'^JM BV 3790 .H27 1921 Hannan, Fred€ ^rick Watson, 1866- Evangel Lsm BY THE SAME AUTHOR THE SUNDAY SCHOOL AN EVANGELISTIC OPPORTUNITY EVANGELISM BY/ WATSON HANNAN On- THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN NEW YORK CINCINNATI Copyright, 192 1, by F. WATSON HANNAN TO MY THREE SONS, WHOSE FILIAL DEVOTION, LOVE TO GOD AND HIGH IDEALS ILLUSTRATE THE EVANGEL- ISM HEREIN SET FORTH, IS THIS BOOK MOST AFFECTIONATELY DEDI- CATED. CONTENTS PAGE The Foreword 9 PART I GENERAL EVANGELISM CHAPTER I. The General Statement 13 11. The Program 19 ' IIL General Methods 47 IV. The Message (General) 54 V. The Message (Specific) 67 PART II PASTORAL EVANGELISM I. The Need of Pastoral Evangelism 85 II. The Big Union Meetings 100 IIL The Periodic Revival 113 IV. The Conduct of the Periodic Revival 119 V. Continuous Evangelism 133 PART III SUNDAY SCHOOL EVANGELISM I. Opportunity and Responsibility 143 II. Decision Day 172 PART IV PRACTICAL EVANGELISM CONSERVING RESULTS I. The Christian Life 181 11. The Doctrinal Basis 198 III. The Christian Service 217 IV. The Art of Soul- Winning 228 V. The Master Soul- Winner 241 THE FOREWORD At a time like this, when so many valuable and in- structive books on all phases of evangelism are offered to the church, it seems presumptuous to add still an- other to the already long list. But the field of evangel- ism is so vast and so varied that no one book can cover it all, and no one man can give all the counsels and sug- gestions that may be of practical value. So the writer feels that there may be a need and use for the small contribution that he is able to make to this very im- portant work of evangelism. If this book has any merit, it is this : its principles and plans were practiced before they were written, and they worked well. If they prove as successful to others as they have been to the writer, who tested them out in his own evangelistic ministry, he will feel that work has been worth while. The chief aim of the book is to give young ministers a broader view of evangelism than is sometimes held by showing how fundamental it is to all church activity, and thus helping them to be more efficient evangelistic pastors. It is hoped, however, that laymen also may be stimulated by it to a larger and more thorough evan- gelistic endeavor. Evangelism has not been considered broadly enough. It has been thought of only as an incident in the gen- eral program of church activity. If the church held evangelistic meetings for one month in the year, it seemed to think that its evangelistic obligations had 9 10 THE FOREWORD been met, whether the meetings had been successful or not. The object of evangehsm was thought to be the saving of men's souls. That was good as far as it went, but it did not go far enough. Evangehsm must save man in his entirety, and that means that society must be saved as well as the individual. That is the modern note in evangelism. It aims to establish the kingdom of God in the earth. That w^as the evangelism of the Old Testament prophets. It was the evangelism of Jesus and his apostles, and that is the evangelism which the modern world needs and demands, if the new world that is built after the wreckage of the war is to be a Christian world. Men must be rightly related to God and to one another if true democracy and brotherhood are to be realized on the earth. It is for that kind of an evangelism that this book pleads. The reader will find repetitions and some overlap- ping here and there in the book, but the discussion of the same or similar subjects under different heads made that almost inevitable. The subjects are grouped in such a way that the pastor can study each group by itself with much cross reference, hence the repetitions and overlappings. It is with the hope that this book may kindle the evangelistic passion of Jesus in the hearts of young men entering the ministry and be of practical value to them and those who work with them in the further- ance of the gospel that it is now sent forth. F. Watson Hannan. Drew Theological Seminary, Department of Biblical Theology, Madison, N. J. PART I GENERAL EVANGELISM CHAPTER I THE GENERAL STATEMENT The object of evangelism is to get men and women — to get folks — into right relation to God. That means far more than to give them a comfortable feeling now and a sense of future security, for the immediate corol- lary of right relation to God is right relation to men. Any evangelism which does not include the redemp- tion of the whole life to its highest uses and most com- plete development comes far short of the demands of to-day. If the reconstruction which is to issue from world peace is to be a real new world, it must result from a reconstructed humanity in its entirety. That is a task great enough to challenge the best effort of God and man working together. This will not and cannot be done by one stroke, but it must be the goal of evan- gelistic endeavor, or the church will go on marking time and fail of its great opportunity. Meantime in- stitutions outside of the church will strive to meet the world's need, and they too will fail for want of that spiritual dynamic which is the normal instrument of the church at its best. Task of Evangelism The task of evangelism is the salvation of mankind. That is more than saving the soul. If men once thought that the supreme object of life was to get to heaven 13 14 EVANGELISM to-morrow, the supreme object of the best thought now is to get heaven down to earth to-day. But the heaven that the world needs is not the quiet resting place whose only activity will be singing and harp- playing. It will not be expressed by that hymn, "There I shall bathe my weary soul in seas of heavenly rest," etc. That was the heaven longed for by the tired saints of yesterday, whose life in the world had been a weary round of toil and self-denial. Perhaps those saints thought more of sacrifice than service. But the heaven which is to begin down here and to con- tinue beyond all time and worlds is a heaven of vigor- ous righteousness, of tireless service, of world-wide sympathy, of real brotherhood built around Jesus Christ, sanctifying all the dealings and relationships of men, and making the world a real kingdom of God. Justice, equity, cooperation, sympathy, good will, fairplay, mutual confidence — these are to be the com- mon rules of everyday life in the new kingdom. Jeal- ousy, greed, hatred, suspicions, intrigue, brutality, op- pression, and all such pagan sins must be done away. That man is not really a saved man who does not set before him as his life task the practice of the above group of virtues and the purpose to oppose and do away with the above group of vices. The gospel recognizes geography but not nationalities as such. The true Christian is the real, the true international. He is a world democrat, for he is a citizen of a mo- narchical democracy, whose King is also Brother; One who loves all and rules all by serving all. To make disciples of all nations, whether at home or abroad — for to-day everybody is everywhere — is the task of THE GENERAL STATEMENT 15 evangelism. The gospel is a law of the survival of the fittest, but it makes men fit to survive, and it sees to it that those who are made fit do survive. It is a real transformation of humanity ; that is its great mis- sionary motive. The missionary does not seek the soul of the non-Christian alone, but he also aims to create better schools, industries, homes, and other ad- vantages. His object is to make a whole new man out of every man, and to make a new world in which the new man is to live and serve. Paul showed in Romans 7, once for all, that there can be no successful or happy living by serving God with the law of the mind and at the same time serving sin with the law of the mem- bers. "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature" (2 Cor. 5. 17).^ His life is organized around a new center — Christ; and has a new direction — Godward; and a new motive — Service. The ministry of the early Christians was preaching and healing. Paul's ministry was of the most practical sort. He did not think it enough to tell the Romans or Corinthians how to say their prayers, but how to live their lives as well. If they were to have the mind of Christ, so also their bodies were holy temples. The man that would not work should not eat; that is, the nonproducer should not be a consumer when his nonproduction was a mat- ter of choice. The Winsomeness of the Gospel But while the gospel program taxes every energy of mind, heart, and hand, and while its righteousness is uncompromising and austere, yet all the while the gos- ^Revised Version, "there Is a new creation." i6 EVANGELISM pel for the whole man is the most winsome thing in the world, because it makes the most winsome people in the world. Adorned people adorn the gospel. That must be so if the gospel is to be a winning force, and it must win men, they cannot be forced into the realm of morals. Men must not only do the right, but must want to do the right. The action must be backed by choice, or, the choice must issue in consist- ent action. An evangelism' that touches only the moral conscience will not be long effective, nor will one that touches only the social conscience. Neither will be effective without the other. The one may be an in- spiration, the other an activity. They must unite. The moral conscience must issue in the social conscience; that is to say, moral power must issue in social action. Character and conduct must go together. Social and industrial problems at the root, or in the fruit, are moral problems. ^-^ Evangelism must deal with sin, which is a wrong "**attitude toward God, that is, anarchy in the spiritual realm, but it must also deal with sins which are the projections of that attitude in concrete forms of wrong among men. Rent problems, wage problems, work problems, sanitary problems, school problems, home problems, recreation problems are all problems of evan- gelism, for in the last analysis they are all moral prob- lems. That man need expect little salvation at the altar, no matter how deep his contrition or how genuine his repentance may be, if next day he is going to op- press or overreach his neighbor in business, or be tyran- nical or unreasonable in his home. He cannot settle the problems of his soul with God without settling the THE GENERAL STATEMENT 17 matters of his conduct with men. Nor can he mend his ways with men and ignore the claims of God. No one- sided salvation will bring in the kingdom of God. Holiness is not a tangent running off the orbit of nor- mal life, but normal life at its best, the soul in perfect health. Holiness is not a matter of rapture, but of righteousness, whether it expresses itself rapturously or not. An evangelism which does not produce both Christian character and Christian service is a mis- taken evangelism. Evangelism that is not ethical is not needed. No amount of machinery in the church can be made a substitute for Christian experience, which is the power that will make the machinery efficient. The man who tries to render Christian service without the Christian experience lacks inspiration; and the man who makes his Christian experience a personal luxury, lacks application. The one is like perpetual fog or rain, which would make the earth a quagmire ; the other is like endless sunshine, which would make the earth a dust heap. Neither could support life. There is danger that the habit of powerful prayer, that is, very per- sonal and very expectant prayer, will be left out of the account when machinery is multiplied to cover every need. One of the greatest powers in evangelism is the power of prayer that comes upon one in com- munion with God. Prayer and Evangelism The greatest soul-winners have been mighty in prayer. This may seem trite, but it is fundamental. It is a great thing when doing God's work to be on 1 8 EVANGELISM speaking terms with him. Petition and intercession are the two essential forms of prayer in evangelism. Prayer for equipment and prayer for success means the nearer we get to God the more we are concerned about men. In God's presence we catch Christ's pas- sion. Personal, social, pastoral, lay evangelism are all different phases of the same thing. Different methods may be employed and different emphasis may be used, but the content is the same. Personal evan- gehsm, social evangelism, and industrial evangehsm are all but the individual and corporate application of the rule of God over the lives and activities of men. The purpose of it all is the same — to save the entire human life, to get the kingdom of God down here, and to get the will of God done in the world. In a word, it is to make the world the kingdom of God. That means to change environment as well as to change man. It is necessary to make the Jericho road safe for everybody, else relieving the victim of the robbers helps the robbers, for it relieves them of adding murder to robbery. Whenever you remedy a defect without re- moving the cause you help the cause. The foundling asylum relieves lust from the necessity of committing infanticide. The inebriate asylum gives a man a bet- ter home for being a drunkard than many men can get by thrift and sobriety. Philanthropy is not evangel- ism, it is only one of its by-products. Unless help becomes self-help, it is hindrance. When a man is helped to a place where he does not have to help him- self he is permanently injured, pauperized, robbed of all self-respect, and made dependent. CHAPTER II THE PROGRAM Neither the evangelistic passion which many have, nor the evangeHstic message which many give will count for much, at least will not count for most, un- less there is an evangelistic program commensurate with the passion and message. There is no use of preaching an evangelistic message if the subjects of evangelism are not there, no need for calling the saints to repentance, or explaining the conditions of conver- sion, or pressing the claims of God on those who al- ready are saved. The message to the saved is for bet- ter character and broader service, not for repentance and conversion. It is folly to ask sinners forward to the altar when there is not a sinner in the house. It is more — it is farcical. Neither can an evangelistic pastor do much in an unevangelistic church. Evangel- ism is not a one-man affair. J[f_jthe_cliurdx_i^-.iiot interested, cooperative, and sympathetic in its attitude toward the whole project of evangelism, little that is of permanent value can be accomplished. To bring new converts into a cold, unsympathetic church is to invite backsliding in advance. The whole church must be so interested in the work of conversion, and in all the preparatory activities, that when new converts are received into membership they will not feel that they are becoming parts of a formal institution but mem- 19 20 EVANGELISM bers of a sympathetic family. When the church loses its family idea it loses its power. Christian character cannot grow in a frigid, uncongenial environment. The church must have something to do with the conversions if it expects to have any important part in the Chris- tian culture and service of those who are converted and brought into the church through evangelistic ef- fort. The larger the number engaged in evangelism, the larger number of interested friends will the new members find in the church. The church must, with the pastor as leader, have an evangelistic policy as well as a social or financial policy. The financial policy of the best-organized and best administered churches is that of the pledge system secured through the every- member canvass. That is made easy if the tithing system or some other such plan is adopted. The aim is to give everybody interested in the church an op- portunity to help support it; that is, the policy of get- ting money is by giving opportunity and inviting co- operation. The second feature of good financial poHcy in dis- pensing the money so gotten is to meet all obligations when due, showing that in doing business for God the church is in the front rank of business integrity, hon- esty, and promptness. A church may have all that. Then a church may be well organized as to its boards, committees, etc., to carry on a fine social and recrea- tional program in the community. It may have all that, and yet that church may have no evangelistic policy. It may have no policy to make it as evangelis- tically efficient as it is financially and socially efficient. The church by personal effort gives all the members THE PROGRAM 21 and attendants an opportunity to support it. It throws the door open to the community on social occasions, and invites the people of the community to enjoy its social life. That is all very important. But is there the same intentional policy to reach the unconverted? Is the policy of the church one that extends to these people the same opportunity to accept or refuse the claims of Christ that it gives to the members to con- tribute or not contribute to its support, or to come or not to come to the social activities ? In matters of busi- ness the church is precise. If it owes a man money, it meets its obligation promptly, and ought to ; but will it be true, after that is done, the man can say, "The church paid my bill but is not interested in my soul" ? If the church is to be a winning force for the Kingdom, it must have an evangelistic policy. What shall we do this year to reach the unsaved of the community? is a more vital question than How shall we advance the church in its financial and social affairs? Evangelistic Efficiency Now, if there is a definite, earnest evangelistic policy for every year, and that policy is as seriously discussed as any other part of the church's activity — indeed, if it is made the main business of the church — it will issue in a practical evangelistic program. Many churches do no evangelistic work because they do not plan for it. It is not a part of their policy. The unsaved of the community should be reached in some systematic way, and the gospel offered to them either by personal workers or by getting them to come to the church where they can hear the evangelistic message. In any 22 EVANGELISM event the gospel should be presented to them. If there is a policy there will be a program. The program will be the policy reduced to action. Every good busi- ness house has a policy to reach a constituency, to handle goods, to expand the business and to make profits. The church which is doing, or supposed to be doing, business for God, ought to have as much sagacity and enterprise in religion, extending the King- dom, getting new members, building up old ones, and helping new and old, as the business houses conducted by the members of the same churches have. In ex- tending trade the business houses put salesmen on the road who will secure new customers, hold old ones, put goods on the market which the public want, anticipate future needs, and make provision to be first on the market when the new demands arise. That is busi- ness foresight, commercial sagacity. When a method ceases to be profitable they drop it, and adopt a new method that is profitable. They don't hold on to old methods for sentimental reasons when they no longer work. When a line of goods ceases to be in demand or marketable, progressive business houses will not carry it. They will not waste time, money, and space for a line of goods that will not sell. Neither will they keep on the road or behind the counter the man who either cannot or will not sell goods. He must do busi- ness to hold his place. Good business men will not mark time as a policy. They do it only as an emer- gency to tide over a period of depression. In advertis- ing their goods they do it in such an attractive way as to create a desire for them. Advertising has become not only an extensive business in itself, but a fine art. THE PROGRAM 23 That creates demand which stimulates supply and so makes business. They make their leaders the goods which are most attractive as to looks, price, and utility. Defective goods do not get into their show windows. Often the most attractive goods shown in the windows are not marked as to price, so as to get people into the store to find out; then they buy. These methods are legitimate and successful. The church could copy all these methods and adapt them to its spiritual enter- prise with great profit. Church Organization If the business men of the church were as thoroughly up to date and efficient in the work of their church as they are in their business, nothing in the world could impede the progress of the church. The only way to keep a passion for God's work alive in pulpit or pew is^ to have it issue in action. And the success of action stimulates more action. No factory could be run on the average church methods — twenty-five per cent of the operatives working and seventy-five per cent of them looking on. Again, in the church, we often see the same small group doing all sorts of work. In the big factory one man does one thing or handles one process, and he does so as an expert. Then all parts, each turned out b}^ an expert, are assembled, and the public gets the benefit of the perfect product. But it takes division of labor and specialization of skill to do it. That principle is not well observed in the church. Here is an opportunity to so organize the church that there will be division of labor and specialization of skill to such an extent that the Kingdom will get the 24 EVANGELISM perfect finished product, and at the same time no one will be burdened in its production as he is in many churches now. A few have to give to the point of sacrifice, and the sacrifice never lets up, while others, far more able to give, do not give at all. A few work to the point of drudgery, which never ceases, while other people of far more leisure and greater ability to serve do little or nothing. A church which has not a better temper and method than that can never conquer a community for God. So in some communities while the population is increasing the church is diminishing, not relatively, but absolutely; and where this happens there will be a church with a seating capacity of twelve hundred or more, having a morning congregation — considered good — of a hundred and fifty to two hundred, and an evening congregation of seventy-five to one hundred, and this despite the fact that the community is now three or four times as large as it was when there was a congregation that filled the church. It is not for lack of folks that the church is nearly empty, but because it has not a program to reach the people that are all about it. That is not an uncommon experience. The personnel of the community may be a good deal changed, but the church is to minister to all sorts of people. It has missionaries in all lands, but when all lands come to the church it is not organized to do for the foreigner on the home field what it does for him on the foreign field. When the church goes to him it has a plan to help him, but when he comes to the church it seems to have no plan to help him. The business house often does the same thing the church THE PROGRAM 25 does — it moves uptown. But the business that stays on the ground and succeeds is the house that handles the goods which that community needs and can afford to buy and will buy. The community supports the business. The business adapts its methods to the con- ditions. Some business must remain, for those people have to live as well as the uptown and suburban people. But these people have both to live and to die, and the church has the same opportunity to save them that business has to serve them. If the church is to gQt them as business gets their money, politicians get their votes, places of amusement get their attendance, and the schools get their children, then it must adapt itself to the prevailing conditions just as other institutions do. And every community will have its own pecu- liarities, so that no one method can be of universal application. The church must study its own com- munity to find out its strength and weakness, its" needs and viewpoints, its possibilities and perils, and then seriously try to put over a program that will suit the situation and present the gospel to them in the best possible way. If the commission is to "'Go into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature," some churches will have to undertake the discipling of that great mass of unchurched people which other churches have left uncared for. It is a hard task but a wonderful opportunity. Such a church will be chas- tened with the discipline of the disagreeable, but such a community once won will make the church a saving factor with which the world must not only reckon but with which it will be glad to reckon, and perhaps cooperate. What the world wants to see is work ac- 26 EVANGELISM tually done. It does not care much for ideals. Now, if the church can do the work by its ideals, it will get the world's attention and be able to show the world its ideals through its work. The Church and the Outside Man The church has a real interest in the outside man, but it has not always shown its interest by any sort of organized or sustained effort to reach him and win him, so he thinks that the church has no interest in him. Theoretically, the church is interested in every man that Jesus is interested in, and the problem is to show that interest by a sacrificial service as Jesus did. The outside man may try to crucify the church as the world did Jesus, but the church can no more be de- stroyed than Jesus could be destroyed, if it is animated by his spirit and he is its real Head. If the church really senses its evangelistic opportunity so that it now represents "Christianity in earnest," great work would be done in building the new world. All of the church all the time at some form of evangelistic work would transform the world. The Christian is saved to serve. Our part of that service is to get others to Christ and thus extend the kingdom of God in the world. The test by which the disciple of Christ is to be recognized by all men as given by Christ himself was, '*A new commandment give I unto you, That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another" (John 13. 