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THE PASSIONATE FEW ARE FEWER
Frank Boreham was a passionate preacher - and had been
since the age of 17. He was also a great reader - having, early in his
ministry commenced the habit of buying and reading a new book each week.
He loved his God, his wife and family, his preaching, the beauty of
nature, the game of cricket - and more. Apart from being a man of
proclamation, he was also a man of literature and letters.
Frank William Boreham was born on Friday 3 March 1871,
the first of eight boys and two girls. He was born in historic Tunbridge
Wells, England. Though from an Anglican family, Frank was baptised in the
Baptist Church in his teens. After involvement with the Open Air Mission
he entered Spurgeon’s College to train for the Ministry. At 24 he went to
New Zealand to commence his pastoral ministry. After some twelve years in
New Zealand he took up churches in Tasmania and Victoria, Australia.
As a young man he developed the habit of buying and
reading a new book each week. He read widely and well. He was also a
prolific writer, having written hundreds of letters, more than 50 books
and, in over 47 years (from 1912 to 1959), more than two and a half
thousand newspaper articles and weekly editorials, especially for the
Hobart Mercury and the Melbourne Age.
His preaching commenced when he was a teenager and
continued after his formal retirement from the pastoral-preaching
ministry, with regular lunchtime sermons at Melbourne’s Scots Church until
his death at 84.
While the greatest part of Frank Boreham’s life was
spent in Australia he travelled on a preaching tour after his retirement.
While in Edinburgh, Scotland, he was introduced to a group of ministers
as:
'The Man whose name is on all our lips,
whose books are on all our
shelves,
and whose illustrations are in
all our sermons.'
Once, following
his retirement, he was reading Arnold Bennett’s Literary Taste. As
he read he was captivated by Bennett’s explanation of why a classic is a
classic. He then wrote on this and developed the theme in one of his
essays in the book, Boulevards of Paradise, (1944). The enduring
significance and greatness of the classics ‘is maintained, Mr. Bennett insists, by the passionate
few. The phrase is his own, and he repeats it in sentence after
sentence. "The fame of classical authors is made and maintained by a
passionate few." "lt is by the passionate few that the renown of
genius is kept alive from one generation to another." And so on: Mr.
Bennett’s pages are peppered with the phrase. Everything depends on the
passionate few.
Now in the loftier realm with which I, as a minister,
am concerned, I find this philosophy strangely impressive and wonderfully
comforting. I am not to be too much alarmed by the stony indifference of
the crowd. I am not to become too much discouraged or dismayed by the
apathy of the multitude…The really important thing is the creation of a
passionate few, and, the more the numbers of that nucleus multiply, and
the more passionate those passionate souls become, the greater will grow
the glory of that Name that must eventually cause every other name to
pale….It follows that those who read intelligently and sympathetically the
works that have been born of an author’s passion will feel, as they turn
his pages, the glow of that spiritual flame. They will be infected by the
subtle agitation of the writers, and every reader thus infected represents
an addition to the ranks of the passionate few. The best reader is the man
who best catches the spirit of the writer.
Boreham, examining Bennett’s comments, reveals three
important elements in maintaining and passing on the passion (be it for
the classics of literature or music, or, as in Boreham’s major focus in
passionately passing on faith in Christ). These three elements are:
1.
Total enjoyment of, and immersion in, the persons/authors
and their creative outflow.
2.
Articulating the passion that grows out of that enjoyment
and sharing the company of like minded people who have caught the same
passion.
3.
Telling others, who know little or nothing about that
passion, what it is that enables them to find such passion and enjoyment.
Frank Boreham acknowledged the stony indifference of
the crowd and the apathy of the multitude, and emphasised the significance
of the passionate few. He especially applied these ideas to the need for
passionately being involved with Jesus Christ and passionately passing on
faith in Christ to others.
However, since Frank Boreham penned his poignant
pointers to a passionate faith, the passionate few have become fewer, and
the stony indifference of the crowd and the apathy of the multitude have
increased.
These days it is difficult to find people being very
passionate about much at all - unless it’s some fairly controversial or
extreme issue - and then, again, it tends to be a much smaller ‘passionate
few’ than there might have been a couple of decades ago in relation to the
same issues.
In a recent book, How Now Shall We Live?
(Tyndale House, 1999), Charles W. Colson, along with contributor, Nancy
Pearcey, raises some of the problems that have developed in Western
thinking since the 1960s. These philosophical changes have been labelled,
postmodernism.
Colson states:
‘In postmodernism, there is no objective, universal truth; there is only
the perspective of the group, whatever the group may be:
African-Americans, women, gays, Hispanics, and the list goes on. In
postmodernism, all viewpoints, all lifestyles, all beliefs and behaviors
are regarded as equally valid. Institutions of higher learning have
embraced this philosophy so aggressively that they have adopted campus
codes enforcing political correctness. Tolerance has become so important
that no exception is tolerated.
But if all ideas are equally valid, as postmodernism
insists, then no idea is really worth our allegiance; nothing is worth
living or dying for - even arguing about. And this climate of apathy can
actually make it harder than ever to witness to the truth of Christianity.
In the past, Christians proclaiming their faith might expect to encounter
a vigorous debate over the rational grounds for belief, but today the same
message is likely to be met with bored indifference.’
Colson then goes on to illustrate this very attitude.
He recalls an invitation to speak at the Yale Law
School in 1996. Christian students there had organised a forum to deal
with the provocative question of how Yale had contributed to the
undermining of the rule of law. Colson was asked to come and speak on the
topic. He expected strong reactions - if not something of a riot - to his
presentation. He assumed that, at least, there would be some strong and
passionate reaction and debate.
There was nothing - except polite indifference!
Students listened and took some notes, but otherwise
did not react in any way. Few questions were asked during the question and
answer time, and most of those came from the Christian students who had
invited Colson. None of his premises or claims were challenged or debated.
He states:
‘Debate can be unpleasant at times, but at least it presupposes that there
are truths worth defending, ideas worth fighting for. In our postmodernist
age, however, your truths are yours, my truths are mine, and none are
significant enough to get passionate about. And if there is no truth, then
we cannot persuade one another by rational arguments. All that’s left is
sheer power - which opens the door to a new form of fascism.’
If you think that postmodernism has nothing to do with
you; that it only affects young people or academics - think again! As
leading Christian apologist and speaker, Ravi Zacharias, recently told
pastors and church leaders in Singapore: ‘You’re in it!’
The only real response to the relativism of today, with
the accompanying stony indifference of the crowd and the apathy of the
multitude, remains the influence of the passionate few - especially those
who are passionate about Jesus Christ, the One who still remains the Way,
and the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6).
Are you passionate about
anything? Are you one of the passionate few?
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