

I. Five Outstanding Features 75

1. Expert Friendship through the Ministry of Ideas

rather than Sensations 75

2. Expert Friendship through Direct Personal Ap-

peal 78

CONTENTS

PAGE

3. Expert Friendship through Personal Example . 81

4. Expert Friendship through Uniformity ... 83

5. Expert Friendship through Sacrifice .... 85

II. Expert Friendship within the Camp Circle — Inside the Y M C A Building 91

1. Expert Friendship at the Counter 91

2. Expert Friendship through the Writing-Desk . 94

3. Expert Friendship through Formal Religious

Services 96

4. Expert Friendship after the Address .... 99

5. Expert Friendship through Discussion and Bible

Groups and Inner Circles 101

6. Expert Friendship through the Upper Room . 104

7. Expert Friendship through the Ministry of Po-

licing 107

III. Expert Friendship Within the Camp Circle —

1. Expert Friendship on the Night of the Recruit's

Arrival in Camp no

2. Expert Friendship through Recreational and So-

cial Leadership 1 13

3. Expert Friendship through Educational Leader-

ship US

4. Expert Friendship in the Barracks and at Mess 117

5. Expert Friendship at the Hospital 120

6. Expert Friendship with Detached Units and with

the Development Battalions 125

7. Expert Friendship on Hikes and Troop Trains . 128

IV. Expert Friendship Outside the Camp Circle . . 134

1. Expert Friendship in the Executive Office . . 134

2. Expert Friendship with Civilian Help .... 137

3. Expert Friendship on Railroad Trains . . . .138

4. Expert Friendship with the Ford Car .... 142

5. Expert Friendship Entering the Fourth Week . 144

PART I

PERSONAL EVANGELISM THROUGH THE PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP

Guiding Principles

MY TASK

To love some one more dearly ev'ry day, To help a wand'ring child to find his way, To ponder o'er a noble thought and pray, And smile when evening falls.

This is my task.

To follow truth as blind men long for light To do my best from dawn of day till night To keep my heart fit for His holy sight And answer when He calls.

This is my task.

M. L. Ray.

Copyright property of Lorenz Publishing Co. International copyright secured.

CHAPTER I PERSONAL EVANGELISM — A DEFINITION Personal Work, Individual Work, Personal

Interview, Christian Interview,

Personal Evangelism

There are few phrases more constantly on the lips of Christian workers than those which relate to the effort to win individuals by personal appeal to the acknowledgment of Jesus Christ as the Lord and Master of their lives. Such expressions as " Personal Work," " Individual Work," * Personal Interview," " Christian Interview," " Personal Evangelism," are employed synonymously by the vast majority of men. We are told that a certain Army Secretary is a splendid personal worker. The monthly report from his building records two hundred personal interviews. Both of these claims may be literally and essentially correct. The Secretary knows the majority of the men in the regiment by name. He can give the date and place and subject of each one of his two hundred personal talks. But further investigation often reveals no evidence of transformed lives or spiritual advance in the little circle to which he ministered. Individual work has been done, personal interviews have been held, but no evangelism has taken place.

The truth of the matter is that the most commonly employed of these phrases — " Personal Work " and " Individual Work " — are terms far too general and too indefinite. A man who persuades another to drink, steal, or commit adultery is doing " personal work " or " individual work " of a definite kind, and, in most cases, of a most effective sort, for he wins his man by personal interview and persuasion to the object which he had in mind, and the victim is generally a conspicuous witness to the type of message which was preached — more than can be said of the results of some distinctly Christian personal effort.

When phrases constantly employed by Christian men and women can lend themselves with literal accuracy to effort so far afield from what was really intended, it is clear that they must be discarded for others which will define with greater exactness the real nature of the work in hand. Many use the phrase " Christian Interview." Here again we are open to the charge of indefiniteness. A " Christian Interview " may or may not issue in real spiritual evangelism. A talk about the weather between two persons who are Christians could quite logically from one point of view be classed as a Christian interview. So could a talk on the same subject in a Y M C A building between a Christian and a non-Christian, provided the object was to make a pleasant environment for the latter and to keep him out of temptation's reach. And so could persuasive appeals to men to attend church services, or random discussions regarding theology, or talks about the achievements of the Y M C A overseas, or decisions to renounce bad habits or to form good ones.