34, 35). Much more will all men recognize the Christian as Christ's man, when his THE PROGRAM 27 love extends beyond his brethren, even to all men. Only the real Christian can love all men. It is not human nature to do it. Only the grace of God and the spirit of Christ will make it possible for the Christian to do it. It takes a real Christ-ruled church to give the poor and ignorant a real welcome and make them feel at home in it. That is perhaps one of the ob- stacles which the church has to overcome. It will have to reduce its theory of brotherly love to practice, yet that is what discipleship with Christ means. Pastoral Visiting Parish visitation both by pastor and people gives the church a great evangelistic opportunity too often over- looked both by pastor and people. It is not enough to merely make pastoral or social calls in a routine way. The parish is to be canvassed for souls with an ob- jective as clearly defined as when an insurance solicitor canvasses a community for business, or when the church makes an every-member canvass for money. If the central policy of the whole church is evangelism, all of its organizations will have that as their ultimate aim in all their activities. If parish activities empha- size evangelism in such a way that the aroused people will come to the church on Sunday and be converted, the Sunday evening problem will be solved. No serv- ice is more popular than the one in which people are being saved, and members of the church who have been diligent in sowing seed during the week will be in the service on Sunday evening for the harvesting of their sowing. That in turn will create a greater desire to go out next week and follow that work up till it be- 28 EVANGELISM comes the habit of the church. If the prayer meeting is made the place of report on what is done from week to week, as well as for earnest prayer that greater works may follow, the prayer meeting problem will largely be solved. When the spiritual has the right of way in the church, every other interest of the church will best be served. There is great danger that in the multiplying of methods and the increasing of church machinery the spiritual, which, after all, is the conserving element, will be left out — a case of "more harness than horse," more machine than power. This must be guarded against at every point. It is so easy to take the spiritual for granted that no provision will be made for it, and as a consequence the church becomes a club, with many excellent things it is true, but without saving power. In such circum- stances the help it brings to society is not constructive. It will be dealing with effects and not removing causes. If religion is kept an affair of Sunday only, it will not meet the challenge of the new age. If the church Christianizes the community, it will be by making re- ligion a matter of everyday life. Religion must enter into and control all human activities. The evangelistic policy of the church will help toward that end, by showing that religion is neither foreign nor hostile to any human interest, but, rather, that it promotes all real human interests. Men ought to be able to talk about religion as naturally as they do about the weather, or business, or any other human interest. If it is kept as something too sacred to be used, like some family Bibles on the musty tables of unused parlors, it THE PROGRAM 29 neither will get into men's thinking nor practice, and it will continue as a thing apart, which may be enjoyed occasionally as a luxury but not practiced as a funda- mental rule of conduct. Men are not afraid of religion when they begin to live it, and to live it in the spirit of Christ is the best silent force for evangelism there is. Men of all creeds and no creeds recognize Chris- tianity when they see it lived. And a life of goodness is one argument that no man can answer. The church must interest itself in all the interests of the com- munity, and that will go a long way toward getting a sympathetic hearing from the community. Practical Religion A rough man who had no love for nor interest in the church brought his little girl to the writer's Sunday school, and one of the superintendents invited him into the school. He replied, "I don't take any stock in religion, but I am interested in the institution that got my boy a job." That Sunday school had an employ- ment bureau which was very successful. The Sunday school got a chance at the man because it got his boy a job. It was interested in things that were very hu- man. The approach must often be made through self- interest. It is a very important thing for the church to get young people work, and have an oversight of them in the years of their inexperience. They need a friend then, for it is at that time that they start on careers that are either right or wrong. Christ is to be made the King of all life. A splendid example of a country parish with a real program is The Larger Benzonia Parish, Michigan. 30 EVANGELISM Three good examples of city churches that have pro- grams are Central Methodist Episcopal Church, De- troit, Michigan ; Dr. Helms's Institutional Church (Mor- gan Memorial), and the Old First Methodist Epis- copal Church, both in Boston. In these parishes there is much valuable work done that is purely social and moral, but the objective in all the activities is the spirit- ual. The other things are means to an end, but the end is to get men rightly related to God, to bring them un- der the Kingship of Jesus Christ. The church that fails in that fails in all permanent and adequate betterment of mankind. If Christ only fed the multitude and healed the sick, and defended the weak against the strong, the world would remain unsaved. It would have been only temporarily relieved, and when his personal pressure was off, it would lapse back to where it was before. Permanent betterment in that way could only be main- tained by the sustained miracle of Christ's personal pressure on the external and material interests of man. His feeding and healing were means to the end that he might save them from sin, and bring them into right relations to God and man, but he did relieve tem- poral needs. Christ's main object was to get men so recreated in their personality that they would be capable of making a better world in which to live. That must be the main business of the church — to make good men, and good men will make a good world. To make good men attention must be given to the whole man, environment and all. The object is to save the whole man — not a disembodied spirit, not an upright animal, but a real man made in the image of God and destined to be a real son of God. THE PROGRAM 31 The church must not be afraid of establishing prece- dents, nor of departing from old ones whenever it is necessary. If the old method does not get people to God drop it. If a new one does, no matter how much it may be criticized, if it really gets men to God, adopt it, work it, talk it up, magnify it. There is no sanc- tity in method. The test of the divineness of methods is that they work, that they produce results consistent with divineness. If an old method will still work, but has been abandoned because it was old, revive it and use it and silence criticism by results. A criticism that flies in the face of results is only fault-finding, prompted by ignorance, prejudice, or maliciousness, and need not be noticed, much less answered. That kind of criticism answers itself in time by destroying itself. The Church the Community Center The efiforts that are now put forth to make the church the community center will work great good for the Kingdom and be a powerful evangelistic force if first things are kept first. If the spiritual is kept foremost, nothing can stop an organized, aggressive, earnest church. When making a house-to-house can- vass of the parish with the evangelistic motive, it is easy to learn many important lessons of how the church can supplement the home. If the home has no music, yet has music lovers; or if there are no books, but book lovers; if the members of the home work but have no wholesome recreation, that is the church's opportunity through some of its organizations, and in some of its 32 EVANGELISM rooms, to furnish the things that are lacking in the home. That is good rehgion as well as good social service. A good way to the soul of a boy or man is to get his body to the church. His sense of obligation for value received often will make him, at the proper time, ap- proachable on the matter of religion. A church whose habit is to minister to the highest needs of men will not have to go out of its way to make religion the fore- most matter. People will expect it and will not feel im- posed upon when it is presented to them, for that is what the church is doing all the time, and everybody knows it. The church is consistent with itself. If, however, the church is interested in spiritual matters only one month in the year sufficiently to put forth systematic efforts to reach people during that one month, it is easy and natural to construe such efforts as baits to get people to church in order to thrust religion at them. Such action is not a genuine expression of the church's interest in their everyday lives. That is always the danger of the spasmodic efforts. The com- munity looks upon them as high-pressure methods to get people into the church for its own sake rather to get them to God for their own sake. The church with a constant evangelistic policy and program never has to apologize for its method nor explain why, at occasional seasons only, the spiritual is put forward. People will be converted right along in such a church in its most normal activity. The older notion of evangelism, which meant the salvation of the soul from sin, that taught that the sanctification of the soul lay in the mortifica- tion of the body, tended to narrow the scope of the THE PROGRAM 33 church's activity. The revival was the only evangel- istic effort of the year. Everyday Evangelism But the modern view of evangelism, which cares for the salvation of the soul as much as the older form did, and in addition cares for the redemption of the body, the home, the business, the recreation — in a word, the whole life of man in all its interests and relations, which the older form often did not, widens the scope of evangelism and gives vastly more points of contact with the man on the outside. It shows a far more minute interest in him, and thus increases in a very large degree evangelistic opportunity. A man is not apt to think much about his soul when he cannot feed his family. The evangelistic approach to that man will not be a call to repent of his sins. It will issue in that, but he must be approached along the line of need that is most real and pressing to him from his viewpoint. It may be said that the evangelist must bring the man to his point of view before he can be saved. That is true enough, because the man's own point of view did not .save him. But before the evan- gelist can get a frank, unbiased hearing from the man he must meet him on his own ground. Having won his confidence by sympathy, he can lead him to higher things, but he cannot lift him to higher things if the man feels that the evangelist is in another world and does not understand him nor care for him or his world. The time was when the evangelistic effort was made to save men's souls. It must now be made to save their 34 EVANGELISM lives. Salvation is a much larger thing than the for- giveness of sins. The forgiveness of sins, however, is basic to all else that is done ; but that forgiveness must issue in the moral action that involves all the life in its individual and collective expression. There is a sort of undefined life that we call com- munity life, or crowd life, that is more than the sum total of all the individual lives. It seems to be a case of "The whole is more than the sum of all its parts." But the community life which seems to be in excess of the sum of all the individual lives that make up the community is a life that is not apparently a part of any individual life. It is a sort of atmosphere of the whole. That atmosphere must be wholesome, or religious life cannot flourish in it. That atmosphere is produced by many things as subtle as itself in their workings. Food, clothing, wages, housing, recreation all play an important part in the reHgious life of a com- munity — indeed, in the life of the individual. Religion is life's expression at its best. No life can be at its best which is underfed or overfed, badly housed, over- worked, which is not properly and comfortably clothed, and which has no time nor desire for natural and wholesome recreation or worship. It takes some de- gree of comfort to put men in a frame of mind com- patible with worship. Formerly too little attention was paid to this group of human necessities in the matter of religion. If a man's sins were forgiven and his past made right with God, that was all that was necessary even though his present life was economically and so- cially intolerable. A person must be comfortable and free from constant anxiety in order to have a natural THE PROGRAM 35 and hopeful view of life. The lack of that sort of life put great emphasis on the hope of heaven, and men longed to get out of the miseries of this world and be at rest in heaven. To-day we must try to drive as much misery as we can out of this world and make it a decent and happy place in which to live, and so make religion more of a present joy and power than a future hope. Hope ought never to go out of the other life, nor joy out of this life. This world ought to be made so good and life so worth while that people would not want to die in order to get rid of tragedies, nor to get out of the world in which living conditions were un- bearable. Evangelism must aim at establishing the kingdom of "Gud liefe'TrTthe earth. We ought to want to live as long and serve as well as we can. That is what a wholesome religion will fit men to do. Men must get rid of all morbid notions of religion. Our Father God wills only best things for us, and we must will and work best things for one another. So religion must sanctify all relationships. Under a true conception of brotherhood no man would wrong another, nor even desire to wrong him. It means a good deal more to a community to have a revival in it than just to throw open the doors of the church for a few weeks and have a large number of people converted, and yet leave untouched most of the unwholesome conditions and institutions of the community. Such revival activity permits many, if not most, of the converts to lapse into a state that makes them harder to reach than they were at first. People sometimes talk as though social evangelism and Z6 EVANGELISM spiritual evangelism were two different things. Any evangelism that deals with the whole life must com- bine the two. All evangelism is spiritual, and it may be personal and social. An evangelism that does not better the community is not worth while. It is time for us to put more emphasis on the permanent results of evangelistic efiPorts. In helping to rebuild the world, evangelism has its greatest opportunity and also its greatest task. If the church has been discounted by the war, it must be rein- stated in the love and confidence of the world by the scope, worth, and efficiency of its evangelistic pro- gram. Life must be brought to its best. If men on the outside look askance at the church, it is either because they misunderstand its functions or else because they think it is not interested in them. If they think that the whole business of the church is to champion their material interests, that it is to be in- terested only in wages, and rent and food, then they do not understand it. The church has a far bigger business than that in the world. On the other hand, if the church has looked upon the man on the outside as a soul that needs to be saved, and not a whole man who needs to be redeemed and saved to the best there is for him in this world and in any other world, unless it deals with him as a man in his entirety, then the church mis- understands the man. One of the very serious problems that the church has to face is when a boy or girl from a bad home becomes a Christian. Sometimes that one Christian will Chris- tianize the whole household, but it too often happens that the Christian life withers and dies in such an un- THE PROGRAM 37 favorable environment. The social aspect of the evan- gelism which saves the boy or girl transforms the home. So of the factory or store. We live a life of interdependence, and never more so than now, and we will never revert to the old-fashioned life of independ- ence. We shall become more and more interdepend- ent, and we must reckon with that in our evangelistic work. Human solidarity must be reckoned with more than ever in an}^ attempt to better the world. Society cannot continue to have apoplexy at the head and anemia at the feet — extravagant luxury and despair- ing poverty in those extremities of the social body — and the world still have a good life, or the church a fair chance. The Individual and the Crowd Of course the individual must never be lost in the mass, or all will be lost. You can no more have a successful crowd result without attention to the individual than you can have a crop of corn if the individual stalks do not produce ears. There is no such thing as a crop apart from the individual ears. The crop is a very concrete thing. Your crowd result will be no more potent if the in- dividual is left out of the account. But individual betterment must be carried on so widely and wisely that it will issue in social betterment. Unrelated and ungrouped individuals will do little toward bettering society or bringing in the Kingdom. Each for all and all for each must always be the law, in the large, of the Kingdom. The prophets were national figures. They preached 38 EVANGELISM a national gospel, they pleaded for national righteous- ness, they denounced national sin; but they also dealt with individuals in a most direct way. The apostles too in a way were national figures, but their nation was the kingdom of God. Nothing can be more prac- tical, nor of greater social moment than the teaching of Paul in First and Second Corinthians, Ephesians, First and Second Timothy, Titus, and Philemon, where he shows the practical bearing of religion on every phase of individual and corporate life and duty. The great evangelists were interested in folks. The law of love, which is the law of the Kingdom, has an upward and outward application — upward to God and outward to man. They go together. In this type of evangelism extremists will have little in- terest. To one class of extremists it will not be re- ligious enough; to the other class it will be too re- ligious to be either acceptable or effective. One class would rather see ten people sanctified than one hun- dred converted, and the other would rather see ten people fed or have their wages increased than one hun- dred converted. But an evangelism that deals with the whole man will be interested in food, wages, con- version, and sanctification. And what is aimed at for the individual man is aimed at for the whole com- munity. The effort is to get the will of God done, and God's ideal for human life realized in the earth, rather than to build up any church or other institution, which will only be a temporary expedient. As far as the church realizes this Kingdom ideal, it ceases to be a temporary expedient and becomes a permanent factor in the betterment of mankind, and is indispensable to THE PROGRAM 39 the good of the race. Such a church the world must have, and when it arrives the world will cease to say the days of the church are numbered. * It aims at making all human relations — religious, domestic, social, economic, political, national, and in- ternational — right. Its aim is not so much to get people to do some religious work, but to do all work religiously. That is a large program, but it is the only program that seems adequate to the needs of the world. Better men and women in a better world — that is the aim. The evangelist must be prophet, teacher, statesman, patriot, and Christian, and no irresponsible group of small prejudiced people under the name "evangelist'* ought to be allowed to usurp his place. They can't take his place and fill it. At most they usurp it. The standards of evangelism must be so high that only the best, most brotherly, most sacrificial men will go into it as a profession. That will give the pastor the best help when he needs it and will put before him an ideal toward which he will be constantly striving. The habit that prevails in some quarters of making the minister whom the churches do not want and the cabinet cannot place Conference evangelist is a very doubtful church policy. He cheapens evangelism and discourages young ministers from being known as evangelistic pastors. The whole thing is discredited. If he is good for nothing else, to make an evangelist out of him is bad. If he is too big for anything else, give him the biggest thing there is, the position of pas- tor-evangelist, or evangelistic pastor. The man who sees the size and the greatness of an evangelism which 40 EVANGELISM actually brings in the kingdom of God, and gets God's will done in the earth, is in the biggest, most perma- nent, and most important work in the world. To get all the will of God done in all human affairs is the master work of the world. This evangelism may climax in a few weeks' meeting, for a harvesting time, but it goes on the whole year through, and there is no part of the community that does not feel its power. It centers in the church, but it radiates to all the com- munity. Constructive Evangelism The evangelistic attitude must be positive and con- structive. It is not enough to tell men that they must give up their sin and quit the haunts of evildoing, and then leave them in the same old environment with nothing to do except follow a very indefinite sugges- tion — ''Serve the Lord." That does not mean much to a man just up out of sin, for he does not know how to serve the Lord. He hopes some day to get to heaven and away from the temptation and torment of the things in which he once lived, but his home and his neighborhood and his neighbors and his employment are all against him. The negative policy is not sufficient. Indeed, the church has put too much emphasis on its "don'ts" and too little on its "do-es." The negative emphasis would not have been too great had it been properly balanced by the positive. Our missionaries would have very small success if they did no more to reconstruct the whole life of their converts than we do here at home. The missionaries build for their converts a whole new world. They THE PROGRAM 41 must create a new environment in which the new Hfe can develop and propagate itself. Their program, where it is most successful, is a cooperative and con- structive program. The home life and industrial life of these new Christians are very vital matters with the missionary. The evangelistic work is only just begun when the conversion is secured. With us it often ends just there. (But more of this in the chapter where the culture of the Christian is considered.) Whether at home or on the foreign field, the drive of a positive gospel which is made urgent under the lead- ership of Jesus Christ is one of the most controlling and compelling factors in evangelism. This city must be saved ; this man must be reached ; this evil must be suppressed. That will give everybody something to do, and being united in a common work for human weal and being urged by a devotion to Jesus Christ will cement them together in a real brotherhood as nothing else will. They serve their own best interest when they promote the interest of everybody else. The Christian must be as aggressive with the Spirit as the Mohammedan is with the sword. Evangelism mus^^ be aggressive. The time was when all sorts of people would come to the church when the revival was on. That is not true in any large way to-day. Now the revival must go where the people are if they will not come to it. Under the compelling power of moral urgency which expressed itself in Christ's hfe by the rugged word "must," the evangelistic message must be delivered, and the evangelistic program must be carried out. As some one has said, "The best defense is a vigorous at- 42 EVANGELISM tack" ; so of the church — when it ceases to be aggres- sive it ceases to be powerful. V The love of Christ is the controlling motive in evan- gelism. It is that love for men which Christ had that creates the moral urgency of the church. Of course there is always in the background the instinct of self- preservation. The church knows if it cannot Chris- tianize the world, the world will paganize the church. But this fight for self-preservation is not the compel- ling motive. The church which has caught Christ's spirit will love men for their own sakes enough to spend and be spent for their salvation. After Paul's great climax in Rom. 8. 33-39 he confesses that he has a continual pain in his heart because Israel is not saved. Again, he said that he could wish himself ac- cursed if only that would mean the salvation of his brethren. See Rom. 9. 1-3. It is that passion which sent Christ to the cross and the martyrs to their death that must dominate the minister if he is ever to be a great evangelist. But he must feel the same compassion for hungry, tired, and wronged people that Christ did, and with Christ's fine indignation strike every institution of human oppression and ruin like a thunderbolt. That is the kind of evangelism that a greed-loving, ease-living, sin-loving age like this needs. But the men "higher up" need the gospel too, and it takes far more courage to break social conventions, to go to them and say, "Thou art the man," than it does to found a rescue mission for the "scum of the city." Very often it is because the men "higher up" in wealth and culture and power are not evangelized, that there are so many who are "down and out." They may be THE PROGRAM 43 running "down and out" factories. These men are hard to reach because of their social station and finan- cial protection. But evangelism takes no note of these artificial distinctions which separate men. Its business is to get all men to do the will of God in all things. Men on the avenue as well as men in the alleys need to know that Jesus is King, and is King of all life, all relations, all properties, all institutions. If the tene- ments need the gospel, so do the mansions, and the more the mansions are evangelized the easier it will be to evangelize the tenements. The tenement group think the evangelist is afraid of the mansion group. The problems cannot be solved by the closet phil- osopher, nor by the drawing-room saint. They must be solved by prophets "who fear nothing but God and hate nothing but sin," who will not count their lives dear to them if they can only build this world into the kingdom of God, where righteousness, peace, and good will, are to be the dominant forces in human society. God's plan for the world is his kingdom. It is his method of bringing in that kingdom and administering it through human agency cooperating with him that gives the moral urgency to evangelism. It is a posi- tive, constructive, courageous, unselfish, powerful agency for the rebuilding of the world in righteousness and holiness. Consistent Goodness But a world cannot be made righteous or holy with- out making indiyiduals righteous and holy. These are personal qualities. They must be concrete to be effec- tive. One of the practical difficulties that evangelism 44 EVANGELISM faces is that between private and public goodness or badness, between personal and corporate righteousness and unrighteousness. A man may be righteous and just and kind in his direct personal actions with in- dividuals, and be above reproach in his private life, yet as a stockholder or director his vote may mean op- pression and injustice to a large group of men and women whom he never saw. He would not wrong one of them if he were dealing privately and individually with them, yet he votes to cut down wages, or to refuse to improve living conditions for the sake of larger dividends on his investment. His indirect action may belie his personal conduct. So too a man may be a rascal in his private conduct, rob the community to get his money, and be unbearable in his home, yet in his public benefactions, in making parks, playgrounds, founding hospitals, helping schools, etc., he may be above reproach. Now evangelism is to make both of these types of men consistent with themselves, so that the one class would no more indirectly do a wrong to people they do not know than they would by direct action wrong people whom they do know. And the other class make their private integrity agree with their public munificence and benefactions. Holiness and righteousness, as personal qualities, must extend to all deeds and to all relations. A good community must be made up of good men and good women who are consistent and constant in their good- ness. There may a sort of abstract goodness that belongs to society as a whole, and that may be a very potent factor in social salvation, but that will not exist in the absence of concrete goodness. There are a social THE PROGRAM 45 consciousness and also a social conscience, just as there are social action and what is called public senti- ment. But there is hardly that which could be called a social personality. Society may be thought of as a body, but hardly