SOMETHING MUST BE KNOWN AND FELT
A Missing Note in Today’s Christianity
By Stuart Olyott
Evangelical Movement of Wales.
150 pages. £4.90 plus postage
ISBN 978 1 783 970 674
Stuart Olyott is something of a prophet to contemporary evangelicalism. As such what he has to say is usually both encouraging and at the same time uncomfortable.
His opening paragraphs ring true and rightly disturb us. ‘Today’s Christianity is largely composed of doctrine (believing the right things), ethics (behaving the right way) and methodology (doing church and evangelism in the best possible way). It is a three-legged stool, but it is not the same shape as the three-legged stool of God’s Word. There we find that methodology is not of any great importance. The three legs on which biblical religion stands are doctrine, ethics and expe- rience – God’s revealed truth is believed, it is lived out and it is felt. It impacts the soul. If we forget this we will eventually lose biblical religion altogether.’ This hits home. Many of today’s church plants proceed with methods which are likely to work just as readily as if you were forming a luncheon club or sports gathering for a certain sociological age group. Many of today’s sermons (my own included) can be technically proficient but powerless. Listeners are fascinated by new Bible knowledge but lives are not changed.
