Many years ago, Elsworth Kalas spoke on the importance of reading biographies and biographical preaching. I think he is right; biographies, particularly of ministers, have been hugely important in my growth. Biographies show us how people in the past thought and acted, for good and bad. I suspect that if there is a biography about someone, he or she was interesting, courageous, or visionary in ways that are worth learning and thinking about.
In the past two years, I have read biographies of Asbury, John Newton, John Hus, William Tyndale, and the one I am reading now is Martyn Lloyd-Jones. My all-time favorite, though, is John Nelson, an early Methodist preacher. John Wesley's Journal, while not a biography, has truly been a school and guide to me.
In the Lloyd-Jones biography, I am marking up pages right and left. One thing I just read sticks out. Immediately after WWII, he spoke on ecumenical unity: "if we united all denominations and added all the powers which each has together, even that would not create spiritual life. The burial of many bodies in the same cemetery does not lead to ressurrection."
Not long after, he spoke on the causes of church decline: " the churches lost their significance and power because the authority of the Bible had been undermined and...[churches] had become too politically minded... we had stressed the social aspect for the past fifty years and men had turned their backs on us"
Interestingly, when I asked Elsworth Kalas why he thought Methodism was in such decline, he said pretty much the same thing. Speaking of a biography, one on Elsworth Kalas would be a great idea!!
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