None of these things are real " Personal Evangelism," though some of them may form the indispensable background for it. The essential element in Personal Evangelism is a persuasive spiritual appeal which introduces a man to Jesus Christ, endeavors to persuade him to take Jesus Christ as his Saviour and Lord, and seeks to induce him who was formerly " consciously wrong, divided, and unhappy" to become "consciously right, united, and happy"

PERSONAL EVANGELISM A DEFINITION 5

through a deliberate act of his will in laying hold of a divine power outside himself.

The Dynamic Which Personal Evangelism Brings — Why Necessary

In the stimulating environment of an army camp or a naval training station, when men are face to face with the solemn issues of life and death, it is not a difficult task to persuade individuals or masses of men to register forward steps in personal living. Decisions to renounce bad habits, such as drinking, narcotics, immorality in thought, speech, or act, gambling, or personal grudges, are in general easily obtained either by word of mouth or in writing. Neither is it difficult to obtain decisions to form good habits, such as daily Bible study, daily prayer, regular attendance at church or Bible class, systematic saving and giving of money, regularity in home correspondence, or practical service of one's fellows. The difficult task is not to get men to make decisions in their own strength. Such moves are generally flattering to the pride of the maker. Humanly speaking, the impossible thing is to get men to keep true to their decisions after they have once made them. Thus, it is not difficult to get almost any soldier or sailor to join the Pocket Testament League. The difficulty is to get him to carry his Bible and read it.

Far too many of the Christian interviews in our war work centers which issue in forward step decisions are fruitless for just this reason. Personal Work has been done, a Christian Interview has been held, a Forward Step Decision has been registered, but the man is left helpless. There has been no real spiritual evangelism. The good which in all honesty he would, he does not, and what he would not, that he does. For him, in his hour of need, there was no friend who knew how to introduce him to the dynamic of divine help outside himself which would make of him a new creature — and to show him how to layhold of this by the act of complete surrender of the human will.

The Types of Decision with Which Personal Evangelism Is Concerned

Personal evangelism, dealing as it does with a dynamic which enables men and which changes life, is not so much concerned with securing those forward step decisions which are manifestations of a changed purpose, as it is with registering another more fundamental sort which will insure that change of purpose. Daily Bible study and prayer, attendance at church and Bible class, regard for home and comrades, are inevitable issues of a real change of heart, not the necessary preludes to it. A man whose purposes have been transformed by divine grace and who knows the power and fellowship of Christ lays hold upon prayer, Bible study, the Church and its institutions as instinctively and unconsciously as he breathes. But many a man has read his Bible and prayed regularly, has attended church services with an unbroken record, has given of his time and substance in the service of mankind, and yet has never laid hold of the dynamic which transforms life.

Personal evangelism is concerned with three decisions in each individual life and in the order named:

1. Restitution for wrongs committed in the past.

2. Absolute surrender of the human will to God for the present and future.

3. Witnessing to the power of God which has come into one's life as a result of this surrender.

Surrender cannot precede restitution nor can witnessing

-ERSONAL EVANGELISM A DEFINITION 7

jrecede surrender. When men pretend to surrender absoutely to God's will in renunciation of sin, without having nade an honest attempt to make restitution for wrongs ione in the past to God or man, they are trying to deceive jod. And when they attempt to witness to a power which hey have not received they are trying to deceive men.

Restitution — Absolute Surrender to God's Will — Witnessing

Before life can be transformed he who is consciously vrong must, by the act of restitution for that wrong, become consciously right. " Behold, the half of my goods I give to :he poor and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of any man [ restore fourfold," cried Zacchaeus in honest repentance vhen his sins were laid bare in the presence of Jesus. And he Lord replied, " To-day is salvation come to this house." Restitution must go as far as the wrong has gone. " If rou have lost the blessing, go back and search for it and fou will find it where you lost it. Just there and nowhere else," says MacNeil. If I have wronged God, as in secret »in, I must make confession and restitution to God and to Bim alone. If I have wronged some man, that man it is md no other whom I must satisfy; if two men, the resolution must include both. If I have wronged a commulity, I must accept that community's penalty for my misdemeanor, no matter at what cost to myself. The grain )f wheat that is to bring forth much fruit must first fall nto the earth before it dies. What the earth is to the wheat >eed, humble restitution for wrong is to the human soul. It Is the soil in which self dies to live again in fruit bearing. Without it the human soul, like the wheat grain, abides ilone by itself unchanged.