as a person, that is, individual. The end of evangelism is the perfection of God-filled and God-ruled personality, and any program that does not have that as an end will not be adequate or final. A saved social order will conserve individual salvation, and individual salvation makes for a social order. Saving the Whole Man Evangelism must not lose sight of the fact that a man must be saved in his entirety if his salvation is to be of permanent worth to himself or to the world. It is the man who stays saved who helps the world; the man who keeps his head cool, his heart warm, his body strong, his hands clean, his sympathies broad, and keeps hopeful and busy who helps the world the most. It is to save men like that that the evangelistic plea is made. That cannot be done in a minute. Every bet- tered individual helps to make a better social order, and in every bettered social order it is easier to better individuals. Men hope for a perfect society some day, \ but not here; they look for it in heaven. That white- robed throng that cannot be numbered, who will not hunger, thirst, toil, suffer, or die any more, is in heaven, but we must realize as much of perfect society here as possible. There will be hunger and suffering and death, but hunger can be constantly lessened, and suf- fering mitigated, and death itself will cease to be feared, when men will live so well and so long that 46 EVANGELISM death comes at last as a glorious promotion. Instead of the death day being a day of gloom it will be a day of triumph. That is the Christian's sense of death. There is needed the coordination and cooperation of all the good forces in the world to help realize the king- dom of God. Too often constructive forces for good have been competitive, and worse still, antagonistic, in a community, while the destructive forces of evil were cooperative. Sin made its conquest while the forces for good were quarreling about methods of defense. Evangelists have sometimes tried to make capital for themselves by denouncing the church, and never ap- pearing to see that the very churches which they de- nounce gave them their living and the only standing they have, and the moral influence of the church in the world carries them when they could not stand an hour on their own merit. Much has been ably written on social and group salvation, but nothing must be thought of as a sub- stitute for the bringing of the individual into right relations with God. The permanence of all religious work at last rests back on that. We may differ as to method, but the objective must be the same — to make man the type of man God meant him to be. We cannot deal with unrelated units nor with unindividuated masses. The mass in large part makes the individual what he is, but the individual helps to make the mass what it is. CHAPTER III GENERAL METHODS Our methods must vary according to our communi- ties and the classes of people and ages with which we deal. Some workers seem to care more for the method than they do for the result. If any man is saved by another method than theirs, they doubt the genu- ineness of his salvation. They overlook the fact that the life, the character of the individual, is the final test of the genuineness of the change that has taken place. If he is, as Paul says, *'a new creation" in Christ, what difference does it make how he became so ? It is folly to expect the same religious reaction in a boy of twelve who never went into sin as in a man of forty who has been in the gutter. Yet some folks seem to reason that way. To cause a child of nine to weep over gross sins as a condition of conversion is not only morbid but wicked. To cause a little child to be afraid of God is barbarous. To bring up children to fear their father is a perversion of family life. It is bad in family life and worse in religion. Skill in Approach The method of approach to individuals or groups must be along the most natural lines, along lines that will not prejudice the people we seek against us in 47 48 EVANGELISM advance. It is a discouraging thing to try to appeal to a closed mind, and doubly so when your message as well as your person is discounted before you begin. Men and women must be won, not coaxed, cajoled, or frightened into the Christian life. ■ To be a successful fisherman one must not only know the general habits of fish but the particular habits of the kind for which he is now fishing; the habitat, the bait, the time of year, the time of day, whether or not they go in schools, etc. All this enters into the common-sense training of a fisherman. Now, men ought to use the same kind of common sense when they become fishers of men. Jesus chose his twelve apostles that he might teach them how to become fishers of men. They had to learn how. In some places the evangelistic methods of fifty years ago will not work at all. Changed conditions of living must be met by changed methods or the people will not be reached. The same methods cannot be employed in college evangelism as would be in a rescue mission. The evangelistic pastor must cultivate powers of adaptabil- ity, so as to adjust the methods to the occasion. In the appeal the power of suggestion must be used with great skill, especially when dealing with young people, such as one would have in Sunday school, where whole classes are apt to act as groups, with little individual initiative or judgment. While all that is helpful in group consciousness and action must be conserved and utilized, the religious decision itself must be intelligent, deliberate, and personal. While you may get group action, there must be individual decision, for religion is the right relation of the individual to God with all GENERAL METHODS 49 its social bearings and implications. Religious action as class action in Sunday school evangelism that does not issue in permanent decisions and also in permanent personal religious activity is apt to be harmful. The lapses from revivals do the church and evangelism in general great harm. Any method that leads to super- ficial work does as much harm as good, perhaps more. The backslider is generally far more dangerous to the cause of religion than the original sinner. Every- body knows the attitude of the original sinner, but the backslider discredits religion by creating the impres- sion that he tried it and found there was nothing to it. He is apt to be more cynical toward religion than the original sinner in order to justify himself in giving it up. He wants to create the impression that the fault was with religion, not with himself. He would rather have the world think that religion was a sham than that he was. It is far easier for him to declare that the church or religion is a failure than to adrnit or confess that he himself is undependable. Emphasizing the Spiritual The church and the evangelist must be above sus- picion if the community is to be successfully reached not merely during the revival but the whole year through.^ No method that has a trick in it will long succeed, and no evangelist who is known to be tricky in his methods will be trusted by the sensible man on the outside. If the church is not absolutely above- board in all its methods, it will not have the confidence of the community. The church must show itself the friend of the outside man eleven months in the year 50 EVANGELISM when the revival is not on, as well as the one month that it is on. It is for want of just that one thing that the one month is often a failure. Religion cannot be spasmodic. It must be constant to wear down opposi- tion by siege as well as to break it down by assault. A church that condones or ignores community abuses for eleven months, and then attacks them violently for one month, cannot make the world believe that it is seriously in earnest. Consistency is always an im- portant factor in efficiency. If meetings are held on the street where are all nationalities and creeds — and no creeds meet — one needs to show the practical results of religion in human welfare and happiness rather than to present abstract doctrines, upon which men differ so widely, and about which the vast majority of men know so little, however valuable such presentation may be in the church. The trouble with the mass of men out of the church is that they think in terms of the mate- rial. They must be met on that ground to get a hear- ing, but they must not be left on that ground. An evangelism which is only social and industrial will never permanently meet the needs of the world. Men must be brought to God. The lines of approach may differ widely, but they must focus in God. If men will not come to the church, the church must go to them. That statement may be trite, but it is funda- mental. For the most part the men will not come to the church. The church too often when that stage is reached, sells out and moves away where its old con- stituents have gone. That leaves the man on the street unchurched; and, worse than that, it leaves him with the feeling that the church cares nothing about him GENERAL METHODS 51 and has gone off and left him. Of course he does not think the thing through. If he did, he would see that if he only had been fair to the church and met it half- way, it would not have had to move out. He ought not to expect the church to come all the way all the time, and when he has proved himself hopeless to the church to blame it for not keeping forever at him when he does not intend to be fair is unreasonable. Of course this means that the church is on the job and is interested in all the life problems of the com- munity. If a churchman works his men seven days in the week, or six days so hard that he exhausts them, he must not blame them for not liking the church or attending it. They ought not to judge the whole church by him, nor condemn the church in all places because in a given place a man misrepresents the real spirit of the church of which he is a member, and much more the church at large; but they do. That is the perversity of human nature, and all folks have some of it — indeed, too much of it to permit their judgment to be fair, or even trustworthy, in these general con- demnations. If the man on the outside finds one hypo- crite in the church, he says, "Well, they are all alike," and for that statement he will be applauded. If the church should say because there is a murder among the men on the outside, "Well, they are all alike," he would strongly resent it, but it would be just as fair. A church interested in the redemption of men all the time will not find it difficult to convince them that it is interested any time. Pious words unaccompanied by pious deeds will not long be effective. Pious deeds are always mighty in their effective eloquence. Some 52 EVANGELISM one has said, in substance, that a loaf of bread is under- stood in all languages. Jesus made large use of the eloquence of deeds, but his feeding and healing were always means, not ends. The end was to get men rightly related to God. He is our Master Evangelist. It will not be hard to follow his method if we once catch his spirit. Spiritual Needs The trouble with most men is that they are blind to their spiritual need, and they translate their hunger for God in terms of the material, and blame the church if it does not do so too. The church must be patient with these blind and hungry folks, and not get discour- aged if it cannot reveal God to them at once. The really evangelistic church represents God in action among men, and the resulting revival is man's response to that acting God. God seems too far off to the average man in the church, and much more so to the man out- side of the church. To the men out of the church God does not know, in which case they don't trust him ; or he cannot help, in which case they do not need him; or he does not care, then they do not want him. Evangelism is to make men feel that God is right here in his world, knowing, helping, caring. The outside man's environment is not favorable to spiritual sensi- tiveness, but many of the noblest souls come to spirit- ual vision and power in spite of environment. Jacob Riis is a good example, and though he said that envi- ronment counted ninety-nine per cent in the slums, he showed that, though he was in the slums, environment was not ninety-nine per cent with him ; nor has it been GENERAL METHODS 53 so with many another. But it is a powerful factor and has to be reckoned with in evangeUsm. To be effective the whole church must be active, the laity as well as the clergy. The Christian is saved to serve. The whole Christian community is called to evangelism. That makes it democratic and effective. CHAPTER IV THE MESSAGE (GENERAL) Dealing Frankly with Sin The type of sermon will depend on the class of people to whom the message is delivered. Its point must be a call to God, to a life of righteousness, to a break with sin. Any evangelistic message that is afraid to be frank and fearless will fail. Men high and low must give up sin. He that steals must steal no more. He that oppresses must oppress no more. He that shirks must shirk no more. It must be a rightabout face, or else he will be marking time. Glossing over sin does not even please the sinner. He may say it does, but in his heart he despises such a message. He knows sin in its horrible nakedness, and he would condemn the preacher who tries to make it harmless or lovely. Sin is horrible, and the sinner knows it even when he likes it. He would not have his mother or sister or wife do what he does for the world. He despises it, yet likes it and commits it, but the preacher cannot fool him by glossing it over. He does not ring true when he does so. Nothing shakes the confidence in his preacher with the thinking man more than to hear him violently attack the sins of the people who are not present and ignore the sins of those who are; or to be severe with the little sin- ners back under the gallery, and gentle with the big 54 THE MESSAGE (GENERAL) 55 sinners up in the middle aisle, as he puts it. Courage must be consistent. The preacher who deals with sin successfully must deal with it impartially, and that means that he must not be afraid of a purse, an office, or an organization. If he attacks capital when it is wrong, he must attack labor when it is wrong. The man who renders a pittance work for a good day's wage is as mean and dishonest as the man who gives a pittance wage for a good day's work. They are equally and inexcusably dishonest and unbrotherly. Neither practices either the Christian ideal or the Christian ethics. The true evangelist strikes at sin and wrong with a courage and consistency which leaves no doubt in the minds of those who hear that a prophet has spoken. He will strike at individual and collective sins with equal fearlessness, yet he must not be vindictive. His indignation may blaze out in fury against all forms of wrong, whether that wrong strikes up or down. But he must also point the refuge in the love of a saving God, He is God's messenger with a call to life on his lips. That call will turn to judgment only when it is refused. Preachers must have the rugged courage and direct- ness of John the Baptist, but also the tenderness and sympathy of Jesus. It is only when men are warmed by the sympathy and softened by the tenderness of Jesus that they can speak effectively on the awful matter of judgment. No man with a cold heart or bitter feeling can speak on the terrible judgment of unrepented sin without being brutal, and brutality al- ways defeats itself, whether it is in gospel evangelism 56 EVANGELISM or prison administration or in the prosecution of war. And when the pulpit made God a monster of brutaUty some people were frightened into the Kingdom, but that type of preaching had to die, and rightly so. Love's punishment is only a last resort after all else fails. It is only the man who will not be moved and won by the love of God that must be faced with the judgment of God. But the gospel is so manifold that it appeals to all cases. Men must face their sins and forsake them and yield themselves in absolute obedi- ence to the will and rule of God, or there will be no permanent religious life that will issue in anything worth while. As before mentioned, evangelism must be constructive. Men must not only see the life of sin they are to be saved from but the worthwhileness of the Hfe they are to be saved to. Evangelism often has failed by only showing what men are to be saved from. That will give them gratitude, but they must be shown what they are saved to. That will give them incentive. The one gives sentiment, the other, motive. Both are needed. Many do not see the need of becom- ing Christians if it only means a change of belief at a few points, and a little personal comfort ; but to show them that it is a challenge to the brightest life and to most unselfish servi(^e for the world's uplift, is another thing. It is a life worth while even if there were no hereafter. The greatness and rightness and usefulness of the Christian life is the major evan- gelistic appeal. To show young people how they can invest their powers in some noble and worthy life service will go much farther toward winning them than any terrors of judgment which will assail them THE MESSAGE (GENERAL) 57 if they do not repent. For death and judgment seem unreal and distant to most young people, especially those we reach in colleges and churches; and, indeed, not much headway is made with the other less cultured class of young people, who have to dodge a police- man, if God is made an infinite policeman who can- not be avoided. It gives them an unnatural and mor- bid conception of God. Their religion will be apt to express itself in either cringing or defiant forms, and that does not help them to win others, except perhaps a few of their own class. God demands justice, righteousness, goodness and service among men. That cannot be stressed too strongly. Men cannot wait until after death to enjoy or employ their goodness. That must be done here and now, and the hereafter will take care of itself. Life must be right to-day. But God will put all the love and grace at man's disposal that he needs, if he will submit himself to the rule of God. The Old Testa- ment prophets insisted that men should do righteously now. See Isaiah i, Amos 5, Micah 6. The nation, or as we would say to-day, society, must be clean, rever- ent, merciful, just and God-loving and man-loving now; not in the far off ''Day of the Lord" which was their Golden Age. They were often discouraged at the meagerness and slowness of the response they received. So they saw that judgment would have to precede that Golden Age, for the people would neither love God nor be just to one another. But it was, "Choose you this day whom ye will serve." There must be righteousness in the earth. Men of later time forgot that and urged men to be saved that they might 58 EVANGELISM get to heaven at last. The old Hebrews expected heaven down here in the "day of the Lord." Life then would be lived in its entirety in the will of God. "Thy kingdom come" does not mean that people should die and go to heaven, but to get the will of God done down here as it is done in heaven. That Lord's Prayer is a great evangelistic message, or several messages. It means the rule of God in the earth. That would bring about a real brotherhood of man. Impartial Ministry In the regular ministry, or in evangelism in the more restricted sense, the minister must not be partisan, but the champion of right and justice and goodness. He must represent God. If he is arrayed against one side, it is because it is wrong; if he is for the other side, it is because it is right. People will soon find that out, and if they want to be on his side, or have him on theirs, they must "true up" with the right. That is the best compliment that can ever be paid to a minister. If men want him to champion their cause, whether that be capital or labor, they must be on the right side of the issue. The rights of labor are as sacred as the rights of capital, but no more so. Rights are rights, no matter which side they are on. In this case they are on both sides, and much of the difficulty which has arisen is because neither side recognized the rights of the other. The preacher must be the friend of both if he would win both, and he must be equally frank and fair with both. If men say it is impossible, then right living is impossible. It is simply THE MESSAGE (GENERAL) 59 a rule of right living. It is practiced fairly well in every well-ordered and happy home. It is the rule of brotherhood. The goal of evangelism is to get that done, but it will be slow work if the only way to get it done will be by adding one individual to another. The Golden Rule is like the disarmament of nations — easy and simple if all nations would agree to it. But the nation that does it alone puts itself at the mercy of all unscrupulous nations that do not do it. So one man who practices the Golden Rule alone in a community where no one else does, is the victim of all designing and dishonest people. So social evangelism comes in again to quicken the social conscience, so that at least a large part of the community, by mutual agreement, could make the Golden Rule effective and profitable in practice. It must be prompted by love to God and love to man in a sincere desire to practice goodness. Repentance may seem like an old-fashioned doctrine, but it is fundamental in evangelism; it must be preached. If men are asked to do less than re- pent, their salvation may be no more than a good reso- lution. This, of course, is not expected of chil- dren who never have been consciously hostile to God, but to men who have either ignored or defied God repentance is fundamental. But repentance is more than a revulsion of feeling. It is a change of mind and will. It is complete change of personal attitude from indifference or disobedience to God to a glad and whole-hearted obedience to God. There must be that new attitude before there can be salvation. It is a change of life's direction, and that change of direction 6o EVANGELISM will change both the motive and the content of life. It will move toward God. Its center will be a love center, not a self center. When man changes from a wrong attitude toward God to a right attitude, God meets that repentant man and changes his nature by grace, forgiving him and accepting him into sonship, and liberating in him a spiritual force that will enable him to live the life on a new center, move in the new direction, and have the new content. He is a new creation in Christ. The evangelistic message must possess not less than this, but it must also add that this new life must begin at once to express itself in service. Only so can it keep moving Godward. God and man now cooperate, not only in the building of character but in the ren- dering of service. Faith and Action Repentance and faith are two requisites to salvation. But faith is more than intellectual belief or assent. Faith in the Christian sense — indeed, in the New Testa- ment sense — is very vital and very personal. It in- volves three things — namely, confidence in, love for, and obedience to a Person; that is, the Person Jesus Christ. This complete change in a man's life may ex- press itself in various ways, but where there is a genu- ine conversion the reality of it must be there. The evangelistic message must be very specific in its in- struction as well as urgent in its appeal. Men must be made to see what it is to become a Christian, and what the Christian life involves after one becomes a Christian. If all things are to go on as they did before THE MESSAGE (GENERAL) 6i except the mere accident of church membership, nothing worth while has been done. It is not difficuh to accept creeds intellectually, but to trust, love, and obey a Person is something far different and more vital. ''Do you believe the doctrines of the church?" is not as important a question as ''Will you do the will of God?" "Will you keep the rules of the church?" is not as important as "Do you love and will you fol- low Christ?" "Will you give your money to support the gospel?" is not so important as "Will you give yourself to God, to help make this a better world and get God's will done in it?" These are important mat- ters to make clear when presenting the gospel for immediate decision. It is not to put the minimum of what must be done to escape judgment, but what is the maximum that can be done to please God and help men. Evangelism a Maximum Business Evangelism is not in the minimum business, but in the maximum business of helping to establish the king- dom of God in the earth. Present the biggest motive possible for men to become Christians. It is a chal- lenge to character and service, not an escape from penalty. Here at home the pagan must be shown a wl^ole new life and a whole new world, just as well as in non-Christian countries. The Christian life must be shown to be the biggest, greatest, and best life in the world. It needs no defense. It needs definition and proclamation. It will stand on its own merits. The gospel message should contain no apology for its proclamation. It offers the world the greatest thing 62 EVANGELISM there is, and is not ashamed of it. Paul puts it finely in Romans i. i6. But this salvation, it must be remembered, is to regulate all life in all its bearings and relations. Evan- gelism strives for saved men, but also for a saved world, "wherein dwelleth righteousness." In the struggle for existence, whether in nature or in industry, the effort of the weak is to get into the place of the strong, and the effort of the strong is to keep them out. If the weak had their way, we would have the same conditions only with a new set of strong ones. When the weak ones got into the place of the strong ones they would act just as the strong ones did before them. When the laborer who cries down the capitalists gets to be a capitalist he is just like the rest of them. Many of the "kings of finance" were once the slaves of a meager wage. So it has ever been. The cure of human ills is not in the material, but in the spiritual. It is in the temper and spirit of the new life. A man must be master of his goods or else he is their slave. Life in union with God is the end of religion. The man with little waits for the man with much to come down, but he himself wants to go up. But where shall the man who is to come down stop? And where is the man who is going up to stop ? The stop- ping place is as difficult for the one as it is for the other. If the lower man begins to rise, he will not stop as long as he can rise higher. At last he comes to the place of the man he con- demns for being up, but he does not want to be con- demned, but commended for his successful rise. The THE MESSAGE (GENERAL) 63 man who has come down now condemns him, and so the circle goes on. As long as the basis of the con- tention is the material the quarrel will go on, for as long as men differ in capacity there will be differences in social and financial levels, and the grade that is longed for will not come by a leveling down process, but by a grading-up process, and that too in charac- ter rather than in property. Men will come together on the level of life's higher values, namely, the spirit- ual. The true democracy is in the spiritual. There can be differences of possession without pride, envy, or hatred. When men come to oneness of spirit there will be real brotherhood. There can be no brotherhood by forces which produce hatred and jealousies. Evangelism is to make men brothers by bringing them to oneness of spirit in Jesus Christ. In that brotherhood there will be justice, righteousness, goodness, and love. Service the Cure for Selfishness The best cure for selfishness is service. When men get interested in making a better world by getting the will of God done, they will have neither the time nor disposition to hate, envy, and oppress one