In Depth:  Tim Horn

My father will be missed in several areas of Christian activity, especially Cranleigh Baptist Church and UCCF and by many people (family, friends, colleagues, adversaries).

Steve Timmis in his article, ‘A sacrifice too far’ (October EN), argued that the church should turn ‘good people’ away from full-time gospel ministry, where they work in the main with Christians, and rather encourage them to remain in ‘secular’ work so that they remain in close contact with non-Christians.

My interest in this issue is that I took the decision not to go into full-time gospel ministry, but instead to remain in secular work so that I would always be in contact with non-Christians. The decision was driven during my student days, when I formed an excellent group of vehemently non-Christian friends, was strangely (in my view!) overlooked for any leadership role in the Christian Union, and then stood and was rather surprisingly (in my view!) elected President of the College Student Union. At this stage, I realised that I was unusual as a Christian in that I had many more non-Christian contacts than a ‘normal’ Christian, and the decision to enter secular employment was confirmed.

It appears to me that it is becoming harder to ‘share the gospel’ with my non-Christian friends. Any direct approach (i.e. a mention of Jesus) is no longer met with polite (or even impolite) interest, leading to some form of discussion. It is just met with indifference and an unwillingness to continue the conversation.

In his book Death in the City, Francis Schaeffer put forward a different approach. He put it like this: ‘There is a time, and ours is such a time, when a negative message is needed before anything positive can begin. There must first be the message of judgement, the tearing down. There are times when we cannot expect a constructive revolution if we begin by over-emphasising the positive message… Unless [our friend] understands what is wrong, he will not be ready to listen to and understand the positive. I believe that much of our evangelistic and personal work is not clear simply because we are too anxious to get to the answer without having a man realise the real cause of his sickness, which is true moral guilt (and not just psychological guilt feelings) in the presence of God’.