But while restitution closes all accounts with the past, it does not insure a man from falling in the future. One may settle all his old debts today and yet secretly reserve for himself the right to run into debt on the morrow. The grain of wheat must not only fall into the ground. It must die. Unless it die, it abides by itself alone unchanged. The second step in the transformation of a life is absolute surrender to God's will of the further desire for the particular conscious wrong for which restitution has already been made — not fifty per cent, surrender, nor seventy-five per cent., nor ninety per cent., nor ninety-five per cent., nor ninety-nine per cent., but one hundred per cent, surrender by the human will — unconditional and absolute — the death of that particular desire. He who prays, " Lord, make me pure " with the secret reservation, " but not now," abides by himself alone unchanged. He who prays, " Lord make me pure here and now, cost what it may " — and means it even at any cost — sees God.

He who has once found God along the pathway of the two successive steps of restitution for a conscious sin in the past and absolute surrender to God's will of that particular unholy desire for the future, has little difficulty at the start with the third step in the transformation of a human soul : namely, witnessing. " We cannot but speak the things which we saw and heard," cried Peter and John. " One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see," said the man from the pool of Siloam. It is an easy task to witness to what one really possesses. Yet the decision to confess constantly in Christ, to testify daily to the power of an endless life, is absolutely essential for the growth of any soul. " For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation." It is the only sure test that some new stagnation and blight of sin has not attacked the life of that soul.

PERSONAL EVANGELISM A DEFINITION 9

When lips are dumb and spiritual things seem unreal, and 3od far away, when the word spoken falls powerless and ife droops and sways, tossed to and fro on every wind of loctrine, then must we beware. The blade is withering, sin las entered in, and only a seed falling again in the soil of lumble restitution and dying the death of absolute renuncia- ;ion, can blossom again into the life that shall be eternal.

Why Christian Workers Do Not Do More Personal Evangelism

The physical price of personal evangelism is a heavy one. Some men are not willing to pay that price. It is right that :he cost should be great. To render ordinary social service Dr to engage in ordinary social conversation make slight demands upon us. But to work with God as His humble nstrument in the act of re-creation of that most delicate of ill instruments, the human soul, must require no less than :onsummate tact, resolute courage, infinite love, and supreme physical sacrifice. Power must go out from us.

Again, success in personal evangelism is wholly dependent ipon right living. Only the pure in heart see God. Only :he man with a consistent life behind his words can work with power. There is a very definite connection between Durity of life and power of spiritual achievement. Moody ised to speak about factories which were to let with or without power. Men's lives are in just such a condition. The stream of power is constantly flowing by them. Will they harness it and put it to work? Some men who should be mighty factors in personal evangelism are compelled to remain silent and impotent, hearing a voice say to them: r< Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter, for thy heart is not right before God."

io THE PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP

The Fundamental Principle Underlying Personal Evangelism

Personal evangelism makes the most exacting demands upon its practitioners of any form of human effort. Enthusiasm may be aroused by cold-blooded men with evil motives. Patriotism may be excited by impersonal means. Public evangelism may even achieve a certain measure of apparent success in the hands of a false prophet, through shrewdness in the application of the laws of social psychology to a crowd. But the personal evangelist must himself first incarnate what he wishes to propagate. He cannot give his message through the impersonal printed page. He cannot even choose the time and season for it. He cannot delegate it to some one else. His task is to hand on, as it were by contagion, a certain genius of life which he has first incarnated in himself. The fundamental principle underlying personal evangelism is this : " You cannot give it unless you have it."

Chapter II The Nature Of The Evangel For Men Of The Army And Navy

jr. It must not dodge the issue of the compatibility of Christianity and righteous war.