another. But before that time comes there must be much justice practiced on both sides of the industrial restlessness of to-day. Religion will not only give a motive but a new power to do this. One of the great dangers of to-day is the mania for immediacy. Things must be done right off. The work of years must be done while one waits. But some things cannot be done right off. An artist can paint a tree in a few days, but it takes 64 EVANGELISM God several years to make a tree. Traditions and prejudices and age-long differences of temper and viewpoint cannot be changed at once; adjustments can- not be made overnight. There must be patient founda- tion work done, but the outcome of the slower and more thorough process will be far more permanent and satisfactory. It is by evolution rather than by revolution that the best work will be done, but there often have to be revolutions, to get evolutionary forces started, just as cataclysms in nature have hastened the work of evolution in many directions. A sudden upheaval or subsidence may change climate and other conditions, such as moisture, dryness, soil, etc., and so hasten the evolutionary process in certain directions by thousands of years. So in human society revival or industrial revolu- tion may greatly hasten progress along all good lines. The South is to-day, perhaps, industrially a hundred years ahead of where it would have been but for the Civil War. The South fell, but it fell upward, and in spite of the devastation of four years of awful war the South put forth an energy in reconstruction which was only equaled by its courage in fighting. Sometimes the whole system of living as far as it is wrong, whether of the individual or social order, has to be broken up by what looks like a method of violence and destruc- tion, so that a new order founded upon better princi- ples may be constructed. The industrial waste and perversion of the liquor traffic had to be destroyed by law in order that the men, money, and plants em- ployed in that destructive traffic might be employed in a constructive and beneficent business. This twofold THE MESSAGE (GENERAL) 65 force must go on in evangelism, destroying or trans- forming all those things which are subversive of the kingdom of God, that the Kingdom, with all its benef- icent principles for individual and social weal, may go on unto perfection. Evangelism must never be put under the suspicion that it is actuated by selfish inter- ests. If a church is suspected of being more interested in its own statistics than it is in human welfare, its usefulness is at an end. If a denomination is sus- pected of being more anxious to spread its own doc- trines than it is to introduce men and women to Jesus Christ, its influence as a world power is gone. The great business of evangelism is to make real Chris- tians. When that is thoroughly and unselfishly done, all other interests will be best served. But that will not be done by antagonizing either capital or labor, but by exalting Christ, and it is his rule in the lives of men that will condemn wrong and defend right among all classes of men, and sanctify all the relations of men. That is the best rule to cor- rect the false standard of the "me first" men in all classes. The Christian spirit is the sacrificial spirit, which puts itself last, and the kingdom of God with God's Fatherhood and man's brotherhood first. That sacrificial principle must lie at the very heart of the evangelistic message. "If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me." That is the hardest thing to do. It is hard for the upper man and it is hard for the under man. To let go of self for the common weal is life's hardest task. Jesus is the example of it. "The Son of man came 66 EVANGELISM not to be ministered unto, but to minister/' That is the lesson that all levels of human life must learn. It takes heroic living to do it, but that is the price that must be paid by those who follow Jesus, and that must be made clear in the message. It may be that is why so few travel the narrow way that leadeth unto life. Men broaden their usefulness as they narrow their self-interests. It may take a long time to rouse the social conscience, longer than it does to rouse the in- dividual conscience. But there is a social conscience, and there will be no permanent social betterment till that conscience is roused, sensitized, and put into ac- tion. There is social sin as well as individual sin, and that sin must be recognized and given up before any salvation that is more than a name will come to the world. The saved man must help to make a saved society, and saved society must be interested in the last lost man, and make it difficult for saved children to become lost men and women. That will put proper emphasis upon guarding the home, the school, industry, and all other institutions that make for the weal of child life, and therefore for all human life and interests. The evangelistic mes- sage is a broad, deep, practical message, and the pro- gram is commensurate with the message. The message is to every creature, and the program is a new world which is the kingdom of God upon the earth. CHAPTER V THE MESSAGE (SPECIFIC) I Love Message to Children The evangelistic message must be adapted to the group to whom it is given, because it is a call to God, but a message of salvation does not mean that the same form or emphasis will be equally appropriate to all groups. The message to children from ten to fifteen or six- teen ought to be a love message. They are still con- stantly sharing in the love of parents. God's Father- hood, with the love charms that are involved in it, is a most natural approach. So far these have earned no rights, they have not produced anything, they are fos- tered and protected by love. Love has fed, clothed, schooled them, and they can see love's obligation, how binding it is. The transition can easily be made from human love to God's Father love. The message always ought to be given along the h*ne that is the easiest and most natural approach to the group addressed. The talk to children or youth who have had natural and intelligent training, about the judgment and the hereafter — either the terrors of hell or the joys of heaven — is a misuse of words and a perv- version of method. Those things are so remote to children and youth as to be unreal. They do not and 67 6S EVANGELISM ought not to think that they are going to die right away. Death to their own consciousness is off in old age. They know, of course, that other young people die, but they do not expect to die till they are old ; and with them, at any rate, the emphasis ought to be on life and opportunity and duty, not on death and re- wards or penalties. Children often are made morbid by thrusting on them considerations far in advance of their experience, and it is a grave mistake to teach them that God would punish them with an eternal judgment when human law would not even send them temporarily to jail. If they think that God is not as good as an ordinary judge, they may develop a religion of obedience founded on fear, but not on love. They will have a slave spirit and give a forced service. The great danger is that they will develop a hatred for re- ligion. Even ignorant and limited parents do not want that form of religion. How much less does God ! To that age, above all other, the message is to be the love of God. They should trust God with the unsuspect- ing confidence of children, and love him with the spon- taneous love of a child's heart. Let "temperance, righteousness, and judgment to come" be reserved for the hardened and deliberate transgressors, where it will be understood and de- served, but to spoil and terrorize child life with the matters of judgment is an inexcusable perversion of the evangelistic spirit and method. No one who is in his right mind would teach that a human father was one who would secure filial obedience by the threat of disinheritance, banishment, or death, to his children. Yet some think that it is entirely proper to so repre- THE MESSAGE (SPECIFIC) 69 sent the Fatherhood of God and the divine rules of family life. God is to be made inexpressively lovely, and tender and gentle and good ; better than all the lov- ing mothers and good fathers in the world, to those under sixteen, who are still in the home, Sunday school, and church. Even to the boys and girls of the slums it is far better to tell them of a love they never knew in their homes than to make God an infinite Policeman whom they fear and despise. The evangelistic message must be carefully worded and guarded when it is addressed to children. Deci- sion Day talks in the Junior and Intermediate Depart- ments of the Sunday school are more exposed to the peril of being misunderstood and to miscarry than any other form of evangelistic address, and the conse- quences are the most serious. To bias young minds against the goodness and fairness of God when the emotions and imagination are far in excess of the rea- son and judgment, is one of the most serious blunders that teachers, preachers, parents, or evangelists ever make in the matters of religion. Utter indifference to religion, or religious hatred, or even atheism, may and often does result from such teaching. To those of tender years, the message must be one of the love and the goodness of God. Any other is given at a risk so great that one shudders to think of the consequences that may follow. Much of the mischief of the boys and girls of that age in Sunday school is but the hissing through the safety valve of action of the steam of unused energy, and is not inten- tional nor premeditated mischief. It is easy to mis- judge these young people, and to accuse them of de- 70 EVANGELISM liberate and planned maliciousness when they know all the time that it is not true. They lose confidence in the accuser's judgment, fairness, and goodness, whether he be teacher, superintendent, or pastor. These young people are more sensitive to injustice at this age than at any other time because now they feel that they have no redress. Bad as it is for teacher, superintendent, or pastor to fall in their eyes, and drop out of the love and confidence of these boys and girls, it is far worse to so represent God that he falls. And when the speaker feels peeved because of inattention, which may be due to uncomfortable seats, poor light, defective hearing, bad air, or weariness, or the general confusion of a poorly disciplined Sunday school, it is easy then to remind them of the judgments of God on offenses of which they are unconscious, so the talk seems nonsense. The evangelist or pastor who wins these boys and girls is wise, and they are more easily won or wounded then than at any other time. Their own love is exuberant and abounding, though often shy, and they will respond more heartily and naturally to a love message that is strong and dignified, and not sentimental and condescending, than they will to any other kind of message. There are many things they do not know. They have not much of an idea of service and sacrifice; their lives are too narrow and well pro- tected for that. They are in school, and that occu- pies a large part of their time and strength. There is as yet but a small opportunity for service, and still less for sacrifice, open to them. Study and recreation are about all that is expected of them. But they do know love. They are living on it. It is love that provides the THE MESSAGE (SPECIFIC) 71 unearned supply of their needs. They know love, therefore the appeal is to be in the realm of their ex- perience. If it is not, the message will mean nothing to them; if it is, it will mean all to them. Their mes- sage is a love message. That is logical and natural. It is at this point that many pastors and evangelists fail. They preach a message almost entirely outside of the experience of this age, and if they try to make their mature messages simple, they make them silly, and that these boys and girls resent. Parents too make a serious mistake by holding their children back because "they do not understand" ; but they do under- stand love; they are full of it. They see its manifesta- tions everywhere. The preacher doesn't have to ex- plain or simplify love. They know it as well as he does. He needs only to appeal to it. These boys and girls can understand God's love as well as parents' love. All the parents need to do is to ask them to respond to God's love as they do to their love. The imagination is very vivid at this age, and the affections warm, and Jesus can be made both real and dear. The love appeal of Jesus is powerful. 2 The Appeal to the Heroic Let us next consider the message to be delivered to those ranging in age from sixteen to thirty. Here the message must be in the main an appeal to the heroic. The age limit on the underside starts about when the hero-worship age in concrete form ends and passes into the heroic ideal. It is the friendship-form- ing, love-making age. Here is where the ideal of the 7^ EVANGELISM heroic and sacrificial takes its rise. Both friendship and love involve the sacrifice principle. The boy wants to be a soldier, for example. This is the ideal-making age, sixteen to twenty. The next decade is the career-planning age, in which the ideal is to be realized. Love issues in marriage, and choices of lifework are made. The spirit is adven- turous and active. These young people can leave home or country now easier than they can at any later time. It is an age of knighthood, beginning in sentiment, but continuing in judgment. The young people are seri- ously getting ready to live, planning lifework, found- ing homes, starting business, doing the hard founda- tion work fearlessly, facing drudgery and overcoming obstacles. Life is worth while. Their holy audacity will brook no opposition. They can work, suffer, sacri- fice because they are fired by a noble ambition. Their life is heroic. The appeal is to be to the heroic. Now it is a waste of words to talk to them about death and judgment. These things are not in their program. Deathbed scenes are poor illustrations for such an age. This is particularly true of college groups and soldiers. They have characterized the pathetic rather caustically : they call it ''sob stuff." That kills it for them. They want to make their lives to count for the most. They may have no clear idea of what the real worth of life is. They want success, and only the exception among them wants to be either a slacker, one who will not begin, or a quitter, who will not fin- ish. That is their ideal more or less clearly defined. Now, their practice may be far below their ideal — in- deed, inconsistent with it. The fault is not so much THE MESSAGE (SPECIFIC) 73 with the ideal as with the motive. These young peo- ple are not afraid of hard work, self-denial, hardship, danger, etc., if these things are essential to success; if they are stepping-stones which when mastered lead to their goal. The religious appeal is to match their ideal, to define it in terms of life's highest values, and then furnish a motive powerful enough to drive them to it. Friendship, love, patriotism, ambition, are their natural incentives. The religious motive involves all these. Friendship with Christ, love for Christ, patriotism for the Kingdom, ambition to make the most of life on its highest level — these natural incentives are to be capi- talized for the Kingdom, and can be, within that age limit, better than with any other class of people. Youth can be successfully asked to dare and do hard things. A safe gospel does not appeal to the intrepid spirit of youth. Loyalty to a principle, and especially loyalty to a person, at that time, is very strong. "Lead on, O King Eternal," 'The Son of God Goes Forth to War," "Fight the Good Fight" appeal more powerfully to that group than "Come, Ye Sinners," "Just as I am," or "Alas, and Did My Saviour Bleed," etc. They want a challenge to heroic service, to daring venture. This class is more responsive to religious appeal than any other class just because of the intellectual and emo- tional make-up of their age. 3 Failure of Weak Appeals The reason why more are not reached is that the appeal is too weak. They are asked to do the minimum that will make their lives most worth while. This is 74 EVANGELISM the volunteer age. Volunteering is now done intelli- gently and with purpose. Volunteering may be done earlier, by the power of suggestion, and later because of policy or pressure; but at this age it is natural, spon- taneous, courageous. It is well to conserve these strong, native impulses for Christ's service. The ap- peal of Christ's manifold character, especially his poise, courage, strength, unselfishness, is powerful, if put to that age. The strong, manly, vigorous, courageous Christ appeals to this age rather than the patient, toil- ing, suffering Christ. Christ the conqueror, rather than Christ the sufferer, is to be preached. They are willing to suffer, but to suffer in order that they may conquer. In a word, it is the heroic age. The appeal that is most effective is the challenge. For this group the challenge has more power than persuasion has. Persuasion sounds too much like coaxing. They would rather be commanded than coaxed. Coaxing is too suggestive of the appeal of weakness to obstinacy. It has not the ring of authority which youth likes. Many fail in college evangelism just because they make religion too easy. They make it mean little more than a good resolution, or the turning over of a new leaf. That is not worth while. The work sometimes is hin- dered also because often the least athletic and schol- arly students on the campus are the most active in religion. The vigorous student thinks that religion only fits the negative, the mediocre, and the weak. Now, if the evangelistic message justifies that opinion, the real leader of the college body will have nothing of it. The evangelistic message must be put with such strength and directness, religion must be shown to THE MESSAGE (SPECIFIC) 75 be so brave, manly, sacrificial, enduring, that the strongest man in college will feel like a coward if he does not accept the challenge. In giving the challenge like that some may be discouraged and fear that it is impossible for them. It is inevitable that some will not accept it, but it is better to discourage the weak with a great gospel than to disgust the strong with a mean gospel. The fear can be allayed even for the weak by a strong setting forth of the Almighty Christ who is to be their Yokefellow. After all, it is not what they can do, but what they and Christ together can do — and that is all that ought to be done. That must be made clear to all groups. Religion is not a thing but a relation. The Christian is not one who believes cer- tain things and tries to do certain things, but one who is in personal fellowship with Christ. That personal element must be stressed in all appeals and challenges. That will solve more problems and answer more ob- jections and prevent more evasions of all classes than anything else. The best answer to the question, ''How can I keep in the fellowship of Christ?" is, "Christ will keep you in his fellowship unless you break away of your own accord." It is not a question of their keep- ing Christ, but of Christ keeping them unless they refuse. The heroic appeal, then, is to be made to the heroic age, and all the powerful incentives of that age are to be capitalized and used for the Kingdom's purpose. That would be the plain and sane psychology and common-sense evangelism for that age. The message must not only be true, it must be pertinent. When the preacher knows that his message is both true and 76 EVANGELISM pertinent he can reasonably expect results which will give him that kind of assurance in preaching that goes a long way toward securing results. 4 The Message to Middle Life Now, what shall be the form or content of the mes- sage to middle life, say from thirty to fifty-five? Of course these divisions are rather arbitrary, and the limits are put rather far apart. This group may be called the middle-life group. This group includes the ''fatal forty." This is perhaps the age of greatest re- ligious indifference. A better term, perhaps, would be "religious inattention." There is a reason for it. This is the age of absorption and preoccupation. Fam- ily cares and business preoccupation leave little room for attention to anything else. The pace at this period of life is so killing that leisure is devoted to recreation of rather an extreme sort. The claim is that the busi- ness and home tension is so great that it must be offset by a similar sort of recreation. Sunday golf and pic- nics, yachting, automobile rides all day with the fam- ily, visiting, etc. — these leave little time for religion or church. The moral sense is not dead, it is asleep. The mind is preoccupied with other things. If a man is successful at all in business, it is at this time. Com- petition is so keen that the business must have his un- divided attention. ''Business first" is his motto. Then he must look after his health to keep that business going. The mother is rearing the children, getting them off to school, so "Family first" is her motto. Perhaps THE MESSAGE (SPECIFIC) yj when the weather is not good for motoring they send the children to Sunday school. These people are not always hostile to religion, but they have no time for it. It is not an essential matter now. They expect some day when life is less strenuous to give more time, or some time, to religion, but they cannot think of it now. The thing that they do not see is that they are les- sening their capacity for religion, and when the long- looked-for leisure comes they have no taste or desire for religious things. That is the tragedy: they have been false to themselves. They allowed their success to make failures out of themselves. That happens so frequently that it needs no further comment. The preacher must understand that group. The two words that bulk big with that group are "responsibility" and "duty." They are faced with them every day. No man can be in business without feeling the force of these. He is responsible to some- body, somebody is responsible to him. Obligation in contracts and so on, hours of business, keeping ap- pointments, the performance of duties — these matters are all perfectly clear. Business success depends on them. This man, it is said, holds a responsible posi- tion. He talks of obligation, of the weight of responsi- bility, of the rigid rules of duty, "duty before pleas- ure," holding people to contracts, etc. That same thing is true of the home — duty to chil- dren, responsibility for health, education, proper care, etc. "Duty" and "responsibility" are the two great words during that period. Now, the thing that men and women forget is that their highest duty and most solemn responsibilities 78 EVANGELISM are not met at all. "Duty" and "responsibility" are to be the two great words in the evangelistic message. These men must be made to see that their first duty is to God. God holds them responsible for the right use, which is the Kingdom's use, of their success in business. What are they going to do with their money ? They are only stewards. Do they recognize their obligation to God for health and life and opportunity? They discharge duties to men, but do they discharge that highest duty to all men, of helping to make a better world, and get the will of God done among men? Surely not if they have left God out of the program of their lives. They recognize claims; they have to deal with them. The country makes claims on their incomes and profits. Press the just claims of God on their lives. They have recognized their responsibility to their sons, as to food, clothing, education, a start in life; but they have not discharged that responsibility to God in the religious care of these sons, or proper examples to them. That same will be true of mothers. They have been faithful in many ways, but in the main way they have failed. It may be they taught their little chil- dren to say their prayers, but they themselves never pray, nor set a good example to their children. These people need to be awakened to a sense of their duty to God, to their children, to the world. That self-centered, self-satisfied idea of life must be changed. The appeal here will be in making clear God's claim on them and God's expectation of them. The message can be very practical. This period of life is apt to be the most selfish. A gospel of duty, of un- THE MESSAGE (SPECIFIC) 79 selfishness, of service can be put so straight to them that there will be no way of evading it. The sin of selfishness is their besetting sin, and they are utterly failing in life, with all of their work and prosperity, if that sin is let to eat away their souls. Responsibility is to be the keynote of the evangelis- tic message to them. These people, if rightly ap- proached, will come to the church. If not, they must be quietly dealt with in their homes or offices, or both. But the same note that is to be in the sermon is to be in the conversation — duty and responsibility. They are tied up to other lives, for whose welfare they are re- sponsible. They owe a duty to God. That is to be the appeal, whether public or private. They must be dealt with frankly, persistently, but sympathetically. The preacher is only calling them to their best, for their own sake, for others' sake, for Christ's sake. 5 Message to the Under-Man Now, there is another class within these age limits and running a little beyond it — the class that will not go to the church. They may go to a rescue mission, but evangelism cannot leave them out of account if it is to gospel every creature, and present every man at last perfect in Jesus Christ. They are the so-called down-and-out class. Society and industry have thrown them out. Nobody will care for them when they are economically unprofitable and a social menace, if the church does not. The church must be their last friend, because Christ is. What is to be the message to them ? To the younger 8o EVANGELISM and more defiant, the judgment of God on the unre- pentant. The language of force and fear is the only language they understand. The terrible outcome of sin can be preached to some of them. Many in rescue missions are reached that way. God can be presented as loving and holy and just, and because he is that, and more, he cannot be trifled with, nor can sin go on al- ways with impunity. The justice of God can be set forth to the willful, deliberate, defiant sinners who scoff at law and government, who are the enemies of society. The rugged side, the judgment side of the gospel, needs to be preached to them with such au- thority and force that they will give attention. Here is where the preacher can be lightning. This too for that hard smug class who fatten on ill- gotten gains and traffic in the bodies and souls of men and women for gain, those who manage the institutions of human ruin. The message is to be like that of Amos to the recreant Israel of his day, like Elijah to Ahab and his house. There is a place for the preaching of the vengeance of God on those who trample upon the weak and wreck all who come in their way. They must be made to see that a day of reckoning is coming, and they must repent of their sins, or be overtaken by the ravages of judgment. Those who have been guilty of the un- speakable frightfulness in the great world war need something more than a soft gospel preached to them. The justice and holiness of God — that is the message for them. It is not easy to preach to that class. It takes courage and candor, but they must have the gos- pel, but the gospel in terms that they can understand. THE MESSAGE (SPECIFIC) 8i There is no escaping the justice of God. That is judg- ment preaching. Not a small class of to-day needs exactly that type of preaching. Message of Hope to the Despairing But