In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do?

By Charles M. Sheldon and John Pavlovitz

Charles M. Sheldon, a Congregational minister and author of the classic novel In His Steps: What Would Jesus Do?, challenged his congregation with this very question in 1896. But it was an impassioned plea from a mysterious stranger that stirred several members into action. Their intertwining stories, first published as a serial and then as an inspirational novel, prompted readers everywhere to explore and reflect upon how to apply Christian ethics toward solving social issues such as injustice, crime, and poverty. Featuring a new foreword by pastor, author, and popular blogger John Pavlovitz, this classic, soul-stirring novel continues to speak to modern readers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ixia Press
• Release date: Oct 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9780486853031

Book preview

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In

His

Steps

What Would Jesus Do?

In

His

Steps

What Would Jesus Do?

Charles M. Sheldon

Foreword by John Pavlovitz

ixia_Press_Horizontal_Logo

GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK

Copyright © 2023 by Ixia Press

Foreword copyright © 2023 by John Pavlovitz

All rights reserved.

This Ixia Press edition, first published in 2023, is an unabridged republication of the revised edition of the work, originally published by Advance Publishing Company, Chicago, in 1899 [first publication: 1897]. A new Foreword by John Pavlovitz has been specially prepared for this volume.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sheldon, Charles M., 1857–1946, author. | Pavlovitz, John, writer of foreword.

Title: In his steps : what would Jesus do? / Charles M. Sheldon ; Foreword by John Pavlovitz.

Description: Garden City, New York: Ixia Press, [2023] | This Ixia Press edition, first published in 2023, is an unabridged republication of the revised edition of the work, originally published by Advance Publishing Company, Chicago, in 1899 [first publication: 1897]. A new Foreword by John Pavlovitz has been specially prepared for this volume. | Summary: This inspirational novel popularized the expression, What Would Jesus Do? Written by a Congregational minister, it tells of four parishioners who resolve to undertake no action without first considering Christ’s example—Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2023008724 | ISBN 9780486851945 (trade paperback) | ISBN 048685194X (trade paperback)

Subjects: LCSH: Jesus Christ—Influence—Fiction. | Clergy—Fiction. | Christian life—Fiction. | LCGFT: Novels. | Christian fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3537.H618 I5 2023 | DDC 813/.54—dc23/eng/20230227

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023008724

Ixia Press

An imprint of Dover Publications

Manufactured in the United States of America

www.doverpublications.com/ixiapress

Contents

Foreword

Preface to the Revised Edition

Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Foreword

THIS isn’t a foreword as much as it is a warning. Caution: this book is beautifully dangerous.

If you choose to proceed further into these pages, do so at your own peril. Not every bit of you, of course, but the parts of you that don’t resemble Jesus—which, not coincidentally, is usually the stuff we professed Christians have the toughest time discarding. Charles M. ­Sheldon surely understands this. His writing style here is approachable and disarming, and that is part of its subversive genius. The words gently usher you in and by the time you realize you’re in treacherous existential territory, it’s too late to reverse course and the only way out is through. Even the book’s foundational question feels innocuous enough (What would Jesus do?). That is, until that question becomes the clarifying lens through which we begin to filter everything, from our hidden motives to our career pursuits to our passing exchanges with strangers. Then things really hit the fan and we find out just what our religion is made of and just how seriously we take this whole following Jesus business.

In His Steps is dangerous for the same reason Jesus is dangerous, for the same reason the Gospels are dangerous: because they all contain the possibility of unpredictable metamorphosis, which likely isn’t something we expect or honestly even want from religion. Most of us who claim Christianity tend to have spiritual lives that feel decidedly safe, with a manageable, domesticated Jesus at the center and a working theology that rarely requires us to alter our routine in any meaningful way. Sure, we may want to have a personal relationship with the Creator of the universe (and all the benefits attached both here and hereafter), but we don’t want to be inconvenienced by fundamental life change or personal upheaval to do it. We may adore the songs, stories, and prayers of the jubilant mountaintop, but we don’t have much interest in the valley or the grieving or the letting go required to get there. We want Sunday morning without Friday afternoon. We want transformation without alteration. Minister Sheldon and his surrogate, Reverend Henry Maxwell, remind us that this just isn’t part of the deal.

