#9 - 50 People Every Christian Should Know

I recently finished 50 People Every Christian Should Know by Warren Wiersbe. It's a brief (4-8 pages) biographical sketch of 50 people that Wiersbe thinks we should know. I liked a lot of the people, but there were enough obscure folks whom I wondered - why is he/she in here? And there were quite a few folks that really should be in there who are not - like Calvin and Luther and Wycliffe just to name a few. But the books is not titled - the 50 greatest people every Christian should know! So Wiersbe had the right to put whomever he want to in there!A lot of the 50 people were from England and quite a few were from the Chicago area. They also seemed to predominantly come from the 19th to early 20th century. Some of the names I knew a lot about like Charles Spurgeon and J. Hudson Taylor. Others I knew nothing about like Christmas Evans and Andrew Bonar. Others I recognized their names but not much else. I particularly enjoyed learning about Robert Murray McCheyne, Alexander Maclaren, Charles Jefferson and G. Campbell Morgan.

As usual, here are a few gems:

• "Let my name be forgotten, let me be trodden under the feet of all men, if Jesus may be thereby be glorified...Let us look above names and parties; let Jesus be our all in all...I care not who is uppermost. I know my place...even to be the servant of all." [George Whitefield]
• The zealous pastor used to rise at four each morning so that he might devote hours to prayer and study of the Bible. [Charles Simeon]
• "Remember this, that you cannot commit some loved sin in private, and perform the work of the ministry in public, with facility and acceptance...Preach the gospel of the grace of God intelligently, affectionately, and without shame - all the contents of the great box, from predestination to glorification...Let the preacher influence himself; let him reach his own heart, if he would reach the hearts of others; if he would have others feel, he must feel himself." [Christmas Evans]
• "The best part of all Christian work is that part which only God sees...Many want salvation, but they do not want the Savior." [Andrew Bonar]
• "God's work done in God's way will never lack God's supplies." [J. Hudson Taylor]
• "This surely is a good rule: whenever you see a fault in any other man, or any other church, look for it in yourself and in your own church." [Phillips Brooks]
• [In talking about people saying they don't have enough time] "We cannot look seriously in one another's faces and say it is want of time. It is want of intention. It is want of determination. It is want of method. It is want of motive. It is want of conscience. It is want of heart. It is want of anything and everything but time." [Alexander Whyte]
• "No man can long be interesting in the pulpit who does not think. No man can think wisely who does not study...Popularity is the most fearful of all tests." [Charles Jefferson]
• "Preaching that costs nothing accomplishes nothing." [John Henry Jowett]

I think my favorite person amongst the 50 was Alexander Maclaren. He was a Scottish preacher who lived from 1826-1910. After a couple of stops, Maclaren preached at Union Chapel in Manchester for 45 years.

Wiersbe described him as "a perfectionist and an idealist. Hence he was never satisfied with his own work." Maclaren was described as one of the best preachers of his day by his contemporaries which included C.H. Spurgeon, R.W. Dale, Joseph Parker and Henry Liddon. He was an expositor of the word who had been known to spend 60 hours on a single sermon. "He studied a passage in the original language, meditated on it, sought its divine truth, and then 'opened it up' in such a way that we wonder why we didn't see it before. No artificial divisions, no forced alliterations, nothing sensational; just divine truth presented so simply that any listener could understand and apply it."

Maclaren's strengths were devotion and discipline. "He was devoted to the Lord, and he walked with the Lord." But despite all of his success in ministry and great blessing from the Lord, "Maclaren was haunted all his life by a sense of failure." He seemed to have a melancholy streak. He seemed to be quite humble too - "To efface one's self is one of a preacher's first duties. The herald should be lost in his message."

I identify with many of the traits of Alexander Maclaren, except of course, the great preacher part.

This was a good book to read. The variety is its strength and weakness. There will undoubtedly be several people you don't identify with but hopefully, there will be many that inspire and challenge you too.