Leadership Journal

The words rang out one Sunday morning in the fictional First Church in the fictional, comfortable town of Raymond. The speaker was a tramp who had walked, mid-service, up the center aisle. "I get puzzled when I see so many Christians living in luxury and singing 'Jesus, I my cross have taken, all to leave and follow Thee,' and remember how my wife died in a tenement in New York City, gasping for air.

"It seems to me," he continued, "there's an awful lot of trouble in the world that somehow wouldn't exist if all the people who sing such songs went and lived them out. I suppose I don't understand. But what would Jesus do?"

The following week, First Church's pastor, Henry Maxwell, challenged his congregation to live up to their faith by asking themselves that same question, "What would Jesus do?" and act accordingly regardless of personal cost.

This is the story of one of the most-read religious novels of all time, In His Steps. The writer, Charles Sheldon, was himself a Congregational minister. Published serially beginning in 1896, Sheldon's story captured people's imaginations. Over the next 60 years, In His Steps sold more than 8 million copies.

Though it inspired countless readers, few have confused Sheldon's novel with great literature. Today its ideals seem naïve. But Pastor Sheldon himself, while idealistic, read the Bible daily, prayed frequently, and was a surprisingly practical minister.

Everyone knew that Sheldon could tell a story. In fact, he told over 50 such stories, often reading them aloud in his pulpit to packed houses on Sunday nights before they were published.

But the thing that most endeared Sheldon to his contemporaries was his obsession to secure material, social, and spiritual relief for suffering people. As a pastor, he made it his business to find out the needs of every class of people-especially those disadvantaged by the prejudices of others: blacks, women, the poor, and the unemployed. When he saw a human need, he did what he could to meet it.

Doing, doing, doing, and urging others to do-this was Sheldon's specialty.

Son of a Congregational minister, Sheldon grew up in the Dakota Territory in a log cabin he himself helped build. Young Sheldon, writes biographer Timothy Miller, "hunted with the Dakotas, fished with them, slept with them on the open prairie, and learned some of their language." This not only produced a warmly unprejudiced person, but also gave him a special kinship with working folks.

Sheldon also drank in the Bible from an early age, as "each morning the family would sit together in the log cabin and read aloud, each member of the family old enough to participate taking two verses in turn."

In his first pastorate in Waterbury, Connecticut, Sheldon attended not just to the souls but the daily needs of his congregation and the town. After "boarding around" (living for a week at a time) with 45 families of his 175-member church, he launched a series of practical works.

He planted a vegetable garden on church property and sold the produce. He began Bible study groups and a successful reading club that attracted 200 youth and led to a drive for a town library. When typhoid killed more than two dozen townspeople, he worked with a young doctor to convince people to move their wells farther from their pigpens.

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