With a couple thousand years between ourselves and the New Testament biographies of Jesus, we often believe and actively perpetuate the myth that following Him should yield only the pleasant and the comfortable: not a Prosperity Gospel necessarily, but certainly Positivity Gospel. Weaned on this false promise of a pain-free faith, it’s easy to forget just how precarious a proposition it would have been for anyone who accepted the rabbi Jesus’s invitation to follow Him in real time. They would have had to leave behind familiarity, comfort, and security—and willingly enter the jagged trenches of a daily existence that was fraught with sacrifice and assured of turbulence. Sheldon reminds us that this profound internal disruption is what we are signing up for—that we’d better be willing to lose something in the cause of emulating Jesus or we may as well walk away while we can. Again, danger is coming.

Watching the members of First Church responding to Reverend Maxwell’s inaugural pulpit challenge—and soon finding every corner of their lives dismantled and then reassembled into something more Christlike—I’m reminded of C. S. Lewis’s image of a Jesus whose invasive presence brings wide-scale renovation:

Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on. . . . But presently He starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is He up to? The explanation is that He is building quite a different house from the one you thought of. . . . You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but He is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it Himself.¹

Charles M. Sheldon knows how volitive the spiritual journey can and should be, if it is one taken in close proximity to Jesus: the assumptions that need to be tested, the areas of privilege that have to be confronted, the questions that we’ll eventually be asked to reckon with, the tables we’ll be compelled to turn over.

As the First Church community beautifully embodies for us here, the easiest place and time to be a Christian is in the pews for an hour on Sunday. The real challenges come when we need to carry the grand and lofty declarations out of the building into the messy, cramped spaces of our lives. There we find out that every decision becomes a profession of faith: the work we do, the way we spend our time, the opportunities we pursue, the people we move toward, the systems we confront.

As a longtime pastor, I’m pretty sure the world doesn’t need any more self-identified Christians whose lives are largely devoid of Jesus’s empathy for the hurting, His embrace for the stranger, His love for the least. We’re well beyond capacity with those. What the world so lacks and is absolutely starving for is a disparate multitude of flawed and failing human beings who are willing to be altered in order to incarnate a greater love than they imagined themselves capable of.

So, you’ve been warned, though I hope you won’t stop here. I hope you’ll step all the way into this book and to the challenge at its core—that you will allow an unfettered Jesus to run amok through every cloistered, tucked away, hidden part of you. I pray, as a result, that you are propelled into this place in a way that makes the grieving dance, the tyrants run, and the Kingdom come.

May you become beautifully dangerous.

—John Pavlovitz, author of

If God Is Love, Don’t Be a Jerk

---

1 C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Preface to the Revised Edition

THE story

In His Steps was written originally to be read to my own congregation in the Central Church, Topeka, Kansas. It was not addressed to unconverted persons, but to nominal Christians, and church members. It is not a textbook on the Atonement, nor an exhaustive theological treatise on the person of Christ.

The rule of conduct as stated in the question What Would Jesus Do? I believe to be both Christian and practical. In actual practice among many of the members of my own church this rule of conduct has led to a complete change of old habits and a renewal of discipleship based on the very teaching which Jesus meant his disciples to obey.

The pledge to try to do as Jesus would do in our places has been taken by a large majority of the members of my own Endeavor Society (including myself) and also by very many members of my church. The results are beginning to be felt and seen in the deeper spiritual life of the members, and the growth of all the Christian graces of active service. We meet in a simple consecration service at the close of each communion service, six times a year. At these services we relate our experiences and confer together as loving disciples. Other churches and Endeavor Societies are beginning to take the pledge and are trying to live it out in every day life.

This edition of the little book goes its way with the prayer that it may touch the heart and help the reader to follow Him who is the Way and the Truth and the Life.

—Charles M. Sheldon

Central Church, Topeka, Kansas

April 1899

In

His

Steps

What Would Jesus Do?

Chapter One

For hereunto were ye called; because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps.

IT was Friday morning and the Rev. Henry Maxwell was trying to finish his Sunday morning sermon. He had been interrupted several times and was growing nervous as the morning wore away and the sermon grew very slowly towards a satisfactory finish.

Mary, he called to his wife, as he went up stairs after the last interruption, if any one comes after this, I wish you would say that I am very busy and cannot come down unless it is something very important.

Yes, Henry. But I am going over to visit the Kindergarten and you will have the house all to yourself.

The minister went up into his study and shut the door. In a few minutes he heard his wife go out.

He settled himself at his desk with a sigh of relief and began to write. His text was from First Peter, ii: 21.

For hereunto were ye called; because Christ also ­suffered for you, leaving you an example, that ye should follow His steps.

He had emphasized in the first part of his sermon the Atonement as a personal sacrifice, calling attention to the fact of Jesus’ suffering in various ways, in his life as well as in his death. He had gone on to emphasize the Atonement from the side of example, giving illustrations from the life and teaching of Jesus, to show how faith in the Christ helped to save men because of the pattern or character He displayed for their imitation. He was now on the third and last point, the necessity of following Jesus in His sacrifice and example.

