“Sermons are not to be prepared in the study but, to use a Puritan expression, “sermons are prepared in the closet.” The “closet” is the place where you engage with God. Open before you is the text of scripture which you’re studying, but you’re having dealings with God as to how He would have this particular passage of scripture preached to this particular people on this particular occasion.”

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances.”
(As You Like It 2.7.139-141)

Keith Batstone and Alun Ebenezer took these Shakespearean lines as the theme for a series of videos which aired on Heath Evangelical Church’s YouTube Channel in early 2021. For these films, Batstone and Ebenezer conducted live interviews with eighteen retired British ministers, including Basil Howlett, Neville Rees, Alun McNabb, John Blanchard, Teify Ebenezer, Ian Hamilton, Geoff Thomas, Bill Hughes, Eryl Davies, Bruce Powell, Andrew Davies, Peter Milsom, Stuart Olyott, Maurice Roberts, Mike Mellor, Iain H. Murray, Philip Eveson, and Austin Walker. Due to the COVID-19 lockdown, the men could not meet in person, so they chose to speak to each other digitally from the comfort of their own homes using basic computer technology. For four months, approximately seven thousand people tuned in each Sunday night at 8:15 to watch a 45-minute episode, bearing with the occasional internet delays, telephone rings, and animal noises captured in these videos.

Two years after the completion of the interviews, Batstone and Ebenezer published an adaptation of the series in book form, thanks to Rhonda Frost’s transcriptions. The book, Before They Leave the Stage: Interviews with Eighteen Men of God, loses much of the emotion conveyed in the videos, but it removes the distracting background noises and technological glitches. The editors also delete some material but add new information. The book furthermore provides black-and-white screenshots of each minister, puts first-person narrations into the third person, and includes an introduction and conclusion by Batstone. Each chapter, like the original episodes, details a minister’s conversion, call to the ministry, highs and lows of his ministry, influential books and people, and the need of the hour as he saw it.

Several common themes emerge from these testimonies. First, several of the ministers mention that they valued godly fellowship in the ministry. All of them note Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ impact on their lives. Some had personal interactions with him, while others simply read his books or heard him speak. Secondly, quite of few of these men battled with liberalism, either while in higher education or later in their churches. A number came out of theologically-compromised denominations* such as the Baptist Union, just as Charles Spurgeon did decades before.

Thirdly, many discuss the importance of prayer and preaching. Roberts, a former editor of The Banner of Truth Magazine, mentions that he would pray often “that the Lord would give him suitable subjects to write about.

Read More