Righteous War — a Definition

The Army and Navy Young Men's Christian Association does not employ on its staff Secretaries who believe that Christianity and righteous war are incompatible. This requirement does not mean that employes of the War Work Council must hold the German view that war in the general sense " is a biological necessity — an ordinance of God for the weeding out of incompetent individuals and states — what might be called the doctrine of the wholesomeness, the desirability of ever-recurrent war." Peace on earth and good will among men is the ultimate Christian ideal for human society. The War Work Council does not require that its Secretaries approve all kinds of war — that, for example, of wanton aggression, in which the German Empire is at present engaged. Regarding this particular type of warfare the Christian teaching is unequivocal. " They that take the sword shall perish with the sword." " Woe unto the world because of occasions of stumbling! for it must needs be that the occasions come, but woe unto that man through whom the occasion cometh." Neither is it required that War Work Secretaries shall approve a right war carried

ii on in a wrong way — as, for example, in a spirit of hatred. Here again there can be no mistaking the teaching of our Lord. " Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time, Thou shalt not kill, and whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment : but I say unto you that every one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of the judgment; and . . . whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire." War from the Christian standpoint is always a pathological expedient, a last resort, like the surgeon's knife. Its sole object is the arrest of malignant and death-dealing cancers in the body of nations, and it looks solely to the restoration of the normal life of peace in the patient. But it should never be forgotten that it is the peace-makers, not the peace-talkers, who are characterized by our Lord as sons of God. We are to resist unto blood striving against sin. Once it be demonstrated that surgery is the only means of arresting the advances of the death-dealing sore, it profits not at all to surmise what might have been accomplished if less heroic measures had been taken in the earlier stages of the disease. It were worse than folly to attempt to apply remedial measures effective only in the earlier stages. If the surgeon alone can check the cancer's spread, then recourse to the knife is not a matter of option, but of duty. And so in extreme crises in the life of nations, peace-making through war is not a matter of choice. It becomes a Christian obligation. As a member of the bar has pointed out, a war by humanity to end war is no more impossible or inconsistent than Jesus' conquest of death by dying.

War is as comprehensive a term as politics. It can be wrong and it can be right. Because many brands of politics and many politicians are bad, it does not follow that we shall entirely renounce governments and governors. On the contrary, we shall dare to try to make bad politics and bad politicians good. And the American Nation, under the inspired leadership of its honored President, is engaged at this very hour in an attempt equally daring — the attempt to Christianize every phase of a righteous war waged to save the very life of democracy. He whose faith is too small to believe that this can be accomplished or to throw himself without reserve into what is in many of its phases a pioneer adventure, has no place in an army or navy camp.

There are some types of war and some types of religion which do not go together. The professional soldier is perfectly right in asserting that the brand of Christianity preached by the pacifist would make a laughing-stock out of the science of military tactics and result in inevitable defeat. The primary object in shooting a rifle or a machine gun is not that the soldier may simply go through the motions and get killed, any more than the object of a surgeon in operating on a cancer is to contract the disease himself and make a vicarious sacrifice of his own life. This latter result is always possible, but it is the business of all concerned to reduce the chance of it to a minimum. The business of a professional soldier is to render his enemy harmless at the earliest possible moment and with the least possible relative loss to himself.

On the other hand, the religious leader is just as right in asserting that the brand of war which issues in atrocities and rape and revenge and hymns of hate must part company once and for all with Christianity. But why should we judge all war by discredited warriors any more than we judge surgery by quack surgeons? The real surgeon cuts quickly and he cuts deeply. He destroys just as much tissue and only as much as will not respond to treatment. But he sees to it that every bit which will not respond is removed. He wishes to spare his patient the necessity of a later repetition of the operation. A surgeon who for the mere love of cutting removed more tissue than was diseased would be at once classed as a degenerate and would not long be entrusted with the knife. Neither soldiering nor Christianity should be judged by distortions.

War and Christianity can never be separated without danger to both. War without Christianity is hell. Christianity holding aloof from righteous war is cowardice and selfishness. True Christianity never weakened the efficiency of any soldier engaged in a righteous war in a righteous way. There is no power like that in a blow from one who knows that he is in the right.