there is a wrecked class upon whom sin has done its worst; the despairing and despaired-of class. No use to talk about hell to them; they are in hell. No use to talk about the wreckage of sin ; they are already wrecked. The judgment can only mean a little more of what they have. They have lost all hope, will power, self-respect, friends, home, health — all gone. So in a sort of stolid, fatalistic way they have submitted to their long-drawn-out misery and look for nothing bet- ter. Yet they must have the gospel preached even to them". Evangelism is for them also. What will the message be ? It is a difficult class to preach to or deal with, for one can do so little with despair. What shall the message be to them ? The message of hope. God can help them to come back. Christ will recreate them into new men and women. There is hope for them, a better life for them; God will give them another chance. They must place complete dependence on him, now that they have no longer any self on which to depend. A complete giving of themselves over to the forgiving, helping Christ, and they can be saved. This is desperate preaching, for the people are desperate. Hope, hope, hope, and more hope, must be poured into them until at last the little linger of hope that is left in their burned-out lives kindles, and the long-dead initia- tive comes to life again, and they dare take hold of the 82 EVANGELISM forgiving grace of God. No use of preaching hope to the defiant, hardened sinner, else he will go on sinning ; but these are about through sinning willfuly ; their wills are gone ; they sin automatically. Hope will bring them back. Hope must be preached even before love. All whom they have known and loved, or were loved by long since gave them up. Love failed, but hope tells them, "When my father and mother forsake me, then the Lord will take me up." Will he? Hope says, "Yes, trust him." This class will take no step toward reformation until hope is inspired that it can be done. They must be told that to Christ there are no impossi- ble cases if they will give him a chance. They do not have to go to him. He has come to them. They are to let him save them. The glory of the gospel is that it has hope for that class. No other gospel has hope for the hopeless; but Christ's evangel knows of no hope- less class except the willfully incorrigible who refuse to be saved. The aged, the wrecked, the hopeless are all in- cluded in Christ's plan of redemption and for them sal- vation is made available if they will only accept it as it is freely offered in Jesus Christ. The Bible has abund- ant messages for all classes. The gospel of love, of hero- ism, of duty, of idealism, of hope, of comfort runs all through the Bible, and it is the duty of the preacher in his evangelistic work to find and offer the messages that best meet the needs of the people to whom he min- isters. PART II PASTORAL EVANGELISM CHAPTER I THE NEED OF PASTORAL EVANGELISM A CHANGE of policy and method must accompany, or at least closely follow, a change of conditions or else failure will be inevitable. In many parts of the country conditions have so changed that the old method of revivals will no longer work. This will be dis- tressing only to those who think more of methods than of results; but those who want to get the work of God done in the world, and are concerned wdth methods only as far as they bring results, will welcome any necessary changes of method. The only danger is that they will be so slow in adopting some methods which will work, that the great evangelistic opportunity will be lost through the changed conditions. Note first, then, the changed conditions. Changed Conditions The first and rather disheartening change is that which has so seriously affected churchgoing. The habit of churchgoing is dying out in certain quarters. Few people, even church members, go twice a day. Where they go but once it is usually in the morning. The Sunday evening services are poorly attended, and those who go are generally the best people of the church. They go from long habit, or a sense of loyalty to the church, or love for the pastor. Those who are not 8s 86 EVANGELISM professed Christians rarely go either morning or even- ing. In many places even the young people who have been to Sunday school and the young people's meeting do not attend the evening preaching service. The pas- tor faces at night a few tired saints and a large num- ber of yawning, empty pews. If church members do not attend church, of course it will hardly be expected that nonchurch people will. That means that there is little evangelistic opportunity in the morning and less in the evening. If the pastor holds revival meet- ings, they will be attended by a few anyway, and almost all of those who do attend will be the most deeply spiritual people in the church. There is no need of preaching an evangelistic sermon or making an appeal to these people, much less is there need of calling for a decision from them. The pastor feels both the em- barrassment and the incongruity of it all and often makes no evangelistic effort whatever. Now, if one, in these circumstances, is to follow the old-time methods of revival meetings, he can see failure be- fore he begins the meetings. The change, then, from the churchgoing habit to a nonchurchgoing habit puts out of date the old method of announcing that revival meetings will be held during a given month, usually January, and then expecting that the meetings will draw the unconverted to the church. In many places they will not draw even the church members to the church. A good many things have led to the change of this habit, such as Sunday sports, automobiling, and a steady lowering of the idea of the sanctity of the Sabbath through the laxer uses of it by our large for- eign populations, who have brought with them the holi- NEED OF PASTORAL EVANGELISM 87 dajidea, rather than the Holy Day idea, which had long obtained with us. Sunday has become largely a day of recreation rather than of worship. Whether we like it or not that condition has come about, and we must prepare to meet it rather than to use the old methods which do not recognize that such a condition has come. Industrial pressure has much to do with making Sunday a holiday. The overworked claim they must have it for family life and play or else for longer leisure for rest and sleep. Anyhow, the habit of nonchurchgoing has set in, and it must be reckoned with ; to ignore it is folly. That is, the condition must be met, not ignored. If the church has not now the kind of evangelistic methods which will meet that new condition, it must create them. In most places the old methods will not — or at least do not — meet the new conditions. But neither the world nor the church was ever more desperately in need of a thoroughgoing, sane, and constructive evangelism than now, and it is pre- cisely that kind of evangelism that is the hope of both the world and the church. The Old Emphasis The second change is that of emphasis. In the past, indeed, up to quite recent times, the emphasis was on the individual. The call was to repentance from sin. The regeneration of the individual man was the end of evangelism. Sin formed a large part of evangelistic preaching. To get to heaven and escape hell were mighty motives presented by pastors and evangelists for the rule of conduct. Judgment for the sinner was always standing in the background. The great aim of 88 EVANGELISM life was to get ready to die. "Prepare to meet thy God" was interpreted and forced to that end. Meet- ing mother in heaven, or seeing Jesus with the nail prints, the thorn marks, and the spear wound, were topics most stressed to get men to give up their sin and get ready for heaven. The torments of hell and the anger of God against the sinner — no mercy beyond the grave — were subjects that were presented with great skill and power, and with a conviction and seriousness that carried great weight, in order that men might be deterred from sinning. That kind of preaching to-day would make little impression in most places, and would not be tolerated in some places. The great realities of sin and its consequences, the fact that character fixes destiny, must still be stressed, but not in the bold and almost cruel form of yesterday. The jailer idea of God has given way to the idea of his Fatherhood. The love and Fatherhood of God make sin more unnatural and shameless than ever, but preaching has lost much of its lurid vehemence. The motive of love is more ap- pealed to to-day than the motive of fear, and the motive to serve than the motive to just save one's soul. The emphasis to-day for the most j)art is social rather than individual. The effort is not so much to get to heaven some day as it is to get heaven down here on the earth to-day. The regeneration of the individual is not so much stressed as the reformation of society. That emphasis itself would require a different method of presentation. The kind of revival that is attempted in some quar- ters has not much to do directly with the church. The NEED OF PASTORAL EVANGELISM 89 attempt to reform society is made by better housing and working conditions, giving large attention to sani- tation and recreation, and very little is said about re- pentance and regeneration; indeed, some go as far as to say the less said about them the better. That is as foolish as it is useless. Repentance and regeneration are as vital and import- ant as ever, but they do not get the same consideration under the social emphasis that they did under the older individual emphasis. It is reformation rather than regeneration that is stressed. The appeal is not so personal and direct as it used to be. You can invite a man to the altar, to an inquiry room, to standi etc., but you cannot ask a community to do these things. The appeal is more general and the response is more general, that is, less concrete and specific. So that the old method of evangelism will not work where the social emphasis has displaced the individual emphasis. But let us notice this in passing : there will be no perma- nent social reform that does not rest back on individual repentance and regeneration. If the individual will not come to the church, the church must reach him in some other way. The Social Method The social emphasis, however, necessitates a depar- ture from the old-time method. The social emphasis can neither be fought nor ignored. The two forms of method are not mutually exclusive; they are supple- mentary. The individual must be saved to save so- ciety, and society must be saved to keep the individual saved. The point here is that in many quarters the 90 EVANGELISM social emphasis is the dominant one, and to meet it there must be a different approach and a different appeal if evangelism is to be effective. The third change is the change of intellectual at- titude. The whole intellectual outlook differs so widely from forty to fifty years ago and back that the methods back of the presentation and appeal must differ if men are reached to-day. In the popular as well as in much learned thinking a statement of the Bible does not settle the question once for all. The Bible is not ac- cepted to-day as final authority on all questions, as it used to be; therefore the biblical appeal has not the force it once had on the average unchurched man. The progress of physical science, the generally accepted doctrine of evolution, and the historical and literary criticism of the Bible known as the higher criticism, have contributed toward the unsettling of many peo- ple in the traditional beliefs about the Bible and its messages. Few things are taken on authority to-day by educated people. Indeed, many of the bright boys and girls in our best high schools, and especially young men and young women in college, will not accept many of the traditional beliefs. We may not like it, but we must face the changed intellectual attitude and deal with it as best we can. It will not do to treat it lightly or ignore it. To tell our young people to stop thinking and accept what they are told in the matter of religion is absurd. They simply will not do it. The thing for them to do is not to think less but to think more — to think their way through. The most dangerous place to stay is half way in one's thinking. There is faith on both sides of doubt. Almost every transition age NEED OF PASTORAL EVANGELISM 91 is an age of doubt. We must think from the old faith, through doubt to the new faith, to the faith in the things that remain after all the tests have been made. Our age has not thought its way all through yet, so it is an age of doubt and uncertainty, and bright young people get into that intellectual haze at an early period. It will not do to scold them. They cannot help it. They found it in books in the schools, in the newspa- pers, and they hear much of uncertainty, or at least negative putting of truth even from the pulpit. Now all this has had its effect upon the old-fashioned method of evangelism, and very many young people are not reached in that way to-day. As a matter of fact, the progress of science, the doc- trine of evolution, and biblical criticism, when they are understood, have done a great deal more for religion and the Bible than they have done against them. Re- ligion is less emotional perhaps, but more ethical. It relates less to heaven and more to earth. It is not so much a solace to die by as a rule to live by. The Bible has been made more easily understood. If some diffi- culties have been raised, many have been settled. It is more preachable. It needs less defense and more proclamation. The views that now obtain of God's Fatherhood and Christ's brotherhood are far more wholesome and winning than the view they displaced. Indeed, the modern viewpoint carried with it far more gains than losses. We are better off than we used to be, but many people have not become adjusted to the new viewpoint, have not thought their v/ay through ; have looked only at the uncertainties that have been raised and not at 92 EVANGELISM the great certainties that have been estabHshed, so there are doubt, hesitancy, indifference, and in some cases hostihty to both the Bible and rehgion. To deal successfully with these changed conditions we must change our methods to meet the needs of our day. To- day is not yesterday ; we cannot do as our fathers did. We ought to do better than they did, for we have more light. But the saddle horse is not the automobile, nor the stagecoach the express train, nor is the tallow dip the electric light. We are not the worse for the change in these material matters, nor need we be for the change in church methods. It is the life that is to be guarded, not the form. If we get men and women saved by the new method, or any method that works, we are as well off as the fathers were who successfully used the methods which do not now work with us. The method is not so important as long as the work gets done. The changed conditions, then, are the first cause which make the old methods no longer useful. The outlook is dark only if we do not constructively meet the changed conditions. The Bible will be more fully believed, will be more loyally served, mankind will be more unselfishly helped, the world more permanently bettered to-morrow than they were yesterday. Professional Evangelism The second cause is the rise of professional evangel- ism on a large scale. There have always been evangel- ists, and they will be always needed. Some men and women, both by temperament and training, are better fitted for that work than they are for the regular pas- NEED OF PASTORAL EVANGELISM 93 torate. They have their place and importance, but when professional evangelism is made a substitute for pastoral evangelism the effect is not wholesome either on the church or on the pastor. The disadvantages to the church are fourfold. I . First, the church comes to the belief that it cannot have a revival without outside help; that is, that its own pastor cannot do the work. Here the church commits two errors. First, the thing which the church does not seem to see is, that if it did the same amount of work for its own pastor, and as cheerfully, as it does for the evangelist, it would be a good deal better off. The competent evangelist sees to it that the church does about all the work that is done. He only sug- gests and directs, but the church thinks that he is doing it all. It thinks that he is drawing the crowd. In part that is true, but the part which the church does not seem to see is that it is itself organized into per- sonal workers' bands, who in a great variety of ways are inviting the outside people to the church, calling for them and taking them to the meetings. The church enthusiastically does this work because the evangelist asks that it be done. If the same work was done for the pastor, a sort of sustained revival would be going twelve months of the year instead of one. The results of the revival are due far more to what the church does than to what the evangelist does. Every pastor cannot have a revival whenever he wants it, but every church can. When any church — pastor and people — will do the work and pay the price, a revival can be had without outside help, but it is difficult to make either pastor or people realize it. 94 EVANGELISM 2. The second error is that the church does not see that if it put at the pastor's disposal for evangehstic work in the parish as much money as it gives to the evangelist, far more and better work would be done. The church gladly pays the bills for the lighting, heat- ing, advertising, printing, music, etc., amounting in six weeks to five hundred dollars, and then with equal or greater cheerfulness gives the evangelist his enter- tainment, and a freewill offering of, say, a thousand dollars. The campaign cost at least fifteen hundred dollars. The same church may pay the pastor no more than fifteen hundred dollars a year. He could invest the fifteen hundred dollars paid one for six weeks' work to far greater advantage by spreading a more efficient service over twelve months of the year. But it is almost impossible to make the church see it, much less act upon it. In a word, if the church gave us much service and money to its own pastor as it gives to a professional evangelist — who often pushes the pastor into the background — it would be better off. This is no criticism of the professional evangelist, his motives or his work, nor does it mean that he is not of very great importance in the work of the church. It does mean, however, that if the church imagines that its own pastor is not, or cannot be, an evangelist, in most cases it makes a great mistake. The second disadvantage to the church is, that it comes to believes there is only one kind of a revival that will be effective, and that is the spectacular. (The word "spectacular" here is not used in any invidious sense.) That is the sort which the professional evan- gelist usually conducts — the large choir, press commit- NEED OF PASTORAL EVANGELISM 95 tee; personal workers' groups, who circularize the neighborhoods; shop meetings, midweek, Sundays, men's meetings, parlor meetings, and other conspicuous activities. The church seems to think that it can have a real revival in no other way. Anything less than that would not appeal to the church, and if the pastor cannot conduct a revival that way, he had better get some one who can; and as the average pastor cannot, little or nothing is done. Of course all the professional evangelists do not work that way, but the methods are pretty well standardized. The average pastor can- not conduct a revival the same way that the average professional evangelist does, and for the best perma- nent interest of the church perhaps ought not. 3. The third disadvantage is that the church comes to believe that an individual church cannot have a re- vival, because most of the professional evangelists want union services. That is all right from the evan- gelists' viewpoint. There are limits to their time and strength, so they want to get the largest possible hear- ing for their message. They want to reach the great- est possible number of people. The impression gets abroad, then, that the evangelist will not go to an individual church. Now, it so happens that in many places union meetings are not practicable, and in some places hardly possible. If, therefore, the pastor can- not have a revival without outside help, and if the outside help will not come to an individual church, and if a union meeting cannot be held, of course there can be no revival. So year after year no revival is attempted. That at once brings us to the fourth disadvantage, 96 EVANGELISM namely, initiative is destroyed. The church fails of its fundamental mission — to get folks saved. It there- fore loses power and does little more in the community than mark time, and in some cases slowly dies out. That is the fate of the church which has no faith in its own evangelistic possibiHties under the leadership of its own pastor. Effect on the Pastor The next point to be considered is the effect upon the pastor. Not only has professional evangelism af- fected the church, through no fault of its own, for it tried to help the church and the church made it a substitute for its own work rather than a supple- ment to it, but it has also affected the pastor. Many pastors believe that they cannot conduct a revival without outside help. So when they add their lack of faith in themselves to the church's lack of faith in them for this particular work, of course nothing is done. Many a pastor justifies his lack of evangelistic efforts on the ground that he is unfitted tempera- mentally to be an evangelist. He says he is not emo- tional nor spectacular, does not believe in high-pressure methods, and therefore he cannot be an evangelistic preacher. He claims to be a cultural preacher, or a prac- tical preacher. He will emphasize religious education and practical ethics. Let the evangelist do the soul- saving and he will build up the converts into strong, consistent Christian characters. So he says there is a division of labor. He cannot do what the evangelist does, nor can the evangelist do what he does. Each, therefore, must remain in his respective field and do NEED OF PASTORAL EVANGELISM 97 the thing that he can do best. That sounds reason- able, but the fallacy in it is that educational and ethical, or what is called a practical cultural preaching, is not good evangelistic preaching. As a matter of fact, that is not good, or the best, evangelistic preaching which is not intellectually strong, doctrinally constructive, and which does not issue in ethical conduct. A type of preaching that is good enough to get folks out of sin, to break bad habits, to give new incen- tives, to establish right relations between man and God and man and man is precisely the kind of preaching to keep saved people saved and to operate to the best advantage in advancing the kingdom of God. One reason that there are so many lapses from highly emo- tional revivals is that the preaching was neither intel- lectual nor ethical enough to show the convert both the privileges and the responsibilities of the Christian life. The strongest and most practical kind of preach- ing is best adapted to evangelism, yet that is the kind of preaching our cultural preacher claims for himself while still declaring that he cannot be an evangelist ! This brings us, then, to the second effect upon the pastor. Like the church, he comes to believe there is only one kind of a revival, and that is the high-pressure kind which the professional evangelist conducts, and for that kind of evangelism the cultured pastor feels he has no aptitude, so he attempts no evangelistic work whatever. The quieter form of direct personal work for which he may be admirably fitted he does not do at all, yet in many ways it is not only more certain of immediate results but far more certain of perma- 98 EVANGELISM nent results than by the high-pressure form; but that quiet way is too often not regarded as evangelism. Reconstruction But the pastor often is confronted with practical difficulties after a revival has been conducted in his church by a certain type of evangelist. This one deals almost altogether with the symbolism of the Bible, but interprets it in the most literal fashion ; or he has some fad, such as holiness, or the second coming of Christ ; or he takes a hostile, even violent, attitude toward the amusement question. He often attacks wealth or scholarship, or has some other hobby which he keeps constantly before the people for several weeks, with the result that sometimes a church is hopelessly split after the meetings are over, meetings which were to unite all people, and the pastor has a work of recon- struction on his hands which is both delicate and diffi- cult to carry on. He must rescue the Bible from fan- tastic interpretation; he must rescue Christian experi- ence from extravagance; he must rescue the church from high-pressure emotional methods; he must win back certain people who left the church because of either superficial methods or extreme doctrine ; he must pacify some who have become hostile over money matters. Now while he is doing this many of the devotees of the evangelist will charge him with trying to undo the evangelist's work, because he is jealous of him, or knows he could not do as well himself and is resolved to destroy the work that has been done. As a consequence many of them get offended and leave the church. NEED OF PASTORAL EVANGELISM 99 No pastor likes to look forward to an experience like that. Of course such a result does not always, nor even often follow, but it does follow with suffi- cient frequency to lead the pastor to draw the hasty, un- fortunate conclusions that evangelists are all alike, their methods all alike, that he will have nothing of either, and therefore he will put forth no evangelistic effort at all. Thus, pastoral evangelism has been allowed to fall into disuse. Instead of stimulating every pastor to be his own evangelist, or to be evangelistic and to call in outside help only when he is tired out, he omits evangelism altogether. That is too common to be com- fortable. Too many pastors lack evangelistic passion, and seem to think that if they help in a big union meet- ing once in awhile, all their evangelistic responsibilities have been met. Far from it. The big union meetings come very far from meeting the evangelistic oppor- tunity of the individual church or the community. If the community will not or cannot go into a union campaign, then the pastor justifies his evangelistic in- activity on the ground that he had no opportunity. CHAPTER II THE BIG UNION MEETINGS The big union meetings are often both misleading and disappointing in their results. It is true they have some very important advantages which must not be overlooked. First. They gather great numbers of people to- gether for religious purposes. That is a good thing for any community. Second. They get the different denominations in a given community into cooperative activity in which they cease their jealousies and competition among them- selves and unite in one common interest. After they have worked together for several weeks they know one another better, think more of one another, and agree to cooperate in community betterment after the meet- ings are over. That is a very good thing. The un- churched classes think more of them when they are cooperative than when they are competitive. Church rivalries are like church quarrels — they die hard, and do much mischief while they live. Third. They offer in the big tent or tabernacle a neutral ground to which people from the outside will come who would not go to any church. That is a very important thing in these days. Not many outside people go to evangelistic meetings unless they are held on neutral ground. So th^ tabernacle has an advan- tage in that respect. 