Having just joined the staff of the Faith Mission Bible College in Edinburgh I decided I ought to include in my reading of the lives of preachers, Andrew Woolsey’s biography of Duncan Campbell. I first read this more than 20 years ago and have thoroughly enjoyed re-reading it, having, over the years become familiar with some of the names and places mentioned.

Campbell, a Highlander, came to faith after a period of soul searching and really never looked back. The workers of the Faith Mission were instrumental in his first encounters with the Gospel, and after a period in the armed forces, having served in the Flanders Campaign towards the end of the second World War, Duncan Campbell studied at the Mission’s Edinburgh College before joining their ranks as an evangelist and itinerant preacher and then later becoming a Church of Scotland Minister.

Campbell was mightily and extraordinarily used of God in various outbreaks of revival in Scotland and, as such, his example forces us to be cautious in seeking to draw lessons from his life. So much of his ministry was exercised in the context of revival when things are from from ‘normal’, but there are, none the less, lessons we can learn from this powerful preacher evangelist.

1. A sense of divine and eternal responsibility. Here’s a description of his preaching style. “There was nothing complicated about Duncan’s preaching. It was fearless and uncompromising. He exposed sin in all its ugliness and dwelt at length on the consequences of living and dying without Christ. With a penetrating gaze on the congregation, and perspiration streaming down his face, he set before men and women the way of life and the way of death. It was a solemn thought to him that the eternity of his hearers might turn upon his faithfulness. He was standing before fellowmen in Christ’s stead and could be neither perfunctory or formal. His words were not just a repetition of accumulated ideas, but the expression of his whole being; he gave the impression of preaching with his entire personality, not merely with his voice. It was prophetic preaching, not diplomatic, and the hearers were called to make a clear choice, for there was no middle path.”

As far as I could make out from what is told by his biographer, his usual approach to preaching would be to take a text and then apply it in all sorts of ways and from different angles to his listeners. There is more detail given of his itinerant ministry than of his settled pastoral work and, by necessity that sort of preaching work militates against a systematic approach to Scripture.

2. An unshakable confidence in the power of Scripture. Campbell was not a highly trained theologian or one naturally suited for the demands of academia. He was, as Woolsey says, “a practical theologian”. He “was not a trained theologian. When Marconi was quizzed about the technical details of his wireless telegraphy he simply looked at the equipment and said: ‘It works.’ Duncan had the same attitude to theology. He did not stop to get involved in time-consuming arguments……He knew God could save and transform lives. He had seen it happen. It worked. That was enough…..All his life he sought to put into practice what he believed. If a man’s Christianity didn’t work out, it wasn’t worth having, no matter how correct its logic, or how orthodox its theology.”

When, later in his ministry, he became Principal of the Faith Mission Bible College, while “the college curriculum was broadened to accommodate the demand for higher academic standards by missionary societies…he kept the priorities right. Education, programmes, new techniques and methods he took little account of in the work of evangelism, and ‘gimmicks’ were right out. Not that he despised education or change of methods but there was no substitute for the power of the Holy Spirit.” In a day and age, such as we live in, where there is much emphasis on and demand for scholarly recognition and plaudits, Campbell’s example reminds us of a much higher and more effective validation which is given to a life yielded to the Lord.

3. A passion for the salvation of the souls of men and women. He preached with a sense of urgency because of his deep conviction of the lostness of men and women. He had no doubts as to the eternal destiny of those who died outside of Christ, whether from a religious or unchurched background and pursued them personally with the message of the Cross or in public pleaded and preached uncompromisingly.

4. A conviction of the reality and nature of eternity and the need to live in that reality. As Woolsey puts it, “God’s greatest gift to any generation is not a major breakthrough in science or technology which makes life more easy and prosperous; it is a man with the voice of eternity within calling his fellow-men from paths of selfishness to find satisfaction in God.” Campbell himself said, “We are the ambassadors of eternity in the courts of time, and it is our business to permeate the courts of time with the atmosphere of eternity.”

5. A man of prayer and a believer in the power of prayer. He recognised that God had gifted some people, even young people, with the gift of intercession, and frequently called on them to stand by his side, at least in spirit, as he laboured in the work of preaching. “More was wrought through the prayers of these men,” he stated, “than all the ministers put together, including myself.”

You might want to take issue with some of Campbell’s methods or emphases but you can’t argue that here was a man through whom God was pleased to change not just many lives but whole communities; a man who resonated with a passion for God and for the souls of men and women and the book left me with a real sense of dissatisfaction of living and preaching in a day of small things and a renewed confidence in the saving and life-transforming power of the preached Word of God.