What Jesus Had to Say Regarding the Use of Force and the Taking of Human Life

It is beside the point to argue that because Jesus did not Himself found a military monarchy He disapproved of the resort to arms in defense of humanity. We must not forget that He lived His life through in an era of universal peace. Rome in the lifetime of Jesus, as Professor Bacon has pointed out, gave complete religious liberty. Had Jesus taken up arms it would not have been in defense of His cause, but in a war of aggression, which He specifically denounced. That He foresaw that the spread of the principles of equality, justice, and liberty which He proclaimed, would be responsible for more wars than any other one cause — an indisputable fact in the light of history — is apparent from a memorable saying : " I came not to bring peace, but a sword." Jesus' use of physical force in the cleansing of the Temple and in the blasting of the fig tree, His instructions to His disciples on the night of His arrest,

And he that hath none, let him sell his cloak and buy a sword," His employment of vigorous moral force in the invectives against scribes and Pharisees, His constant use and sanction of judgments involving physical force, such as " He will miserably destroy those miserable men " ; " It were better for him if a great millstone were hanged about his neck and he were cast into the sea " ; " But the king was wroth; and he sent his armies and destroyed those murderers, and burned their city " ; " Every plant which my heavenly Father planted not, shall be rooted up " — only serve to reenf orce what Professor Bosworth has so well stated :

" The Christian witness in war asserts himself resolutely against the enemy with an invincible good will. He brings all the force of his being, physical and spiritual, to bear against the enemy with an unfailing good will. Force is absolutely non-moral. It is no more bad or good than is electricity. Moral quality appears only in the disposition of the man who uses force. Force may be applied to the mutilation of the body as it is by the surgeon, or to the destruction of the physical life, as it is by the executioner, and there is no immorality in the act so long as the disposition of him who performed it is free from all ill will."

As Sherwood Eddy has shown, the Old Testament forbids private murder in the sixth commandment, but the death penalty is enjoined six times in the chapter of the law immediately following.

Professor Fosdick has pointed out that the real essence of Jesus' teaching regarding the taking of life in a righteous war of defense must be sought, not in isolated texts which are liable to misinterpretation when quoted out of context, but in such a parable as that of the Good Shepherd. The good shepherd sees the wolf coming and he does not flee. He lays down his life, if necessary, righting for the sheep. But his object is not merely to make a sacrifice of his life. His object is to save the sheep. This involves the use of force on his part and the employing of every effort of which he is capable to either capture or kill the wolf. The shepherd is under no illusion that the wolf will be so impressed by his vicarious sacrifice in lying down and letting his life be taken that the ravenous beast, whose appetite has once been whetted with blood, will give up his previous intention of devouring the sheep after the shepherd has been disposed of. A shepherd who, without resisting, simply let the wolf kill him and did not employ every means in his power to dispose of the wolf, would be simply postponing for fifteen minutes the inevitable destruction of the sheep. If the sheep are to be killed anyway, what was gained by the vicarious death of the shepherd fifteen minutes earlier ?

It is not true, as often asserted, that the Sermon on the Mount forbids the use of force and the destruction of human life. The facts are that the Sermon on the Mount contains two, at first sight, contradictory teachings regarding the use of force. The first, familiar to all, is the injunction " Resist not evil." The second, no less mandatory but for some reason seldom quoted, is the implication that false prophets with the wolfish spirit are to be treated like corrupt trees that bring forth evil fruit. They are to be hewn down and cast into the fire. In reality there is no contradiction between these two passages. Non-resistance is not only the ideal way but it is also the only effective, practical method for two parties, both of whom are living within the kingdom of God, to settle their differences. Witness the league to settle disputes by arbitration between Great Britain and the United States. But just as surely, not only the sole practical way but also the ideal way, divinely sanctioned, for a party living within the kingdom to act when attacked by false prophets from outside — men with the instincts and methods of ravening wolves — is, as soon as they are known by their fruits to be corrupt trees, to hew them down and cast them into the fire. Surely the League to Enforce Peace would be hollow mockery were it not right for the international police force to employ force to enforce peace. The second injunction of Jesus is no less binding than the first. Indeed the Golden Rule, far from forbidding righteous war in defense of human rights, would seem to demand it. We are told to do unto others as we would have them do unto us — not to refrain from doing. No one has seen this more clearly than Dr. Bridgman:

" I think I see a literal application of the Golden Rule to my present attitude toward war. If I were a madman who had already killed helpless women and children, I should want myself to be killed before I did further harm, provided I could not otherwise be restrained from my devastating career. If I happened to be one of the leaders of the German people today, sharing in the duplicity, inhumanity, and lust for power that have marked the foreign policy of those same leaders, I should want, provided I still kept the Spirit of Jesus, to have America enter the war against Germany just as she has done."