100 THE BIG UNION MEETINGS loi But there are serious disadvantages which must not be overlooked. First, the tent meeting does not cul- tivate the habit of churchgoing. The atmosphere of the church is not in the tent. Many who make deci- sions for Christ on neutral ground, do not afterward go into the church, and after a longer or shorter varied career, they lapse into the old life again and never be- come active in the work of the Kingdom. They do not identify the tent with the church. Few people con- tinue in the Christian life who are converted out of the church, unless they become members of the church and are active in it after they are converted. Second, the crowds are usually so great that it is almost impossible to deal with individuals, which is very important in evangelistic work. More than that, perhaps ninety per cent or more of those great crowds are Christian people. It is almost impossible to get a building which can be made practical, to hold all the church members that are in the union group. Crowds were never larger in the union services than now, and perhaps never was there so large a percentage of Christians among them. The big crowd does not mean that large numbers of unconverted people are being reached, at least in the meetings. Third, the method of securing decisions is apt to be unsatisfactory, because not definite enough. The method of having people come forward is very effective, provided something very definite and personal is done with and for those who go forward. They should be dealt with personally in an after meeting, where their difiliculties could be removed, objections answered, and the way of the Christian life very fully explained. Then some action on their part, like pray- I02 EVANGELISM ing or giving a testimony, which might not be more than a declaration of intention, could be had. Even this would tend to fix their decision more firmly than the mere going forward did. In the big meeting too often that is not done and cannot be done. Then, too, going forward may mean little more than going forward and shaking hands with the leader. That does not go deep enough to constitute a real serious Christian decision. Many who go forward in a big public meeting may not be heard of again. Perhaps they were strangers, and when they go back to their distant homes they may never record the decision they made, or seemed to make, in the tabernacle. Nobody will be the wiser. The follow-up work is very difficult. That same thing is true in the card-signing method. That method can be made very effective when properly done. There is a great deal of shallow criticism made against the card-signing and hand-raising methods. If these methods are used superficially or insincerely, of course they are open to criticism; but going forward to the altar may be as superficial or insincere, or thoughtless, or hasty, and then it is open to the same criticism. The great mistake that too often is made in all these methods is that the public act is taken as a conversion when it may be far from it. At best it is little more than an introduction to conversion. It may be a method of inquiry just to find out how to be- come converted; and if nothing is definitely done for those who thus make their expression, the whole matter will end there, and conversion may not ensue. Too much is expected of the method and too little of what the method stands for or invites. Many peo- THE BIG UNION MEETINGS 103 pie decide, or want to become Christians, and come forward to find out how to become Christians. The important thing is not the coming forward, but the help given when they come. Simple Decision Cards Covenant cards or decision cards are often too rigidly drawn. Many who might be won are not yet prepared to make so definite a pledge, and so they will not sign. Others who do sign, sign to so much that nothing more is thought to be needed. The real object of the use of the card in both instances is defeated; the ''almost persuaded" are not reached, and the ''fully persuaded" are not helped. The decision card should be very simply drawn. Its real use is to introduce a personal worker to a seeker. On one side of the card a simple statement like the following could be made : 'T earnestly desire to become a Christian and would welcome any help that may be given me." When that card is signed, any personal worker, even a timid one, has an introduction to that person, and an invitation to talk to him about the Christian life. On the other side of the card a little more definite statement could be made, such as, "I have accepted Christ as my per- sonal Saviour, and by his grace I intend to lead a Christian life." That too is an invitation for some one to explain more fully the privileges and responsi- biHties of the Christian life, and to induce the person who signed the card to become identified with the church at once. It is the personal work that is done by the pastor or some other competent persons that is of vital impor- I04 EVANGELISM tance in evangelistic work. Where that is not done no method will be productive of large permanent re- sults. It is the lack of that direct personal work that is one of the great weaknesses of the big union meet- ings. The crowds are too great to be handled individ- ually. There are too many things going on at the meetings to keep them brief and make successful after meetings possible. Accordingly, the whole work is apt to be more superficial than if a like amount of effort were put forth in a group of individual churches, each doing its own work in its own way, a way which would be most effective on its own field. Fourth. The recorded results of such meetings are apt to be very misleading, and that gives an oppor- tunity to the man on the outside to discredit the whole thing and make him harder to reach than before. It also disappoints many of the cooperating pastors and churches, and makes them less willing to go into a union movement on a large scale again. Among those who go forward are many who are already Christians. They do not go forward to record their decision to become Christians, but for other reasons : to meet the evangelist, to report a hopeful case, to invite the evangelist to their homes, to encourage some timid persons to go forward too, to ask for some personal work to do, to report names of persons whom they have worked with, etc. But the whole number who went forward are reported as con- verts. That is the way the public understands it. ''On a given night there was a great meeting. After a powerful appeal Evangelist A. gave the invitation, and five hundred and eighty-seven went forward for THE BIG UNION MEETINGS 105 prayers." Now, as a matter of fact, three hundred and fifty of them might have been Christians already. It is only when the numbers who went forward are checked up by the numbers who join the uniting churches that the public sees the disparity. Then the integrity of the whole thing is brought under sus- picion. The inaccuracy of the reporter does not settle the matter. The after impression is not always whole- some or pleasant. The misleading element is more evident with the card-signing method than with the method of going forward. Many people will sign a card who would not go forward. Few people see them sign cards, but everybody sees them when they go forward. Card- signing will be very misleading unless carefully guarded, and it is not often carefully guarded. It is perfectly natural for one who is conducting a meeting to want to get the largest possible response to his appeal. If he is not careful, he will deceive himself as to the sincerity of his motive. Of course if he wants advertising, and if his next engagement will depend on the success of this one, the desire for advertising is both strong and subtle. But even when the whole matter is as far removed from per- sonal interest as it is natural to get it, the results are apt to be misleading. Sometimes the wording of the card is such, and sometimes the invitation to sign it is put in such form, that no real Christian could refrain from signing it. Anyone familiar with those methods well knows how generally that is done. It hardly could be otherwise. Of seven hundred cards signed four or five hundred io6 EVANGELISM may have been signed by Christians; that proportion is none too high in many cases. But the seven hun- dred are reported to the pubHc as seven hundred de- cisions for Christ. The impression that the pubHc gets is that there v^ere seven hundred conversions. Now, when the meetings are over and the cards distributed among the churches according to the preference of the signers, then the disillusionment comes. Pastor B. has two hundred and fifty cards turned over to his church. He finds that two hundred and twenty-five have been signed by his best members. He receives into his church only twenty-five people. The public will be apt to say — and it would be natural to say it, judging from the published reports of the meetings — that Pas- tor B. had two hundred and fifty converts turned over to him and let two hundred and twenty-five slip through his hands, for he only received twenty-five into the church. Or it might be declared that the church was so cold, or so poorly organized, or so some- thing else, that two hundred and twenty-five refused to join it. If it is explained that the two hundred and twenty-five were already active members of the church, the man on the outside will ask, "Why then did they sign decision cards and allow the public to think that they were new converts?" The whole thing will look insincere to him. He will say it is a pious way of stuff- ing the ballot box which would be strongly condemned outside of the church. It is hard for the outside man to believe in the genuineness or sincerity of the matter ; he looks upon it as a sort of pious fraud, and will have nothing to do with it. The statistics of big union meet- ings are bound to be misleading although there is no THE BIG UNION MEETINGS 107 intention to be dishonest or insincere. If the church were shut up to this one form of evangelism, which some people think is sufficient, it would create the per- petual task of explaining away misunderstandings and of making the best of disappointments. In a word, it would be a very unsatisfactory form of evangelism both for the world and the church. Fifth. The big meetings are very expensive, and much of the good done in some campaigns is offset by misunderstanding and hard feelings which grow out of the financial difficulties that follow the meetings. The unfortunate projection of financial matters to the front in a spiritual work leads to harsh criticism and bitter feelings. The business end of some evangelistic campaigns is very poorly managed. The churches com- plain because they have to pay so much, and the pastors complain because the results are so meager, and the public complains because the work did not seem to be genuine. So there is dissatisfaction all around. The question will now be raised, If these things are true even in exceptional cases, ought big union meetings to be held at all ? Is not the sum total effect on the nega- tive side rather than on the positive side? Union Meetings Useful Big union meetings, by all means, ought to be held. The sum total effects need never be on the negative side. There is both need and room for just such meet- ings, and whenever the conditions warrant it they ought to be held. But if they are made a substitute for pastoral evangelism, or individual church evangelism, then the sum total effect will be apt to be on the nega- io8 EVANGELISM tive side. The big union meeting ought to be the cli- max of a great many unit meetings. When all of the individual churches under the leadership of their own pastors, or such brother pastors as might be called in to help with evangelistic fervor, are interested, a union meeting of these churches will be almost inevitable. Then a competent evangelist can be of inestimable value. There is a form of union meetings, however, that is very effective without the aid of a professional evangelist. The writer has had part in several such meetings. A given group of churches of one or sev- eral denominations will meet either on a common neu- tral ground, as in a Young Men's Christian Association auditorium, town* hall, lyceum, or some other large public building, or they may rotate among the churches of the group. However, it is not wise to change the place of meeting, if it can be avoided. It breaks the continuity of effort, and it helps to break up the habit of attendance. It will take a night or two to get used to the place, and that introduces the element of inter- ruption. If the meetings are held in the churches of the group in rotation, too often the members of each church will feel responsible only for the meetings held in their own church, and that prevents that community interest that is cultivated by having the meetings in one place. In this type of union meetings the cooperating pas- tors are their own evangelists. They all attend all the meetings, sit together in the pulpit, or at least two of them are in the pulpit each night, and the rest are scat- tered judiciously among the congregation as personal workers. They preach by turns. Sometimes the man THE BIG UNION MEETINGS 109 who did not preach will conduct the after meeting; he may even make the appeal, although that had better be done by the preacher, at least in its first form. But the person who watches the effect of the sermon on the congregation, and is not under the strain of the mes- sage himself, may often see more clearly what ought to be done than the one who preaches. There ought to be most complete understanding and the heartiest co- operation between the men who conduct the meeting. The meeting ought to be carefully planned before- hand, and as far as possible every emergency antici- pated, so that there would be no surprises, disappoint- ments, nor awkward pauses in the meeting when no- body seemed to know what to do. That confusion can be avoided when good team work is done. When one of the team seems to have exhausted his resources, the other may take hold with something new, or one of the preachers in the congregation may take advan- tage of a pause, to offer prayer, start a hymn, give a testimony, or exhortation, and thus save the meeting from an awkward situation. After an evening or two all the cooperating pastors would be known by face and voice, and that would prevent any of the people thinking that outsiders were trying to take the meet- ing out of the hands of the leaders. All the pastors would be a unit in their effort and understanding. To make that possible they ought to have a council to- gether for prayer, and plan before and after each meeting. That kind of a union service is usually very fruitful in permanent results. But if it were deemed wise, the union service might be under the leadership of some competent evangelist, whose staff of coworkers no EVANGELISM would be the cooperating pastors. There would be few drawbacks or misunderstandings resulting from such union meetings. In this case the union meeting would not be a substitute for, but a supplement to, pastoral evangelism. Another question might be asked here : Is there any real place for the professional evangelist? Does the church need him any more? In the interest of pastoral evangelism, ought not professional evangelism and the professional evangelist to be discouraged? Certain types of evangelists ought to be discouraged — there is no doubt about that; but certain other types ought to be encouraged. The church needs not fewer evan- gelists but more and better evangelists. Conference Evangelists The type of men that are sometimes set apart as Conference evangelists ought to be discouraged. Men are sometimes given a nominal appointment, and they are designated as Conference evangelists, either be- cause of some disability that renders them unfit for pastoral service or because churches do not want them. These are exactly the men who ought not to be ap- pointed, even nominally, as Conference evangelists. The office of Conference evangelist ought to be made as important as any office in the Conference. It would not be a bad thing for every district to have its official evangelist selected from among the most successful evangelistic pastors in the Conference, and be paid by the district a salary equal to any other minister's salary on the district, and let him be at the service of the churches on the district under the direction of the dis- THE BIG UNION MEETINGS in trict superintendents and pastors, or at least in hearty cooperation with them. Very much important work could be done by such an arrangement, but even then his work must not displace pastoral evangelism. This would in no way render the professional evangelist useless. Professional evangelists ought to be trained by the church just as its ministers are. Every theo- logical seminary ought to have a department of evan- gelism. The evangelist should take the full course of the seminary just as the pastor does, but he could specialize on evangelism. He would then have the pastors' view- point and cooperation would be much easier between pastor and evangelist. They would have a better com- mon ground than some do to-day. Then the evangelists would be able to preach and interpret the Bible as well as the pastors. That would make their work far more constructive than it is. Training Evangelists If there were provision for the training of evangel- ists by the church, many people, both men and women, who have peculiar gifts for that work would go into it, but now, as they do not feel qualified to be pastors, they either go into evangelism untrained, or else they do not go into distinctive Christian work at all. Some men who do not want to take time to train for the min- istry will go into evangelism, because they think it takes less training and less ability. An evangelist ought to be a specialist. He ought to know as much as the pastor does, plus. It is true that formerly some men who could not get through a medi- cal college would take up some particular study in 112 EVANGELISM medicine and call themselves specialists. They could be more fitly called quacks. The best specialists add their specialty to a very thorough, all-round training. So ought an evangelist. No person ought to go into evangelism as a profession who is not as thoroughly trained as the pastor. I mention this because some one who reads this book may have considered almost any kind of seminary training to be sufficient for the work of an evangelist. Far from it. He ought to have the best training that can be had, for he is to be a specialist in the most fundamental thing in the ministry, namely, soul-winning. The church is confronted with two duties in the mat- ter of the professional evangelist : it should train evan- gelists and have many more of them, and it should not employ nor encourage untrained evangelists. By using only those who are best trained it might have fewer in service, but they would be better. Evangelists are to be pastors' helpers and not pastors' substitutes. Whatever or whoever takes the place of pastoral evangelism or makes it unnecessary works harm to the church. The pastor is first of all an evangelist. He may have a way of his own in getting people saved. He need not conform to any of the conventional stand- ards, nor employ any of the conventional methods, but he is to get folks saved; and when he does, by whatever method he employs, he is essentially an evangelist. He is saved to serve, and he serves to save. There may be as many methods as men, but the main thing is to get men and women rightly related to God and man ; that is, to make them Christians who will get the will of God done in the earth. CHAPTER III THE PERIODIC REVIVAL Pastoral evangelism may and perhaps ought to take two forms. The first form may be called the periodic, or occasional revival. The time-honored month for that revival was January, beginning with the week of prayer. That has not always been the best month, al- though the beginning of the new year was something to be said in its favor even if the reason were only a sentimental one. But very often the weather in Janu- ary for a large part of the country is disagreeable. A better month would be November, climaxing with Thanksgiving Day. Better still is March, which being in Lent, is less given over to pleasure and more given over to religion than any other month in the year. That month could climax on Easter Day, and Passion Week would give a splendid opportunity for very effec- tive appeals. It is a time when the cross and sacri- ficial service easily can be made prominent; they are always powerful appeals, but especially at that time of year. Spring Conferences often interfere, but under the area system the month preceding Easter ought to be left free for evangelistic work. But now it may be asked, If the old methods no longer work, is it worth while to have a month's re- vival ? Can it be made successful ? To both questions the answer is "Yes." The periodic revival is logical, 113 114 EVANGELISM natural, and, if the necessary conditions are met, in- evitable and successful. In nature it corresponds to the harvest, but it is no more of a detached or unrelated thing than the harvest. The harvest is not an accident. It didn't just happen. The harvest is the climax of a process. Nature's method is a process with a climax. That is God's method, and it is as true in grace as it is in nature. No man can reap a harvest that was not sown. Neither can a church have a revival by setting apart a certain time, throwing the doors open, and saying, ''The re- vival is now on ; come and be saved." When there was less to do and fewer places to go, that method did work, but it does not work to-day. The revival to- day is the climax in one month of diligent and faithful work and prayer through the other eleven months of the year. The periodic revival is a method employed by God in the religious history of his people. The Old Testament is a book of revivals. The prophets were national revivalists. They called the nation to repentance and to works of righteousness, as our fa- thers did their communities. The New Testament is a book of revivals. John the Baptist introduced a revival after a long period of religious dearth. Jesus was a revivalist, and his method was to set up the king- dom of God in the world. His messages were for the most part Kingdom messages. Jesus talked a great deal about the kingdom of God. Evangelism to him was getting the Kingdom established. He did not put much emphasis on a man getting off to heaven some day, but he did put emphasis on doing the will of God to-day. If the life is right to-day, to-morrow need THE PERIODIC REVIVAL 115 cause no anxiety. That person is sure of heaven to- morrow who lives the heavenly life in the will of God to-day. The model prayer which he gave his disciples in Luke eleven is a Kingdom prayer. The Golden Rule is a Kingdom rule. The Sermon on the Mount is a Kingdom message. The general commission in Matthew twenty-eight is a Kingdom commission. Most of his parables are parables to illustrate the Kingdom. The parable of the mustard seed illustrated the law of expansion of the Kingdom, the leaven the pervasive power of the Kingdom. The apostles were evangelists, and none more so than the missionary evangelist Paul. The history of the Christian Church is a history of revivals and evan- gelists. In the nature of things, there is room and need for the occasional revival. It may not be wise to attempt to hold one every year in every place, par- ticularly in small communities. But in big cities, where there are always large numbers of unsaved people and a moving population, it would be wise to hold one every year but varying the method so as not to get into ruts or become commonplace. The occasional revival has some advantages that ought to be noted : 1. It breaks up monotony by introducing the unu- sual. It has the element of novelty and has a freshness that appeals to many people to whom the regular serv- ices of worship do not appeal. 2. The revival idea gets in the air and makes it easy even for timid people to talk about religion; and because it is unusual and many people are talking about it the subject is always introduced. It is very easy to ii6 EVANGELISM say, "Have you been to the meetings yet?" and then extend an invitation to go next time. So conversation can easily and naturally lead to personal work. 3. It opens up a variety of avenues of service for young people. They can be gotten to sing in the choir, to usher, to distribute cards of invitation in the neighborhood, to go out in teams of two each to call on other young people and invite them to church, or, better still, call for them and take them to church, sit with them and help them in any way they can to de- cide for Christ. Men can organize to do personal work among men, and they will do it for a short period, but would not think of keeping it up through the year. 4. Various types of afternoon meetings can be held for women and children who cannot well attend the evening meetings. Mothers' meetings are of great value in evangelistic work. The prayers offered in mothers' meetings have been of incalulable value in revival periods. Shop meetings for men also can be held, often with the heartiest cooperation of both the employers and the employed if the meetings do not last too long and if they do not interfere with the regular work of the shop. Shop meetings are of great importance if properly conducted and are productive of gratifying results. It requires great skill to conduct such meetings, but let no one be discouraged on that account. Common sense is the most important factor in their successful conduct. They should rarely exceed fifteen minutes in length. The problem is to pack those fifteen minuets with interest and importance. The mes- sage must be brief, bright, and to the point. The THE PERIODIC REVIVAL 117 singing also should be bright and cheery, and the hymns familiar, so the men could all join in the singing, es- pecially in the choruses. Debatable questions should not be discussed at the shop meetings, nor should any- thing be raised that would tend to alienate the em- ployer and the employed. Industrial matters had better be let alone ( i ) because there is not time in a five or six-mijiute speech to deal satisfactorily with such com- plicated problems; and (2) the aim of the shop meet- ings is to bring to the men a simple, direct, strong gos- pel message, to hold up Jesus Christ as every man's friend and Saviour. No appeal to class spirit should be mentioned, and nothing that would stir up strife or create a suspicion that the preacher was partisan. He is the friend of all men and is interested in the better- ment of all. Good shop meetings greatly elevate morale and tend to bring capital and labor into more wholesome and brotherly cooperation. If the meetings are judiciously conducted for two or three weeks, the preacher often is invited to continue them at least once a week indefinitely. When that is the case the preacher has achieved a great victory in that he has established a sympathtic bond between his church and the work- ing man. He will often have them in his congregation on Sunday night, so that out of his periodic revival he has created an opportunity for continous evan- gelism. 