He had just put down, 3 Steps: What are they? and was about to enumerate them in logical order when the bell rang sharply. It was one of the clockwork bells and always went off as a clock might go if it tried to strike twelve all at once.

Henry Maxwell sat at his desk and frowned a little. He made no movement to answer the bell. Very soon it rang again. Then he rose and walked over to one of his windows which commanded a view of the front door.

A man was standing on the steps. He was a young man very shabbily dressed.

Looks like a tramp, said the minister. I suppose I’ll have to go down, and—

He did not finish the sentence, but he went down stairs and opened the front door.

There was a moment’s pause as the two men stood facing each other; then the shabby-looking young man said,

I’m out of a job, sir, and thought maybe you might put me in the way of getting something.

I don’t know of anything. Jobs are scarce, replied the minister beginning to shut the door slowly.

I didn’t know but you might perhaps be able to give me a line to the city railway or superintendent of the shops or something, continued the young man, shifting his faded hat from one hand to the other nervously.

It would be of no use. You will have to excuse me. I am very busy this morning. I hope you will find something. Sorry I can’t give you something to do here. But I keep only a horse and a cow and do the work myself.

The Rev. Henry Maxwell closed the door and heard the man walk down the steps. As he went up into his study he saw from his hall window that the man was going slowly down the street, still holding his hat between his hands. There was something in the figure so dejected, homeless and forsaken, that the minister hesitated a moment as he stood looking at it. Then he turned to his desk, and with a sigh began the writing he had left off.

He had no more interruptions and when his wife came in two hours later, the sermon was finished, the loose leaves gathered up and neatly tied together and laid on his Bible, all ready for the Sunday morning service.

A queer thing happened at the Kindergarten this morning, Henry, said his wife while they were eating dinner. You know I went over with Mrs. Brown to visit the school, and just after the games, while the children were at the tables, the door opened and a young man came in, holding a dirty hat in both hands. He sat down near the door and never said a word. Only looked at the children. He was evidently a tramp, and Miss Wren and her assistant, Miss Kyle, were a little frightened at first, but he sat there very quietly and after a few minutes he went out.

Perhaps he was tired and wanted to rest somewhere. The same man called here, I think. Did you say he looked like a tramp?

Yes, very dusty, shabby and generally tramp-like. Not more than thirty or thirty-three years old, I should say.

The same man, said the Rev. Henry Maxwell thoughtfully.

Did you finish your sermon, Henry? his wife asked after a pause.

Yes, all done. It has been a very busy week with me. The two sermons cost me a good deal of labor.

They will be appreciated by large audiences, on Sunday, I hope, replied his wife smiling. What are you going to preach about in the morning?

Following Christ. I take up the Atonement under the heads of Sacrifice and Example, and then show the steps needed to follow His sacrifice and example.

I am sure it is a good sermon. I hope it won’t rain Sunday. We have had so many rainy days lately.

Yes, the audiences have been quite small for some time. People will not come out to church in a storm. The Rev. Henry Maxwell sighed as he said it. He was thinking of the careful, laborious efforts he had made in preparing sermons for large audiences that failed to appear.

But Sunday morning dawned on the town of Raymond one of those perfect days that sometimes come after long periods of wind and rain and mud. The air was clear and bracing, the sky was free from all threatening signs, and every one in Henry Maxwell’s parish prepared to go to church. When the service opened at eleven o’clock, the large building was filled with an audience of the best-dressed, most comfortable-looking people in Raymond.

The First Church of Raymond believed in having the best music that money could buy and its quartette choir this morning was a great source of pleasure to the congregation. The anthem was inspiring. All the music was in keeping with the subject of the sermon. And the anthem was an elaborate adaptation to the most modern music, of the hymn,

"Jesus, I my cross have taken,

All to leave and follow Thee."

Just before the sermon, the soprano sang a solo, the well known hymn,

"Where He leads me I will follow,

I’ll go with Him, with Him all the way."

Rachel Winslow looked very beautiful that morning as she stood up behind the screen of carved oak which was significantly marked with the emblems of the cross and the crown. Her voice was even more beautiful than her face, and that meant a great deal. There was a general rustle of expectation over the audience as she rose. Henry Maxwell settled himself contentedly behind the pulpit. Rachel Winslow’s singing always helped him. He generally arranged for a song before the sermon. It made possible a certain inspiration of feeling that he knew made his delivery more impressive.

