Steering Through a Season of Decay
In the quiet corners of the British pulpit a century ago, John Henry Jowett spoke words that feel less like historical record and more like a contemporary diagnostic report. We live in a nation where the steady state of spiritual decline is no longer a pessimistic forecast; it is the visible geography of the American religious landscape. Save for a very few Bible-believing outposts, the lights are dimming. In such an hour, the temptation is to either retreat into a paralyzed nostalgia or to frantically adopt the effeminate cleverness of the world to stay relevant.
Jowett offers a third way, the better way. He writes:
“Now we may not be able to command intellectual power. Ours may not be the gifts of exegetical insight, and luminous interpretation, and forceful and unique expression. We may never astound men by a display of cleverness, or by massive argumentative structures compel their admiration. But there is another and a better way at our command. With the powers and means that are ours we can build a plain, simple, honest altar, and we can invoke and secure the sacred fire.“
There is a profound liberation in these words for those of us who recognize our own limitations. I have never claimed the title of an intellectual. If there was ever a ship carrying those particular gifts for myself, it sailed long ago, disappearing over the horizon alongside the many wasted hours of my youth. I look back at years spent in the aimless “vagrancy” Jowett warns against, hours that cannot be recovered, energy spent on things that did not profit.
Yet, the grace of God does not require us to be “big” mediums; it requires us to be clean ones. If the vessel is small, let it be an open and uninterrupted channel for the waters of God’s grace.
The crisis of our generation is not a lack of talent, but a lack of destination. We are, as Jowett vividly describes, “out on the ocean sailing,” but we have no destination. We are “out for anywhere,” and consequently, for nowhere in particular. This is the “peril of vacuity” that haunts the modern Christian life. We drift through our weeks, our services, and our labors, hoping to arrive at “glory” through some spiritual current of least resistance.
But the harbor is not reached by drifting; it is reached by steering. Jowett’s remedy is strikingly practical:
“Let us clearly formulate the end at which we aim. Let us put it into words. Don’t let it hide in the cloudy realm of vague assumptions… Let us take a pen in hand, and in order that we may still further banish the peril of vacuity let us commit to paper our purpose and ambition for the day. Let us give it the objectivity of a mariner’s chart: let us survey our course, and steadily contemplate our haven.“
To the young person standing on the threshold of a world that desperately needs the labors of the faithful: do not let your life be a vagrancy. We do not have the luxury of “wasting time” in an era of such rapid spiritual recession. The honor and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ demand an intentionality that “compels ourselves to name and register our ends.”
When we keep one end in view, the glory of God, everything else begins to pay tribute to that quest. Our studies, our mundane tasks, our conversations, and our private disciplines are “knitted together” by the pervasive influence of a common purpose.
If I cannot be “great” by worldly values, I can be “prayerfully ambitious to be pure, and sincere, and void of offence.” I can build the “plain, simple, honest altar” of a life dedicated to the word of God and the service of the Lord.
The decline of the churches will not be arrested by “massive argumentative structures” or “displays of cleverness.” It will be met by a generation that refuses to stammer when challenged for their mission, a generation that knows exactly what “urgent errand” they seek to serve their Lord with today.
Maybe stop sailing for “anywhere.” Instead, pick up the pen, survey the chart, and steer with a lofty, single, and imperial end: the glory of the One who redeemed us from our sin and called us to a crusade.
Pastor Thomas Irvin
George County Baptist Church
Lucedale, Mississippi