5. The deck is all cleared for action; in other words, all social and recreational activities are suspended for the period of the meetings, and the church concen- trates on one thing — the winning of men and women to God. The preaching is more direct and appealing; ii8 EVANGELISM in fact, the best preaching of the year should be done during the revival. A preacher ought always to try to better his best; but if ever he is to do his best, it is when he is preaching a soul-saving gospel, when he is presenting Jesus Christ as Saviour and urging the im- mediate acceptance of him by men. The whole church is alert and expectant; prayer groups get together every day for the preacher, the meetings, and the un- converted. Personal workers will be quietly winning souls between meetings, and that always is a guarantee of good meetings. Altogether it is very wholesome to both pastor and people to hold the periodic revival. In those meetings it is better, if possible, for the pastor to be his own evangelist. Occasionally it is wise to call in some effi- cient evangelist or another pastor to help him, but the pastor is to have charge of the meetings and direct all the activities. For no reason should be abdicate his leadership. CHAPTER IV THE CONDUCT OF THE PERIODIC REVIVAL How is it to be conducted? No one can give a definite answer to that question. The conditions differ so widely that what would be wise in one place might not be in another. Indeed, in the same place on differ- ent nights in the same week the conditions will differ so widely that the method of the night before will not work. The method should be always so elastic that any emergency could be met without any embarrass- ment. Only general principles can be suggested. I. As to the preaching. This subject was discussed in a previous chapter, but only in a general way. Here a few specific hints may be given that will be helpful. The revival sermon should be brief, say twenty-five or thirty minutes long. It should be strong, clear, direct, and deal with fundamental things. No careless, ill- prepared, or trivial preaching ought to be tolerated in evangelistic meetings. Sin, repentance, righteousness, duty, service, the love of God, the Saviourhood of Christ, the greatness of the Christian life are fitting subjects for the revival meetings. In this day it is not so much instruction, that most people need, the important thing is to create in them a motive strong to make them act on what they already know. The sermons should be intellectually strong but also 119 I20 EVANGELISM emotionally warm. Many a man's reason is convinced that he ought to be a Christian who does not yield be- cause his emotions are not warm enough to move his will to decision. The main object of the revival is to lead to immediate action. The sermon is to create mo- tive power. Men must be made to see that they owe it to themselves, to their- families, to the world, and to God to live the best lives that it is possible for them to live, and that cannot be done as long as they love and practice sin. Christ came to deliver them from the power and defilement of sin, and he is to be presented for their immediate acceptance. Every reason, motive, affection, and argument is on the side of living a life wholly in the will of God. Character studies make good revival sermons — the stories of Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Gideon, David, Elijah, Jeremiah, Nehemiah, Amos, Paul, and others, on the positive side. But men whose careers are warnings are also important as studies, for they show the subtilty and danger of sin ; for example, Samson, Saul, Achan, Ahab, Judas, Pi- late, and others. The following are suggestive passages for texts : Isa. 5. 4; 6. 1-8; 53. 5. The Psalms are also helpful; for example, i, 15, 24, 51, y:^, 103, 130. In the New Testament the following are useful: Matt. 4. 17. Mark i. 17. Luke 9. 57-62; Chapters 15, 16, and 19. 10. John i. 11, 12; 3. 3-5; 16. i John i. 8-10; 5. II, 12. Acts 26. 18. Rom. 5. i; Chapters 7, 8. i, 2, 31-39. It is often wise to take large sections, even whole chapters, for texts in revival meetings. The preacher should settle on the type of preaching that he is going to employ long before the meetings begin, so that he is CONDUCT OF PERIODIC REVIVAL 121 so familiar with his subject that he will be able to do the many things that must be done during the meet- ings without seriously affecting his preaching. His sermons should follow a cumulative order, reaching a climax near the close of the meetings, when the strong appeals are to be made for immediate decision. They should be brief, so as to leave ample time in the after meeting to do a variety of the things that need to be done to bring about intelligent decisions. The trouble with many revivals is that the people are preached almost to death. They are wearied before the after meeting comes, and if decisions do not follow the first invitation, there is nothing to do but dismiss the meet- ing or there will be a small number out the next night. In the revival the meeting is more important than the message. A short sermon with a long after meeting in which there is time for plenty of action is far better than a long sermon, no matter how good it is, and an after meeting so short that nothing worth while can be done with the message. There should be ample time in the after meeting for song, prayer, testimony, and several forms of invitation if need be without wearying the people. Therefore the sermon is to be a packed, powerful, brief message which will lead to action, but which will allow ample time for deliberate and intelli- gent action. 2. The preparation for the meeting. It is some- times said that real revivals "come down," or "break out," and that they should not be "worked up." Re- vivals, however, which seem to "come down" or "break out" are not accidents or oddities. They have been worked up, consciously or unconsciously, by a few 122 EVANGELISM deeply spiritual men and women, possibly some of the old or sick, who long for a work of grace in the church and pray daily for it and the pastor. The revival came down by the drawing power of prayer, or it broke out by the expulsive power of prayer. No great revival comes without a great deal of earnest, powerful, and expectant prayer. So a large group of cottage meetings should be held for several weeks be- fore the revival begins. Very often these cottage prayer meetings precipitate the revival a week or two before the time planned ; then, indeed, it comes down, or breaks out. Many times, however, cottage prayer meetings accomplish very little because they are not focused. It does not do much immediate or specific good for a group of people to get together and pray in a general way for God's blessing upon a series of meetings to be held at a given time. Of course all praying does some good; if to no one else, certainly the one who offers the prayer is benefited. But prayer meetings which are to usher in a revival must be very definite, and must for the most part be followed up by personal effort of the one who prays ; he himself must cooperate with God in answering the prayer.; It will be a long time before this world will be saved if men only pray to God to save it. Prayer* and work must go together. About the only effective prayers, without work, that are offered for conversions are the prayers of children, old people, and sick people. They cannot ordinarily follow up their prayers with work. For the conversion of men God works through men, and rarely in any other way. So there is a work that even precedes the cottage prayer meetings. To make the CONDUCT OF PERIODIC REVIVAL 123 cottage meetings most effective those who pledge them- selves to attend the meetings and take part in them should do something more. Prayer Lists of Unconverted ^ ' Everyone interested in a revival knows one or more persons whom he or she would like to have brought to Christ. All the people, then, who support the cottage preparatory meetings should make prayer lists of those they want to see saved and pray for them daily, in private, by name, and in the cottage meetings, where the names need not be mentioned. That would mean that all the prayers offered would be prayers with a definite object. More than that, the persons who pray for their friends in the cottage meetings should do all they could by personal effort to answer their own prayers between meetings. They could then not only pray in the meetings but also report what success they had in personal effort during the week. When any considerable number of any church membership under the direction of its pastor will do that kind of prepara- tory work a revival will be inevitable. Many deci- sions will have been made before the revival formally opens, and these decisions can be declared early in the meetings, and success will attend them from the start. Very much evangelistic interest comes to nothing be- cause it does not issue in definite action. A revival must be planned through, prayed down, and worked up. Good planning, earnest praying, and faithful working will bring a revival. A revival costs much, but it is worth while. Not only has a good revival given a church a new lease of life but also has added 124 EVANGELISM hope, faith, and power to many a discouraged minis- ter's preaching. 3. The more specific preparation for the revival meetings themselves. From among the people, both men and women, who attended the cottage meetings the pastor should select the wisest and most successful to be his personal workers in the revival. It is not wise to call for volunteers for this delicate and diffi- cult work, for very often the most tactless and least trusted people in the church will respond. They may be enthusiasts or hobbyists, or those queer, good peo- ple whose queerness offsets their goodness. All such people will by one tactless venture often undo the careful work of a whole week, and sometimes make the whole revival effort fail. Personal workers should be selected by the pastor with the greatest care, and should be so organized and their work so planned that there would be no opportunity for the tactless and dis- trusted or ignorant people to do any harm. The whole field of personal work should be so covered that there would be no occasion, especially in the meetings, for anyone to do personal work, except those chosen by the pastor. Personal workers should not only be good but wise. Foolish goodness is half -badness. Tact- less personal workers are obstructionists. I put great emphasis upon this, for too great care cannot be ex- ercised in the choice of personal workers. But even the most efficient personal workers will be able to accomplish but little if they work in a hap- hazard way. The work for each night must be planned so that each worker will know where to be and what to do. Of course all plans must be elastic enough to pro- CONDUCT OF PERIODIC REVIVAL 125 vide for the unexpected, but good judgment and tact will always provide for emergencies. The workers should meet with the pastor each night before the meet- ing and plan to cooperate in the closest way with him. The workers should know in advance what the pastor is going to do, so that any sign he may give them will be understood and acted upon at once, and done so easily and naturally that the plan will not show to the congregation. Some of the personal workers can do no better than to call for the unconverted whom they have previously seen, take them to church, sit with them, and help them in a very judicious way to make their decision, by going forward with them, standing with them, encouraging them to sign a card, or to make any other record of their decision. But the worker must not nag, nor urge, nor make the person conspicuous or embarrassed. Other personal workers will have charge of a small section of pews, and sit in such a position that they can see the faces of all that are in their section without turning around, or in any other way attracting the attention of others, much less of disturbing the pastor. The church ought to be divided up into sections so that one person could easily have charge of a section and do all that needed to be done quickly and quietly. These workers are invaluable if decision cards are used. The workers are to keep the cards out of sight until the pastor has made his appeal, read and ex- plained very clearly what the card means and what signing it involves. Then the workers distribute the cards giving one to everybody, so that nobody will be made conspicuous. Those who are already Christians 126 EVANGELISM need not sign the cards, but return them to the worker when he collects them. When the cards are in the people's hands, after their use has been explained by the pastor, then the pastor or some one on whom he may call should offer a brief prayer for God's blessing upon the decisions about to be recorded. Another brief prayer should follow the signing of them. Cards should not be dis- tributed in the pews or in the book racks before the dis- tribution is ordered by the pastor, nor should they be left lying around after they are used. Personal workers should use great care in this respect. All signed cards should be turned in to the pastor at the close of the meeting; then he and his council should divide up the names among themselves, or give them to other personal workers, and those who signed the cards should be called upon next day, or before the next meeting, and should be given such help as might be needed and urged to attend the next meeting. After Meeting with Seekers and Workers Signing cards, standing, raising the hand, or going forward are only beginnings. A definite and complete work should at once follow. The night following the decision at the close of the service an after meeting should be called for the workers and all those who made decisions. The pastor should have charge of this meeting, and give additional instruction to what has already been given the night before. This would be somewhat of a private meeting, at which the new converts might first learn to take part in prayer and testimony before doing so in the more public meet- CONDUCT OF PERIODIC REVIVAL 127 ing. Many a person has come to a definite and joyous experience in offering his first prayer or in giving his first testimony. That which was more or less general and indefinite in his decision becomes definite and settled when it is put into action. Hence the importance of having new converts, as soon as possible, translate their religious intention into religious experience through action. When the appeal is for people to come forward it should be pretty clearly understood that there are peo- ple there who will come forward. The failure to get a response after two or three nights has a very bad effect upon both preacher and people. It destroys ex- pectation. After a while when the invitation is given, nobody expects a response, and the whole thing be- comes more or less farcical. Expectant faith is es- sential to a successful revival. Some preachers and evangelists give the invitation every night from the first night to the last, often with meager results. The best evangelists and evangelistic pastors defer the in- vitation till near the close of the meetings when they know that many are ready to make their decision when the opportunity is given. That is much the better way. Preparation for the Invitation It is wise before an invitation to come forward is given that it be known, through personal work before the meeting, that several persons are ready to go for- ward when the opportunity is presented. The pastor then will be certain of a response, and the faith of the church will be greatly stimulated by such a ready re- sponse on the first invitation. Some may here object 128 EVANGELISM and say : "Such action shows too much of man's plan- ning and too little dependence on the Holy Spirit. If there had been more dependence on the Spirit and less leaning to human understanding the results would have been far greater." But wise and tactful plan- ning, accompanied, as all human plans ought to be, with prayer, is certainly cooperating with the Holy Spirit. If that objection were carried to its logical con- clusion, there would be no meetings held at all, for the meetings themselves are humanly planned. Before Jesus fed the multitude he had them organized. Be- fore he called Lazarus from the dead he required the human preparation. God's plans and man's plans are to harmonize ; neither is to work without the other. It is cooperative work. God saves the world through human instrumentality. In the meeting it is always wise to have what you set out to have. If you set out to have an altar service, have it. If seekers will not come forward, invite intercessors to represent them — parents, Sunday school teachers, personal workers, of- ficial members, recent converts. There always will be enough people to come with definite purpose to make the altar service one of great profit. If an invitation in one form will not bring a re- sponse, try another. When intercessors are at the altar ask for some expression of the unsaved in the congregation, such as rising, lifting the hand, or some other visible sign so as to give definiteness to the prayers of those at the altar. Many sons or daughters will yield when they see father or mother at the altar interceding for them. That same thing will be true when Sunday school pupils see their teachers pleading CONDUCT OF PERIODIC REVIVAL 129 for their conversion ; many will give themselves to God who perhaps would not be moved by any other appeal. It makes a good ground for an additional appeal by the pastor. Another form of after meeting is to have an inquiry room in which the meeting can be held after the regu- lar meeting has been dismissed. To this meeting only two classes of people should be invited — those who want help and those who are willing to help. That will eliminate the impatient, who think that all meetings are too long; the indifferent, who are more or less of an embarrassment to serious people; and the curious, who are nuisances. That meeting will be made up of people who mean business and who are not at all con- cerned about its length as long as something worth while is accomplished. If seekers do not attend, it can take the form of a council meeting for prayer and re- ports on personal work and some further direction on the plans for the next meeting. If seekers do come, they can be dealt with more directly and helpfully than in the more public meeting. Very often people will come and take a stand in a small, semiprivate meeting who are too timid to take a stand in the general meeting. The inquiry meeting should be very informal. It should be a sort of conversational group where the seeker could ask questions and any of the workers be free to answer as well as the pastor. It is often helpful to have testimonies from the older Christians as to how they met their first difficulties and what a constant in- spiration and help their religion has been to them. All this helps the new convert or the one about to decide for Christ to know that religion is more than a happy I30 EVANGELISM feeling that might not stand the rough tests of life. Those who give themselves to Christ can be asked to pray or speak, and thus more firmly establish them- selves in the faith than if they had no such oppor- tunity. It is a sort of family gathering where they can talk things over in a frank and confidential way. The inquiry meeting wisely conducted is very effec- tive in evangelistic work. Divided After Meeting Another profitable way of conducting an after meet- ing is to divide the congregation, having the men go into a separate room and leaving the women in the audi- torium. As a rule, the pastor should take charge of the men's meeting. The women's meeting can often be turned into a prayer service for the success of the other meeting. The men's meeting needs a strong and frank leadership. It will be observed that men as a rule will give public expression to their decision in a men's meeting far more readily than in a mixed meet- ing. If the pastor is a real man's man, he can do almost anything he wants to do with his men when he has them by themselves. Men like to be talked to with great candor and directness, and the pastor has a great op- portunity to do a splendid soul-winning service with his men alone. Women, on the other hand, will more readily make a public decision in a mixed meeting than when they are by themselves. Women seem to be more sensitive to the criticism of women than they are to the criticism of men, while men are far more sensitive to the criticism of women than they are to crit- CONDUCT OF PERIODIC REVIVAL 131 icism by their own sex. Indeed, most men care very little about male criticism. It may be that men fear that yielding to a religious appeal seems more emo- tional than rational, and, therefore, weak; and in the presence of women they do not like to show any sign of what they may think is weakness. But what- ever the cause, the pastor should capitalize the pecu- liarity in the interest of the kingdom of God. The writer always has had more success in bringing men to a decision in a men's meeting than in a mixed meet- ing, and he has been more successful in getting deci- sions from women in a mixed meeting than in a women's meeting. In the course of a long experience he has found great value, especially in dealing with men in the divided after meeting. Still another form of after meeting can be held. After the sermon, during the singing of a hymn, all who so desire may go, leaving only those who are deeply interested, either for themselves or others, in the after meeting. That removes occasion for com- plaint by those not deeply interested that the meetings are tiresome. If any such person remains after there is offered an opportunity to go, he has no one to blame but himself. It is well to vary the after meeting. Ruts are fatal to good meetings. The unexpected always adds an element of interest and keeps the mind alert, thus sus- taining and saving the meeting from the deadening power of monotony. It is sometimes wise when the sermon has been unusually impressive and the emo- tional tension is strong, to close the sermon with the benediction and let the people go out silently occupied 132 EVANGELISM with their own thoughts and convictions, wondering why the preacher did not give an invitation. Very often when the emotional tension is greatest there will be the least action of the will; the people are too much engrossed with their thoughts and feel- ings to act. If an appeal is given at that time it rarely results in any response. The minister should not be discouraged, for the next night he may have an unu- sually good response to an appeal based on a much less searching sermon. At this point it is easy to make a grave mistake, namely, to conclude that it is the less powerful ser- mons that bring results and therefore pay little atten- tion to the sermon, believing that almost anything will do by way of preaching. One will have to try that method but a little while to discover that he will have no results that will be worth mentioning. The best action follows the best preaching, though not always immediately. The time for action must be carefully studied by the preacher and the invitation given when there is a reasonable expectation that there will be a response. CHAPTER V CONTINUOUS EVANGELISM The periodic revival discussed in the preceding chap- ter depends very largely for its success upon what might be called a continuous revival; that is, a sus- tained evangelistic program running through the year. The periodic revival, then, in one month would be the climax of the other eleven months of more quiet, but none the less persistent, effort. The objection that some ministers raise to the periodic revival is that they have no aptitude for that form of work. They do not think that they are emotional enough to conduct a successful revival. That form of work does not appeal to them. Some of them, thinking that there is no successful evangelistic work other than the periodic revival, do no evangelistic work at all. That is a great mistake. Some of the most successful evangelistic pastors seldom have a periodic revival, but they re- ceive converts into the church every month in the year, and because it is quietly done in the regular work of the church nobody thinks of it as a revival, nor is the pastor considered an evangelistic pastor. It is better for the converts and better for the church to have twenty people join the church each month of the year, than to have two hundred and forty come in at once who were brought to Christ under the high-pressure method of one month. They could be better cared for 133 134 EVANGELISM and more easily be built into the life of the church. Of course it would not make as good advertising as the quicker method, but it would be far better for the church, for it would keep it expectant and awake to every opportunity to win people to Christ. It would also greatly help the preacher, for it would assure him that his regular work was evangelistically effective. His preaching, therefore, would be more direct and vital. Evangelistic Policy But the continuous revival is no more of an accident than the periodic one is. Neither of them just happens. They are caused ; the laws of their success are just as determinable as are the laws of a successful harvest or prosperous business. If the church is to have a con- tinuous revival, it must plan for it; that is, it must have an evangelistic policy. It must get the soul-win- ning habit. One of the advantages of the continuous revival is that everybody can be engaged in it all the time. It is not confined to any one time or method; each person engaged in it can be doing his work in his own way. Not many people have the ability to conduct a revival meeting, but everybody has some influence with somebody else, and that influence can be capital- ized for Christ. One person may specialize in getting people to come to the church in order that they may be brought under the power of the gospel. Another may do a great deal of good work by writing tactful, sympathetic let- ters. The value of judicious letter-writing cannot be overestimated. A letter has certain advantages over a CONTINUOUS EVANGELISM 135 conversation. A letter cannot be interrupted, nor can the subject be changed ; it has the floor till its message is delivered. No matter how often the letter is read it always says the same thing in the same way. A con- versation may be accidental as the parties meet casu- ally, and so it may be neither wise nor timely. But a letter is intentional. The writer says what he means to say. It is deliberate, carefully thought out, so that the person who receives it knows that the writer has been thinking about him and therefore must have an interest in him — a fact which in itself goes a long way toward winning a favorable reception for it. A conversation may be forgotten, but a letter can be kept, and more often than not will be kept. A conversation may be turned into an argument and its very end thus defeated, but not so with a letter ; there is no one to argue with, and usually before the reader has time to answer it, any irritation that may have been aroused at the first reading will be allayed. Very likely that letter will later be found among the reader's keepsakes. Very few tactful and sympathetic letters in the in- terest of other people's souls are either destroyed or discourteously answered, especially if the writer is con- sistent in his interest in the person to whom he writes and if his own character warrants such an evangelistic effort. Such letters are answered with great courtesy and appreciation, and often lead to a correspondence or to interviews the outcome of which may be the con- version of the whole family of the person to whom the letter was written. If the periodic revival is on, letter-writing is not so effective, for the reason that the person receiving it 136 EVANGELISM may think that the writer is more interested in the success of the meeting than he is in the salvation of his soul. But when no special meetings are on and the church is just doing its normal work, then for a man to get a letter from some one interested in his soul means a great deal to him, and is more apt to be effective. The genuineness of the writer's interest at that time