People said to themselves they had never heard such singing even in the First Church. It is certain that if it had not been a church service, her solo would have been vigorously applauded. It even seemed to Henry Maxwell when he sat down that something like an attempted clapping of hands or a striking of feet on the floor swept through the church. He was startled by it. As he rose, however, and laid his sermon on the open Bible, he said to himself he had been deceived. Of course it could not occur. In a few moments he was absorbed in his sermon and everything else was forgotten in the pleasure of the delivery.

No one had ever accused Henry Maxwell of being a dull preacher. On the contrary he had often been charged with being sensational. Not in what he said so much as in his way of saying it. But the First Church people liked that. It gave their preacher and their parish a pleasant distinction that was agreeable.

It was also true that the pastor of the First Church loved to preach. He seldom exchanged. He was eager to be in his own pulpit when Sunday came. There was an exhilarating half-hour for him as he stood facing a church full of people and knew that he had a hearing. He was peculiarly sensitive to variations in the attendance. He never preached well before a small audience. The weather also affected him decidedly. He was at his best before just such an audience as faced him now, on just such a morning. He felt a glow of satisfaction as he went on. The church was the first in the city. It had the best choir. It had a membership composed of the leading people, representatives of the wealth, society and intelligence of Raymond. He was going abroad on a three months’ vacation in the summer, and the circumstances of his pastorate, his influence and his position as pastor of the first church in the city—

It is not certain that the Rev. Henry Maxwell knew just how he could carry on all that thought in connection with his sermon, but as he drew near the end of it he knew that he had at some point in his delivery had all these feelings. They had entered into the very substance of his thought, it might have been all in a few seconds of time; but he had been conscious of defining his position and his emotions as well as if he had held a soliloquy, and his delivery partook of the thrill of deep personal satisfaction.

The sermon was interesting. It was full of striking sentences. They would have commanded attention printed. Spoken with the passion of dramatic utterance that had the good taste never to offend with a suspicion of ranting or declamation, they were very effective. If the Rev. Henry Maxwell that morning felt satisfied with the condition of his pastorate, the parish of First Church also had a similar feeling as it congratulated itself on the presence in the pulpit of this scholarly, refined, somewhat striking face and figure, preaching with such animation and freedom from all vulgar, noisy, or disagreeable mannerism.

Suddenly, into the midst of this perfect accord and concord between preacher and audience, there came a very remarkable interruption. It would be difficult to indicate the extent of the shock which this interruption measured. It was so unexpected, so entirely contrary to any thought of any person present that it offered no room for argument, or, for the time being, of resistance.

The sermon had come to a close. The Rev. Henry Maxwell had turned the half of the big Bible over upon his manuscript and was about to sit down, as the quartette prepared to rise and sing the closing selection,

"All for Jesus, All for Jesus,

All my being’s ransomed powers,"

when the entire congregation was startled by the sound of a man’s voice. It came from the rear of the church, from one of the seats under the gallery. The next moment the figure of a man came out of the shadow there and walked down the middle aisle.

Before the startled congregation realized what was being done, the man had reached the open space in front of the pulpit and had turned about, facing the people.

I’ve been wondering since I came here— they were the words he used under the gallery, and he repeated them—If it would be just the thing to say a word at the close of this service. I’m not drunk and I’m not crazy, and I’m perfectly harmless; but if I die, as there is every likelihood I shall in a few days, I want the satisfaction of thinking that I said my say in a place like this, before just this sort of a crowd.

Henry Maxwell had not taken his seat and he now remained standing, leaning on his pulpit, looking down at the stranger. It was the man who had come to his house Friday morning, the same dusty, worn, shabby-looking young man. He held his faded hat in his two hands. It seemed to be a favorite gesture. He had not been shaved and his hair was rough and tangled. It was doubtful if any one like this had ever confronted the First Church within the sanctuary. It was tolerably familiar with this sort of humanity out on the street, around the railroad shops, wandering up and down the avenue, but it had never dreamed of such an incident as this so near.

There was nothing offensive in the man’s manner or tone. He was not excited and he spoke in a low but distinct voice. Henry Maxwell was conscious, even as he stood there smitten into dumb astonishment at the event, that somehow the man’s action reminded him of a person he had once seen walking and talking in his sleep.

No one in the church made any motion to stop the stranger or in any way interrupt him. Perhaps the first shock of his sudden appearance deepened into genuine perplexity concerning what was best to do. However that may be, he went on as if he had no thought of interruption and no thought of the unusual element he had introduced into the decorum of the First Church service. And all the while he was speaking, Henry Maxwell leaned over the pulpit, his face growing more white and sad every moment. But he made no movement to stop him and the people sat smitten into breathless silence. One other face, that of Rachel Winslow, from the choir seats, stared white and intent down at the shabby figure with the faded hat. Her face was striking at any time. Under the pressure of the present unheard-of incident, it was as personally distinct as if it had been framed in fire.

