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Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981) and Twentieth-Century Evangelicalism
by John Brencher
Paternoster Press
267 pp.; $49.99, paper
In the opinion of many who heard him personally, Martyn Lloyd-Jones was the greatest preacher of his day in the English-speaking world. And also maybe in the Welsh-speaking world. Yet as the experience of early evangelical history suggests, the permanent legacy of powerful preachers is hard to measure.
The influence of George Whitefield, probably the most effective public speaker of any sort in the English-speaking world over the last three centuries, has been much harder to specify than that of his contemporary (and, despite difficulties, friend) John Wesley. Wesley, though by no means a shabby preacher, left a concrete, researchable legacy not only in Methodism but in paradigm-shaping evangelical initiatives like lay-preaching, small-group meetings, and the publication of hymns. By contrast, Whitefield left a style of preaching that, however influential, was much more difficult to measure. Similarly, it is not surprising that nearly a quarter century after the death of Lloyd-Jones, memories of his influence linger powerfully, but the exact character of his enduring influence is difficult to state with precision.
Lloyd-Jones' memory has been kept before the evangelical public by a remarkably thorough biography from his younger friend, Iain Murray (2 vols. of David Martyn Lloyd-Jones,1982, 1990). It is certainly a concrete legacy of great importance that Lloyd-Jones encouraged Murray in the founding of the Banner of Truth Trust, which has continued to supply the Christian reading public with a nourishing diet of classics, admonitions, and history from an evangelical Calvinist standpoint.
Other interesting books on Lloyd-Jones have been published by friends and family members, including Christopher Catherwood's Martyn Lloyd-Jones: A Family Portrait (1995) and a volume edited by Catherwoood, Martyn Lloyd-Jones: Chosen By God (1986). Above all, there remains the written fruit of Lloyd-Jones' sermons and addresses—as of February 2003 an incredible 69 titles are available from 14 different publishers in the United States alone, with smaller numbers in print for the U.K., Canada, Australia, and elsewhere. There is no shortage, in other words, of available reading both for those who remember Lloyd-Jones and those for whom he is entirely a historical figure.
In this ample literature, however, there has not been much analytical, contextual, or critical assessment. To those angles on Lloyd-Jones, John Brencher's new book makes a significant contribution. Brencher was a longtime minister in Britain who sat under Lloyd-Jones' preaching and who later served as president of an association, the Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches, that Lloyd-Jones had done much to encourage. The book arises from a doctoral dissertation that Brencher wrote late in his ministerial career and that he has now published in revised form in his retirement.
It is a book that appreciates Lloyd-Jones for all of his larger-than-life singularity: a promising physician-turned-preacher, a Welshman active most of his professional life in England, a passionate Christian intellectual, an captionruistic midwife to many evangelical enterprises (like InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students), and a preaching lighthouse at Westminster Chapel in London during World War II and the tumultuous decades following. Yet it is also a book that, more than anything that has yet appeared, dares to question if Lloyd-Jones always made the right choices in his momentous preaching career. Brencher acknowledges Lloyd-Jones' power as a preacher, for example, but wonders if he neglected the potential of parish ministry at Westminster Chapel. He praises him for the conviction of his preaching, but asks if he should have done more in preparing the next generation of evangelical Calvinists. He acknowledges him for his fidelity to Wales, the Welsh language, and Welsh culture, but thinks Lloyd-Jones could have done more to help the Welsh churches about which he always spoke with such affection. Above all, Brencher values Lloyd-Jones' importance for reviving evangelical exegesis, evangelical publication, evangelical student work, evangelical scholarship, and evangelical preaching in mid-century Britain, but also asks if his ecclesiastical separatism did not lead him to squander much of the good he otherwise accomplished.
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