Below is an excerpt from an interview conducted by Carl Henry for Christianity Today. Lloyd-Jones answer is a rebuke to the pragmatism that has sought to hijack Biblical Christianity.
CH – You and I met in 1966, I believe, to discuss the projected Berlin World Congress on Evangelism. You declined to be either a participant or observer. You were also, I think, the only minister of a major church in London that did not cooperate in the Graham crusades? What kept you on the sidelines?
MLJ – This is a very vital and difficult matter. I have always believed that nothing but a revival – a visitation of the Holy Spirit, in distinction from an evangelistic campaign – can deal with the situation of the church and of the world. The Welsh Presbyterian Church had roots in the great eighteenth-century evangelical revival, when the power of the Spirit of God came upon preachers and churches, and large numbers were converted. I have never been happy about organized campaigns. In the 1820s a very subtle and unfortunate change took place, especially in the United States, from Azahel Nettleton’s emphasis on revival to Charles G Finney’s on evangelism. There are two positions. When things were not going well, the old approach was for ministers and deacons to call a day of fasting and prayer and to plead with God to visit them with power. Today’s alternative is an evangelistic campaign: ministers ask, “Whom shall we get as evangelist?” Then they organize and ask God’s blessing on this. I belong to the old school.