I’m not an ordinary tramp, though I don’t know of any teaching of Jesus that makes one kind of a tramp less worth saving than another. Do you? He put the question as naturally as if the whole congregation had been a small private Bible class. He paused just a moment and coughed painfully. Then he went on.

"I lost my job ten months ago. I am a printer by trade. The new linotype machines are beautiful specimens of invention, but I know six men who have killed themselves inside of the year just on account of those machines. Of course I don’t blame the newspapers for getting the machines. Meanwhile, what can a man do? I know I never learned but one trade and that’s all I can do. I’ve tramped all over the country trying to find something. There are a good many others like me. I’m not complaining, am I? Just stating

Reviews for In His Steps

[krista.rutherford · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

The original story about a community that pledged to live by asking the question "What would Jesus do?" Good idea, but the story is pretty boring.

[chris_el-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Classic book from 1887. This is where WWJD came from. Story follows several different people as they try to live by the question: "What would Jesus do?" Fairly well written with believable and sympathetic characters who sometimes suffer and sometimes become more successful in life because of the changes they make following the WWJD mantra.

[kristelh_15 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This book is written in the late 19th century and is set in the US probably a town close to Chicago and involves a church community. A beggar comes into their midst and the pastor comes under conviction as to his conduct towards this beggar. He asks himself, “What would Jesus do? and he asks his congregation to take a year long pledge to live their lives by this question. The story was entertaining, well read by the narrator but a better word would be inspirational. I was really shocked to realize that this saying “what would Jesus do” or WWJD (worn as jewelry, etc by Christians) was so old. I then proceeded to ask the question, Is this book relevant today, what is the author trying to get across through the use of this story and how does it fit with today's church. Essentially, this is a book about discipleship and there is a strong movement in todays church (at least the one I attend) to make disciples. The story is simple, the struggles were hinted at but nothing was developed in depth. Was this a simpler time, was it easier to be a disciple in the 19th century than it is now? How does this book fit today. The book stated that if Christians took this to heart they would change the world. I think one of the basic premise was that government and social change could not do what the church could do for social change (help for the poor, cleaning up the tenements and ridding the environment of the saloon). Is today’s Christian willing to give up money, position and family to do what Jesus would do or are we content to let government and organizations do the work and just give our support without getting personally involved. I hope I am very wrong, but I think that today’s average Christian is not living by this principle. We haven’t taken up our cross, we haven’t sacrificed or suffered and we are willing to let the government take care of the poor and downtrodden. Its easier to pay our taxes (and complain) that invest our time and energy and our money.

[thriftymorgana · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This novel had a truly wonderful message that is important for any and every Christian to hear and to think about. The story involves a small church in a railroad town taking the pledge to always ask the question, "What would Jesus do?" before making decisions in both their personal land business lives. One thing that the reader needs to be aware of from the get-go though is that this novel takes place in the late 1800s and the syntax/language as well as some of the cultural norms are extremely foreign to the modern reader. Another issue I had with this story was the hardcore attack of "the saloon" as it refers to any establishment that provides alcohol. Well, we all know what happened when Prohibition actually did occur about 2 decades later, rampant crime of all sorts to keep the continued production of alcohol under wraps. So, with hindsight, this aspect of the book just seemed a little ridiculous to me. Besides that though, the focus on getting one's hands dirty to help those who are less fortunate than you was truly powerful and it was heartbreaking to see the way so many of the upper class citizens saw the poor. I can only hope that our views on the less fortunate of today are FAR different from those held over a century ago. Definitely an eye-opening and enjoyable read.

[revslick_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

the book takes you on a journey of one church's struggle to live out 'What Would Jesus Do?' While there are several tidbits that wounldn't match up today since the book was written in the height of the temperance movement, it still provokes some good wholesome thought on how we live the gospel.

[toddpeperkorn · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I hate this book. The kitsch is appalling, but it is the false theology that drives me bonkers. It works with the premise that one can keep the Law. St. Paul reminds us that by the law is the knowledge of sin. I find this book offensive to the Christian faith.

[jeyra_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Christians in a small town take a challenge to do only what they believe Jesus would do, and the results are life-changing.

[mrslee_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I love this book. One of my all-time favorite Christian fiction books. It reminds me that a Christian's mark on the world should be love.