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SAMUEL M. SHOEMAKER
Billy Graham said, "I doubt that any mail in our generation has made a greater impact for God on the Christian world than did {52 } Sam Shoemaker."
He seemed forever in the middle of launching something big. Usually, after it got started, he stepped out of the way and let others take credit for it. He was a key figure in the beginnings of Alcoholics Anonymous, helping its founder adapt the small-group model for use in its Twelve Step program. And Shoemaker's Religion That Works has been termed "the most powerful part of the legacy bequeathed to Alcoholics Anonymous."
Shoemaker was an early leader in the Oxford Group, an international outreach movement that encouraged small groups within the church. In Pittsburgh he launched a program known as the Pittsburgh Experiment, designed to help laypeople in personal evangelism. He started the magazine Faith at Work, which also concerned small groups.
Longtime associate W. Irving Harris called him a "Bible Christian," The churches he served were molded into places where people could learn the how's of the faith: how to find God, how to pray, how to read the Bible, how to pass on the faith. And much of the learning of how emerged from fellowship in small groups.
Born in 1893, Shoemaker spent two years as a Bible teacher and evangelist with the YMCA irr China before returning to America for his seminary training. Ordained an Episcopal priest in 1921, he was called to be rector of Calvary Protestant Episcopal Church in New York City in 1925 and he ministered there for the next twenty-six years.
Less than a year after he became rector, he started the Calvary Rescue Mission to reach alcoholics. It was here a few years
later that the future founders of AA would be converted and later mentored by Sam Shoemaker.
Shoemaker wrote about forty books between 1923 and 1963, when he died. Many of them were collections of his Calvary Church sermons, as is Religion That Works. But his logical progression of thought and his clear articulation of truth make the book stand out.
"If I had but one sermon to preach," Shoemaker begins, "it would be on the homesickness of the soul for God." He went on to talk about the sin barrier and a person's need for salvation a new birth experience. But he didn't stop at evangelism. He knew conversion had to be followed by instruction in prayer, the Scriptures, the church, the sacraments, Christian fellowship, and worship. And so his book discusses all those elements.
In his chapter "How to Know the Will of God," Shoemaker lists eight points typical of his practical wisdom: (1) pray; (2) think; (3) talk to wise people, but do not regard their decision as final; (4) beware of the decision of your own will, but do not be too much afraid of it; (5) do the next thing, for doing God's will in small things is the best preparation for knowing it in great things; (6) when decision and action are necessary, go ahead; (7) never reconsider the decision once it is finally agreed on; and (8) keep in mind that "you will probably not find out until afterward that you were led at all."
It was Shoemaker's emphasis on a religion that works that made him so successful in reaching men for Christ, whether the man was an alcoholic at the Calvary Rescue Mission or a prominent businessman in his Pittsburgh Experiment.