During research for Jack Miller’s biography “Cheer Up!” I found an undated and unpublished chapter written by Jack entitled “Overview of the Booklet ‘A New Life.’”
I sent it to the Miller family and they did not recall having seen the chapter. Based on internal and external evidence, it is estimated that Jack wrote this unpublished chapter somewhere between 1988 to 1989.
From interviews it is clear that Jack and others—including Bill Viss who co-taught the Evangelism Module with Jack—had expressed concern that amidst the increasing popularity of the Sonship Module in the “Leadership Training Series” evangelism training and the Evangelism Module was falling into disuse.
In this unpublished chapter, Jack re-explains his own original vision for evangelism as foundational to discipleship and his purpose for the booklet “A New Life.”
The story of the booklet “A New Life” is interesting in itself, but Jack’s larger vision for evangelism and the foundations of discipleship is of utmost and vital importance.
Overview of the Booklet “A New Life”
During early 1973, I spent a great deal of energy and time studying the gospel. It seemed to me on the basis of my study that the message of the cross contains three things:
A. The facts—that is, the intellectual content of the message that human beings need in order to find salvation.
B. The assurance of God’s personal love—that is, the gospel as the cause of faith through the promise of God to the undeserving.
C. The saving power—that is, the power of the message to change the standing of the person with God and change the inward life.
But I asked myself, “Is there a fourth element in the picture that I have missed?”
I decided there was.
D. It was that the gospel is a preached message. A word of grace designed to be presented with persuasion, gentleness, and the authority of faith.
A message that has power as it is taken to people where they live and presented to them by believing hearts. Preaching the message of the cross by faith (both in formal and informal settings) is the divinely appointed means for bringing human beings to Christ. It is not a matter of personality but of proclamation of heavenly realities born out of the faith-perception of those who have learned to labor in prayer.
The essence of such preaching and witnessing is confident assurance. You catch it coming at you from every direction in the book of Acts and is typically described by one word “boldness.” The term does not refer to aggressive self-assertion. Instead, it is a synonym for humble faith in action. It means to “tell it all” with a keen believing awareness of the saving power of Christ combined with an extraordinary indifference to human opinion.
Such preaching of the gospel by faith inevitably brings forth fruit in all the world (Colossians 1:5-6). Paul summed it up concisely in the description of his own preaching and its effect on his hearers in 1 Thessalonians 1:4-8:
“Brothers love by God, we know that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words, but also with power, with the Holy Spirit, and with deep conviction. You know how we lived among you for your sake. You became imitators of us and of the Lord; in spite of severe suffering, you welcomed the message with the joy given by the Holy Spirit. As so you became a model to all the believers in Macedonia and Achaia. The Lord’s message rang out from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia—your faith in God has become known everywhere.”
“But how,” I asked myself, “do you get the faith to present the gospel like this?”—to have a belief in “the Lord’s message” that rings in all directions? Can you find this faith in yourself? My experience has been that the more I look inside myself for faith the less faith I find. But then the answer dawned on me as I continued to study the gospels, Acts, and the Pauline Epistles. The gospel is itself the cause of faith in those who hear it (Romans 10:1-17, and especially v. 17).
Therefore how can I grow in faith so that I may declare it with unshakable convictions to others? The answer: I must preach the gospel to myself as the instrument for believing, for “faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the preached word of Christ” (Romans 10:17).
Therefore I organized small groups at New Life Church. They were not very well organized because I was only gradually catching the vision myself. Still, in these groups we prayed often for God to open our own eyes and prepare a spiritual harvest among the lost. We also labored diligently to understand the gospel ourselves and to make the gospel message and its faith-building character the center of our own lives.
During these opening months of 1973 I worked with several others to develop the evangelistic booklet “A New Life” and started working with it in our small groups. We used the booklet to preach the gospel to one another until we were growing in our understanding and awareness of the gospel message as centered in a risen Christ.
I also emphasized the gospel and its power to our Wednesday night prayer meeting. I weekly preached the gospel to myself and to all who came. The singular focus of the prayer meeting was upon God’s willingness to hear our prayers because through faith in the gospel we were forever pardoned, accepted as righteous for Jesus’s sake, and established as his sons and daughters.
