A Poor Shoe Salesman Becomes an Evangelistic Success
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May 15, 2007There was so much feedback from yesterday’s blog; I wanted to insert some additional thoughts today. It was pointed out that I should have focused on diligence or celebrity as keys to why people get heard instead of for their wealth. I was going to head down the diligence track soon, because that is what, for the most part, produces wealth, when combined with excellence and applied wisdom. The Pilgrims were praised as good examples of poor people whose voice was heard despite my claim that poor wise men have no voice. Of course, there will always be exceptions - Mother Theresa being one of them. The pilgrims who came over to America 400 years ago had no need of currency once they got here, but it took a great sum of money to charter an ocean-going vessel from one continent to another. Further, the Pilgrim work ethic, later named the Protestant work ethic, is largely responsible for America becoming the greatest economic super power in the world. Another example set forth was Dwight L. Moody, the great evangelist led to the Lord by a poor shoe salesman. Actually, D.L. Moody was the shoe salesman led to Christ by a Sunday school teacher, named Edward Kimble. D.L. Moody went on to become close friends with Henry Parsons Crowell, the great cereal tycoon and founder of Quaker Oats. We honor and draw attention to the great evangelistic work of D.L. Moody and what a passionate preacher he was, but we forget the fact that without the tremendous financial support of Henry Parsons Crowell, and other influential Chicago businessmen, we may never have heard of D.L. Moody. Another example of what you often don’t see… A number of businessmen were so impacted by the ministry of Billy Sunday that they decided to invest some of their wealth to set up a crusade and invite Mordecai Hamm to speak to their group. Even though it never became a huge evangelistic success… one night a man named Billy Graham attended his meeting and decided to become a follower of Christ himself. The point here is that we often hear about men like Billy Sunday, Billy Graham or D.L. Moody but rarely hear about the financially successful businessmen who funded the ministries in the first place, making the outreach possible. We don’t hear about them, largely because they don’t want the glory and they are used to being misunderstood and often maligned.
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If the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous...well that can't be \"heavenly riches\" because the wicked don't have that! Do they?
Prov 13:22 A good man leaves an inheritance for his children's children,
but a sinner's wealth is stored up for the righteous.
Bill makes an interesting point about staying in your calling.
The truth is that we all must learn to be clear about what God has called us to do and be busy about doing exactly that. As we do, may God give us the voice that He has called us to have.
One of the pitiful truths associated with this one, however, is that the Church has marginalized the value of anyone whose \"calling\" is something other than being in a pulpit or on a mission field.
Had these businessmen that Michael mentioned decided that their calling was in the pulpit, and had they then abandoned their call to the business world, they would've been impoverished preachers with no voice and no influence.
Shame on us for devaluing the work of those whose calling is in places we haven't expected. Their influence in those places might be difficult to measure by many of our standards, but I'm guessing that at least some of those businessmen had an incredible impact through their work, and not just by funding the work of traditional ecclesiastical ministers.