The prayer meeting grew rapidly and so did my faith. By faith I committed myself to acting on the promise of the gospel and not on my feelings. Rejecting my fears, I believed with childlike faith that the gospel was the power of God to salvation to everyone who believed it (Romans 1:16–17). I determined with God’s help to live and witness accordingly. It seemed to me that the stress of Scripture, especially in Isaiah and the book of Acts, was on its power of Christ to save all kinds of people as the Spirit applied the strong doctrine of the cross to their hearts.
This insight was confirmed in my mind by meditating on the form of the Great Commission given in Matthew 28:16–20. Here “going with the gospel” and divine empowerment appeared to run on parallel tracks. As you go with the message (v. 18), you carry with you the promise of the conquering presence of Christ expressed in the awesome words, “Lo, I am with you all the days” (v. 20).
It was, then, against this background that I decided to “tithe my time” so that a certain portion of it would be given every week to witnessing to people who were really different from me. They could be down and out or up and out or far out. I quipped inwardly as I thought of the implications of this kind of witnessing by faith. I definitely did not feel like doing any of this outreach, but my face was resolutely set against any giving in to my feelings.
In fact, the more my mind was set on reaching out in new ways and with new vigor, the less I felt like doing it. Negative thoughts would swarm into my mind, and for about a week before going forth into uncharted waters my mental world was troubled with shadows of doubt.
In late July of 1973 I decided to begin by reaching out to those who were “far out.” Very far out. I resolved to witness to a motorcycle gang that I had heard operated in nearby Glenside.
Once that decision has been made the darkness really settled in. I especially remember feeling very alone and weak. Dimly aware I was under satanic attack, I recruited people to pray for me—actually every Christian I met. Then I gave myself to worship, centering my whole thought life on the greatness of the gospel message. I just kept preaching the gospel to myself until I was full of praise.
But I knew I needed more prayer behind my venture into boldness. So I committed myself to launch forth one Wednesday evening after the prayer meeting.
So after prayer meeting on a sizzling hot evening early in the August of 1973, I drove over with a friend to a drive-in nearby Edge Hill and witnessed to a group of partying teenagers and older young people. I expected a motorcycle gang, but this gathering looked very “far out” to me. There were about fifty young people out there, and I couldn’t see anyone among them who did not seem high, either, on drugs or alcohol. It began as a shaking encounter with some of the tougher ones trying to frighten me off.
Inwardly I kept praying, trusting, and waiting for God to act. At times I felt like I was trying to sell refrigerators to Eskimos. Still, the wilder the action under the glaring lights of the drive-in the more confident I became. Deep in my heart I rested on Christ to conquer. I believed that the gospel would take over the party and that someone from this group was going to come to know Christ. God’s answer to my prayer soon followed.
A young man came running into the light swinging a quart beer bottle. Here was what seemed to be the wildest of the lot. I ended up talking with him, a young man named Bob Heppe. Bob was hungry for life, but was looking for it in all the wrong places. He was very much attracted to the booklet “A New Life.” I left a copy with him, and soon he knew its contents well. For about four months we talked about Christ’s power to give a new life. Gradually I could see that Bob was getting addicted to Christ. The Crucified One was conquering!
In late October, Bob unexpectedly turned sober, and said he wanted to come to church with me. He had become a Christian through faith in the gospel!
At the time the booklet had a blue and white cover, and though the pictorial layout was effective in communicating the gospel, the design throughout was still pretty amateurish. The context was powerful because it focused all attention on the awesome saving power of the Lord Jesus Christ. But it certainly had need of further refinement.
In the later 1970’s Charlie “Chip” Howell then of Presbyterian Evangelistic Fellowship did a great deal to make the booklet known throughout the United States. It is now translated into several languages, including Chinese and African languages.
Today the booklet has gone through a great deal of reworking and polishing. The illustrations have been skillfully executed by Robert Smith, and Paul Greenmeyer has worked with me to improve continuity and coherence in the layout and text.
Today there are many people that I know about that God was pleased to bring to Himself through the study of this booklet. Some of them have become key leaders in church and mission.
For example, Bob Heppe is completing his Ph.D. degree at the University of Pennsylvania, is an elder at New Life Church in Glenside, and serves as field director for World Harvest Mission in Western Europe. He is also noted for his effectiveness in mobilizing and training others in the use of the booklet “A New Life.” A number of people in the U.S., Western Europe, and Africa have become Christians through presenting the gospel using the booklet “A New Life.”
But why another evangelistic booklet?
But why develop another evangelistic booklet? Are there not already some excellent ones available?
There certainly are some excellent evangelistic pamphlets available today. This booklet was definitely not produced to compete with these other booklets.
“A New Life” was born out of the Spirit’s mysterious quickening of the vision of Christ at New Life Church. It’s not the work of professionals at all. From the point of view of the skilled communicator, the book attempts to say too much. It also has in it a certain exuberance, an unrestrained boasting about Christ. Some Christians would say that it overpromises what grace can do to renew hurt, broken, and wicked people.
Perhaps that is so. Yes, let me acknowledge the work of grace sometimes takes years to soak into our lives. Grace definitely is for the long haul and must overcome much resistance in our lives. But isn’t much of our problem right here? We tend to resist grace by underestimating what the Lord of grace has done and can do for us? We minimize in our hearts what He has done in His work for us in His atonement and is now doing in us by the Spirit. So then the problem lies not so much with grace, but with our tendency to overestimate what we can do by our own moral will power and in this manner hinder the Spirit of Christ by our unbelief.
At least at our New Life Church we have come to see ourselves as all too often our own worst enemies in the warfare of grace. As a church and as leaders we have had to struggle constantly with a personal and group pride which armors us against intrusions of grace. But from the first beginnings of our congregation (now several congregations) we have labored to humble ourselves in prayer. During those first days of bitter sweet revival, many of us were coming to see our own sinfulness and the fulness of Christ with new clarity, and our desire was simply to express Christ’s fulness in a booklet that gave Him the credit for His awesome saving power.
Therefore the booklet emerged out of the conquering of our proud hearts by the King. However imperfectly it has been done, I wrote the booklet in order to make known to the lost the shared confidence of God’s people in the gospel message. We believe the gospel message expresses something almost too big to put into words: the glorious transforming power of God revealed to us in the message of the cross.
This grace emphasis is the distinctive feature of the booklet. Actually there should be no need to apologize for its lifting up of the conquering power of Christ through grace. Here we have our hands on a message about omnipotence moving from eternity into time. And omnipotence—well, we should expect it to do big things. So do we exaggerate when we say with faith: it just happens to be true when this booklet insists that the gospel has the power to change anyone. I have seen many, many people of all sorts brought to faith just because of the glad elevation of Christ’s saving omnipotence proclaimed in this evangelistic instrument.
The key idea, then, to be found in this booklet can be summed up in one word: fullness. It is a call to be full of faith in responding to the fulness of grace in Christ. It celebrates before the church and the world the loving, saving majesty of a crucified Lord ascended to the Father’s right hand and now sovereignly conquers sinners!
The roots and purpose of this booklet
In the booklet the strategy for expressing this fulness is clear. If you study it, you will discover that it is more comprehensive than some evangelistic booklets in its treatment of sin, the work of Christ, the nature of faith and repentance, and the way to live the Christian life after conversion.
I think for their own purposes other booklets may have features that are superior to “A New Life.” Often the standout purpose of these booklets is to present the fundamentals of salvation in a readable and brief form. From what I have seen of these booklets they often effectively realize their objective.
The booklet “A New Life” reflects this same concern for simplicity and clarity in the presenting of the gospel message. But it also has different roots and purposes.
Let me explain. I have said this booklet was born within the context of the Christian church. Specifically it was the fruit of our joint efforts at New Life Church to mobilize every member of the local church to witness. Its twofold aim is to communicate faith to others through fostering faith in the church member who uses it. The idea is that church renewal and outreach go together.
Hence “A New Life” Booklet is a witnessing tool, and it is also a revival booklet. It functions as witnessing booklet by calling unsaved people to look to Christ in His fulness, and as a call to revival it calls the witnessing Christian to growth in faith. It does this by focusing on the greatness of Christ’s saving power as the constant and sole source of growth in grace.
It is, in effect, almost a small theology book centered on the saving power of Christ. You might even call it a pictorial catechism outlining the saving acts of God in His redemption.
Seen from another angle, it seeks to be a praise book celebrating the power of God’s salvation. The aim of this booklet is to get the church member using the booklet to forget about himself— and even to forget about the booklet— and devote himself or herself to worship of the glory of the Father revealed in the gospel. Thus the content of the booklet leads to praise and praise is the compelling motive for witness. Worship and witness, confession of God’s greatness in worship and confession of our sins, and celebration of His forgiving grace.
Five distinctive ideas in the booklet:
“A New Life” has five distinctive features or ideas controlling it.
1. The first idea concerns the nowness of the gospel presentation and the present working of Christ by His Spirit.
The message has for its centerpiece the finished work of Christ. Christ died and rose again in the past.
The booklet, though is intensely focused on the nowness of the love of God expressed in the form of a gospel promise to be claimed in faith by thirsty hearts. The Crucified One is now become the Lord of all, and a life-giving Spirit. His rule is sovereign today and as the risen Lord He is the One who sends His Spirit to open hearts to the indiscriminate promise of grace as stated in John 3:16.
2. The second idea concerns hope.
The gospel is the free offer of God’s saving love to sinners. “A New Life” attempts to express this hope in relationship to the deep despair of modern people. It seeks to banner forth this biblical promise: there is complete forgiveness and abundant life for those who repent and unite themselves to Christ by faith.
The gospel is set forth as God’s promised power for conquering and transforming the worst sinner—or the most self-righteous one. The intent of the booklet is not to present the gospel as a magic wand which waves away old habits without a struggle, but it does declare that the message of the cross cuts sin at the root, wherever it is received with faith and repentance.
3. The third idea concerns our moralistic tendency in church and society to trivialize the gospel through trivializing sin.
The booklet stresses that the gospel has saving power for sinners alone, not for people who are only half-lost and therefore get only half-saved through a negotiated settlement with God. The emphasis on this booklet is on sin not only as a wrong act as in religious moralism, but on sin as separation from a holy God.
4. The fourth idea concerns human sinfulness as a state of self-centered blindness and the gospel as God’s saving wisdom.
Moralistic religion teaches that human beings can be renewed by improving their self-control and exercising will-power. But the booklet states that this is pretty stupid: “wanting control of our lives” is just what is wrong with us! We are creatures who are entirely dependent on our Creator for everything we have, and we have no ultimate control over anything!
The gospel as applied by the Spirit, however, can heal us of foolish desire to “play God” in controlling our lives and those of others.
5. The fifth idea concerns the need for every Christian to keep growing in the Christian life by daily drinking of Christ’s grace.
Essentially the booklet teaches that you keep growing in the same way you first came to Christ. The Christian life begins in prayer: in a thirst to know Christ. So the essence of coming to Christ is a contrite, seeking heart trusting exclusively in Him and in His salvation. The idea of this booklet is that you never leave the gospel behind and that you never leave believing and repenting behind you.
This booklet attempts to undercut our instinctive religious professionalism, the self-dependence which often creeps into the lives of those who are professionally trained as theologians or evangelists. I am thinking of my own unconscious and almost instinctive drift into the attitude that I am a self-assured victor bringing hope to struggling victims. Of course, we are victors in Christ, but the victories come only as we keep on preaching the gospel to ourselves and only as we in deep humility keep on praying for the fulness of Christ’s grace.
Dr. Clair Davis called my attention to a succinct and wondering summary of it all in a commentary by one of the greatest Reformers of the sixteenth century. The man wrote,
“In God … is the fountain of life, righteousness, power and wisdom: but this fountain is hidden and inaccessible to us. Yet in Christ the wealth of all these things is laid before us that we may seek them in Him. Of His own will He is ready to flow to us, if we only make way for Him by faith. He declares briefly that we should not seek any blessing at all outside of Christ …
First, he shows that we are utterly destitute and empty of spiritual blessings. For Christ is rich that He may help our failure, support our poverty and satisfy our hunger and thirst.
Secondly, he warns us that so soon as we forsake Christ we seek in vain the slightest morsel of good, since God has willed that whatever is good shall dwell in Him alone. Therefore, we shall find angels and men dry, heaven empty, the earth barren and all things worthless if we want to partake of God’s gifts otherwise than through Christ.
Thirdly, he reminds us that we need not fear that we shall lack anything if we only draw upon the fulness of Christ, which is in every way so perfect that we shall find it to be an inexhaustible foundation indeed.”
In evangelism, then, the heart of the enterprise lies in constant rediscovery of Christ as the “inexhaustible fountain indeed,” the fountain of life issuing from the unconditional, unmerited love of the Heavenly Father.
Wherever there is the humility of faith, the fountain of God’s love is constantly rediscovered, and the thirsty unsaved are drawn to Christ as they see our hearts satisfied and overflowing with grace. How this drinking of Christ takes place, both individually and corporately is the subject matter of the chapter which follows.
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