is far more apparent than if everybody were doing something unusual for a short time. The continuous revival gives a good opportunity for the cultivation of the habit of helpful letter-writing. Others still may interview men at their offices briefly and to the point on the matter of God's business and with just as much frankness and persistence as they do on the matter of man's business. That is a great art. Happy is the man who can do it well. Young people can do effective team work with other young people. Every person and organization in the church can be utiHzed in the continuous revival, but none of the work should be done in a haphazard way ; everything should be carefully planned and skillfully executed. In no place is blundering so fatal as in evangelistic work. The pastor must frequently check up on it, and often be in council with his workers, so that he may know how the work is being carried forward. Frequent reports from individuals and organizations is a good way to get work done and to get it intelligently and effectively done. Having to report is fatal to idlers. If no re- ports are called for, part of the work will be badly done by those who do not know how to do it and part of it will be left undone by those well meaning people who are always going to do something but never get any CONTINUOUS EVANGELISM 137 farther than their good resolutions. Reports are fundamental to getting work done. Of course in all this work the pastor must be the leader. It will come with ill grace for him to require reports of others if he has not something to report himself. Long Pastorates This kind of evangelism cannot best be done in short pastorates. It takes time to win the confidence of the community and lay those lines of siege that are so effective in long pastorates. The pastor must become a helpful factor in all the interests of community life — indeed, in a way he must become the conscience of the community before he will be most effective in contin- uous evangelism. Hard-headed business men will want to know what he stands for in all the affairs of the community before they will give him audience to talk to them privately on the matters of their souls. These men may be good citizens though they may not be Christians, and they want to know whether the pastor is as good a citizen as he is a Christian. If the pastor has made good on the claims of men, they will listen to him on the claims of God; indeed, if he has not made good on the claims of men, he has little right to press on others the claims of God. The periodic revival can be gotten up in a few months after the pastor gets on a new field, and if he is a successful conductor of public meetings he may have a successful revival, for in such a case it will not matter very much whether he is well known or not; much will depend on how well be can conduct the meet- ings. But to carry on successfully a quiet campaign of 138 EVANGELISM personal work throughout the year in the church and out of it, he must not only be ,welUaiow»-but thor- oughly trusted. The goodness of his character and the soundness of his judgment must be above suspicions Continuous evangelism cannot be done well where a / pastor takes a church only as an expedient, with no intention of seriously settling down to solve the re- ligious problems of his community. The restlessness of both pastor and people is detrimental to good evan- gelistic work of any kind. It requires greater tact, skill, and consecration to conduct a long, quiet cam- paign, which is a sustained hunt for souls, than it does to work up and carry through a few weeks of high- pressure meetings. In the continuous revival the stimulus of the unusual is lacking, and there is no such \ high level of enthusiasm as there is in the other kind of revival, but in the long pastorates the continuous revival is far more fruitful in permanent results. Training Personal Workers Another thing that the continuous revival presup- /j poses is the training of personal workers. This is diffi- cult work, and it must be done with great care and skill. It is also discouraging work, for as soon as one band of workers is trained many of the band will move away and the work will all have to be done over again ; but, of course, there will be this compensation in it: trained workers will thus be scattered among other churches, and they may become the trainers of still other bands, the result being that the Kingdom's work will be better done. As personal workers must be chosen with great care, CONTINUOUS EVANGELISM 139 the draft system is better than the volunteering system, for, as previously stated, those who volunteer are often the very persons who ought not to do that work at all. They do not sense the seriousness of the work, nor do they regard special preparation as at all necessary for it. The pastor may have to begin with two or three who will quietly work with him or under his direc- tion. Then others as they are found and tested may be added. But these personal workers are not to take the pastor's place in evangelism. They are to use all their skill and wisdom in a great variety of ways, but always under the leadership of the pastor. They are to be his council. He should train them in the art of soul-winning and supervise their work until they be- come experts. Then when he leaves, this group of trained workers will be an invaluable staff for his suc- cessor. They will keep the spiritual life of the church at a high level, and will enable a new pastor to do fundamental work from the beginning. These per- sonal workers also can be the friends and helpers of all new converts who come into the church, and to strangers who come by letter from other churches. In a church where there are frequent conversions through the year almost everybody will feel at home. They can also help in other forms of church work, such as teach- ing in the Sunday school and giving spiritual leader- ship to young people's work. All the interests of the church are best served when its main business, the winning of souls, is kept to the front. Happy is the church that has in its member- ship a great number of people — young and old, men I40 EVANGELISM and women — who are successful soul-winners. In very many cases, where continuous evangelism is car- ried through the year, a revival will break out which will absorb all the interest and attention of the church for several weeks; and a pastor who has been through one revival which comes as the climax of his steady evangelism will feel at home in the periodic re- vival ever afterward, and, indeed, may become an ex- pert in conducting such meetings. Nothing can take the place of pastoral evangelism, and when the pastor feels that there is no conventional type of evangelism to which he must conform, but that any method which gets people to God is good evan- gelism, his own ministry not only will be a successful one, but the church committed to his care will be a prosperous and happy church. He ought to employ every means that he can command to advance the kingdom of God, keeping always in mind that he is called and commissioned by Jesus Christ to be a soul- winner. He is to help to make disciples of all the na- tions under the leadership of his Divine Master. PART III SUNDAY SCHOOL EVANGELISM . CHAPTER I OPPORTUNITY AND RESPONSIBILITY The Sunday school is the most hopeful and fruitful field for evangelism that the church has to-day. Sun- day school evangelism is very largely a work of con- servation, the object of which is to prevent the young people of the church from going into sin. If the Sunday school clearly sees its opportunity and faith- fully does its work, the church will have little to fear about the wastage of its young life. The Sunday school has the young people of the church from the Cradle Roll to the Adult Bible Class ; that is, from in- fancy up to middle life and after. If it is alive to its opportunity and has an intelligent evangelistic policy, it will make the age period covered by the Primary and Junior Departments a period of careful prepara- tion, so that when the ''teen" age — which is the age of highest religious susceptibility — is reached, there will be little difficulty in winning almost every boy and girl in the school to Christ. They would be prepared to make a definite and intelligent decision for Christ and would expect to do so if they had the opportunity. It is stated that about sixty per cent of the pupils go out of the Sunday school without becoming Christians. This is because most Sunday schools have not a definite evangelistic policy. No well-managed factory would waste three fifths of its raw material for want of a 143 144 EVANGELISM good business policy, yet that is about what the Sun- day schools are doing. The evangelistic responsibility of the Sunday school does not rest with any one person but with many per- sons. Here it is easy to pass the responsibility along. The pastor may say that evangelism in the Sunday school is a matter for the superintendent to look after, that the school is his church and he ought to be re- sponsible for its evangelism. The superintendent may say that he does not come into close personal relation with the pupils, but the teachers do, and as evangelism is a personal matter the responsibility rests with the teacher. The teacher may say that if the parents did their duty as parents in the religious training of their children there would be no need of Sunday school evangelism at all, therefore the responsibility rests with the parents. The parents may say, *'That is what we pay our minister to do; if he fails to do it, the fault is his, not ours." And so the vicious circle moves round and round, each one passing the responsibility along to some one else, w^hile the children are deprived of their rights. This passing along of responsibility may not be consciously done, but each of the parties takes for granted that some one else is taking care of the situa- tion, the result being that the work does not get done at all. Pastor's Responsibility As a matter of fact, all the persons named are re- sponsible, each in his own way and to the extent of his ability and opportunity. The pastor has a responsibility because he has an opportunity, and a very great one OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 145 too. The Sunday school is a part, and a very important part, of his church, and nothing will excuse him for neglecting that part of his evangelistic field. Many pastors plead a lack of time and strength for Sunday school work. But that excuse is no more valid than if a business man should say that the pressure of his busi- ness is so great that he must neglect his family. If that is so, he has no right to have a family. If the pastor, as a rule, has no time for his Sunday school, he does not deserve one. No preacher needs to feel compli- mented on his fine preaching or on his large floating congregation if the salvation of his own Sunday school children is neglected. If he does not think it worth while to evangelize the young life which is put into his hands and is more responsive to his appeal than other people with whom he deals, there is little hope that he will ever be a successful pastor evangelist. He had far better let other people do a great deal of the work about the church that saps his strength and give more of his time to the Sunday school, where it will count for the most. The Sunday evening service is no longer the evan- gelistic opportunity that it used to be, for the reason that most of the young people after they attend the Sunday school and the young people's service do not go to the evening preaching service. One of the best ways to get the young people to attend the evening church service is for the pastor to attend their service and show such a friendly interest in them that they will feel it is their duty and privilege to attend his service. Young people are loyal to any one who is loyal to them. If he is regularly at the Sunday school, 146 EVANGELISM he will find a large number of the older Sunday school pupils at the evening service. The pastor ought not to teach a class if he can help it, for that shuts him up to a small part of the school. Sometimes it is necessary for him to teach a class to hold it to the school, especially if it is a class of young men. As a rule, he ought to move freely about through the school, so that all the pupils will know him, and he will have the opportunity of saying a word of cheer in all the departments as well as to individual pupils. It will be impossible for him to be in the school every Sunday. A pastor, like a physician, is always subject to emergency calls, but barring these he ought to be in his Sunday school whenever it is possible. The pastor cannot expect that his influence will be great in the school if he attends it only on special days, such as Rally Day, Decision Day, Christmas, Easter, and Children's Day. If he attends only at such times, he will be considered by the school only as one of the visitors, for on those occasions there will be many visitors. The pastor should never be thought of as a visitor. He should be thought of by the pupils as their personal friend, and as intimately related to the school as the superintendent and teachers are. The Pastor and the Boy Problem The pastor can do much toward getting the men of the church to attend the Sunday school. When that is done the boy problem will be solved to a great extent. Boys will not get to the place where they feel they are too old for the Sunday school if a large number of men regularly attend. The Sunday school no longer will be OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 147 thought of as a child's institution, but it will be con- sidered a real school of religion, where none are too young to be admitted and none too old to remain. The pastor must realize that the Sunday school of to-day is his church of to-morrow. If he is to have an evangelistic church to-morrow, he must have an evangelistic school to-day. He is to set the example to superintendent, teacher, and parent in the work of evangelism. As the pastor moves about in the school he can easily find out what is being taught, whether the work the teachers are doing both in teaching and in discipline is conducive to evangelism or subversive of it. If the pupils are not being led to Christy he can find out why they are not. If certain teachers are to blame, the pastor and superintendent working together can make such adjustments in the teaching staff and such organiza- tion of classes as will prevent, or at least minimize any work that would be obstructive to evangelism. The pastor could find some other kind of work about the church which would not directly affect evangelistic ef- fort, and put the inef^cient or undesirable teachers at that work, thus eliminating altogether the obstructive forces of the school. The evangelistic emphasis should be put so strongly before the teachers that no one out of sympathy with it or hostile to it would want to remain on the teaching staff. Teachers, of course, are to be allowed large liberty as to method. Each teacher, for the most part, should do his evangelistic work in his own way so long as he gets the work done. If he wins his class for Christ, it makes little difference how he does it. The result is 148 EVANGELISM the main thing, not the method. That principle the pastor should safeguard so well that no teacher would have his own initiative destroyed, nor would he have forced on him a method so out of keeping with his temperament and ability that he could not work it. The general principle could be taught by the pastor, but the details of working it out should largely be left with the teachers, when they have been fired with a passion to win their pupils to Christ. One of the greatest factors in the pastor's success in evangelism in the Sunday school is to have a clearly thought out evangelistic policy and program for the school; and in the development of these he should re- ceive the heartiest cooperation of both the superintend- ent and the teachers. He should never spring an evan- gelistic surprise on the school which would confuse or embarrass his superintendent and teachers. They should feel that they have his utmost confidence. It will be in the closest cooperation with them that the pastor will get his best work done. The pupils need not know beforehand what the pas- tor is going to do, but the cooperating staff of the school ought to know, so that they can fall right in with it, and see it through to a successful issue. A well-planned effort by the pastor may utterly fail be- cause no one knew of it beforehand and so could not cooperate in carrying it out. The Pastor and the Home The pastor can make a large indirect contribution to Sunday school evangelism in his pastoral work by en- listing the sympathy and cooperation of the parents in OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 149 the efforts that are being made by the school, and par- ticularly the teachers, for the salvation of the children. Very much more could be done than is done in Sunday school evangelism if the parents and teachers did better team work. It often happens that the parents don't know the teachers of their children even by sight, let alone know what the teachers are doing to win those children to Christ. The pastor can do a line piece of work here that will be reflected in the school in a very wonderful way. Very often the parents do not under- stand either the motive or method of the teacher in evangelistic work, and they think that the teacher is bringing undue pressure to bear upon the children in asking them to make a decision, or to take steps far beyond their years. They declare that the children do not know what they are doing, and therefore they as parents resent such procedure, even sometimes writing the teachers to mind their own business and informing them that they will attend to their children's religion themselves. They will often make their complaint to the pastor, and tell him that unless that kind of work ceases they will take their children out of the Sunday school. This offers a fine opportunity for the pastor to say a good word about the teacher, and have a very plain, frank talk with the parents. When parents fully understand the noble and sacrificial work of the teachers they will rarely refuse cooperation. All the cooperative work of the home is quickly and power- fully felt in the Sunday school. Here is an oppor- tunity that no pastor should let go unused. The establishment of the family altar in the home, which the pastor may encourage or secure, will con- I50 EVANGELISM tribute largely to Sunday school evangelism. But one of the most important things that the pastor can do in Sunday school evangelism is to safeguard what is called child conversion and keep it from being distorted or being misunderstood. Nothing is much more mis- chievous in religious work with young people than to expect such a religious experience of them as might be expected of people in middle life, yet that is often done. Some people expect the same phenomena in the conversion of a boy of fourteen who has never gone wrong, as in a man forty, who has sowed his wild oats, played the fool, and has become morally disfigured by sin. In both cases they expect the same remorse for sin, the same bitter repentance, the same radical con- trast in living, and the same joy at the change that takes place. Such a position is absurd. The cases are in no way parallel and should not be compared for points of resemblance. In the case of the well- brought up boy who at fourteen makes his decision for Christ, he is only doing now deliberately what up to this time he had taken for granted. If he had been asked at ten, or perhaps twelve, if he was a Christian, he would have answered ''Yes." It did not occur to him that he was not a Christian. This, of course, presupposes that he was carefully brought up by Chris- tian parents, as many Sunday school boys and girls are. At fourteen this boy, for the first time, takes a public stand for Christ. Perhaps it is the first oppor- tunity he has had to do it. Of course there will be no weeping over sins which the boy is not conscious that he ever committed, there will be no marked contrast between a life darkened by sin and one lighted up by OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 1 5 1 the forgiving grace of God. There will very likely be no marked change of feeling except in the satisfaction of now having put on record the feelings and beUefs he had long cherished. To ask him to weep over his sins and beg for mercy in order that his conversion might conform to the type of a hardened sinner would be wicked. If he did, he would have to be insincere in his tears and prayers. This would not be true of every boy of fourteen, but it would be true of many boys and girls of that age, and true of more boys and girls from ten to twelve; and it might be true of not a few up to sixteen years of age. With such children what is called conversion might more truly be called consecration. They really go for- ward now by their own deliberate decision, with the Christ whom they have followed more or less uncon- sciously. They do not turn around and face the other way, as an old sinner does. But Christ now gives them the grace and help they need to live the Christian life as they come to him just as he does the sinner who has been converted from the error of his way. Wherever deliberate and willful sin has been com- mitted there should be deliberate and thorough re- pentance, which is not so much a revulsion of feeling as a change of mind, a change which turns the wrong attitude of the life toward God into the right attitude. That conversion will express itself quietly or enthusi- astically according to the temperament of the individ- ual. If the person is highly emotional, that is the kind of conversion he most likely will have, while a quiet, deliberate, calculating person will have a conversion whose expression will be in keeping with his tempera- 152 EVANGELISM ment. It is folly to try to fit all kinds of people in a Sunday school or rescue mission — young and old, well brought up and ill brought up — into the same form of repentance and into the same mold of conversion. The thing cannot be done, and to insist upon it is to lose most of the people who ought to be won for Christ. It is because some teachers very innocently try to do this that the pastor must be alert all the time to see that no child is misled, discouraged, or be caused to expect that something will happen in a way which from the nature of things in his case will not and ought not to happen. There will be morbid and precocious children, but they will be the exception, and a wise pastor will deal exceptionally with them. But handling all children as though they were morbid or precocious is senseless, unjust, and absurd. The form that children's so-called conversion will take, whether of consecration or conversion, going straight on or turning around, will depend largely on temperament, training, and environment. The main thing is to get them to commit themselves to Christ in a simple, whole-hearted, and intelligent way. They need to be made to see that religion is not a thing that they get, but a loving relationship of trust and obedi- ence to Jesus Christ. All else that is necessary may be taught them later on in the training class for pre- paratory membership. It is at this point that the pas- tor can be of great value to the teacher and the child in Sunday school evangelism. The pastor must instruct the parents both from the pulpit and in the home in what is to be expected of children who give themselves to Christ, and what is to be done for them. Certainly, OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 1 53 too much must not be expected of them and, certainly, too Httle must not be done for them. They will need much help, sympathy, and patience in their religious life, for they need all this in their physical and intel- lectual life. They are adolescents and hardly under- stand themselves, and few people understand them. At this time of their life they can be easily marred or mended, and that permanently. The pastor's part in the evangelistic meeting in the Sunday school will be discussed under "Decision Day." The only thing that is attempted here is to point out that the pastor has both the opportunity and the responsibility of evangel- istic activity and oversight in the Sunday school. Superintendent's Opportunity The superintendent has a responsibility because he has an opportunity. He is the official head of the Sun- day school, and should feel not only the responsibility for its largest and most vital success, but should also feel the privilege of being intrusted with the religious guidance of the young life of the church. If he is a man of strong leadership, he can make the school about what he wants it to be. If he is interested in evan- gelism and sympathetic toward it, he can make evan- gelism very effective in his school. If he is unsym- pathetic toward it, he can make it almost an impossi- bility to do any effective evangelistic work in the school. He can very easily dissipate any profound impression that the teacher makes on the pupils by an incongruous closing exercise. He can make it almost impossible for a teacher to create a deep evangelistic impression by allowing all sorts of interruptions during the lesson 154 EVANGELISM period and having a general disorder during the clos- ing moments of the school. He can make a whole ses- sion seem ridiculous by having some roving stranger who tells funny stories and talks nonsense generally, address the school. If the superintendent has no evangelistic policy or program for the school, or if he is unsympathetic, or hostile toward one, it is almost useless to attempt any public evangelistic effort in the school at all. The teachers may quietly and privately work with their pupils, but a public exercise in evangelism would be almost certain to fail, in which case the best piece of constructive evangelism would be to get a new superin- tendent. A great, sustained opportunity ought not to be wasted for the sake of one person. Better, if need be, to make one man and his family mad, and save five hundred boys and girls, than to humor that one man and let that host of young people pass through the school unsaved. The pastor should do all that he can to prevent any person holding any office in the church when that office would be used by that person to defeat the very object for which the church and Sunday school exist. The wise superintendent will do a great many things which indirectly are of great value in Sunday school evangelism. He will protect the teacher against inter- ruption of any sort while the lesson is being taught. He will allow no one to address the school who will strike a discordant note in the session's program, or who will in any way make the close of a Sunday school hour ridiculous or frivolous. He will have frequent teachers' prayer meetings, in which the evangelistic OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 155 emphasis will be strong. He will have council meet- ings with the teachers about their work, and especially about their success in winning their pupils to Christ. When he knows that a group of teachers are working to win their classes he will arrange his closing exercises so that they will help the teachers to focus the lesson in some form of appeal that will be fruitful of results. He can invite pupils as classes or individually to his home occasionally and have a frank talk with them on the matter of their personal salvation. He can go to the homes of the pupils who are interested in re- ligion and talk to them there with their parents. He can write letters to many upon whom he would not have time to call. He can strongly urge the Senior depart- ment and the adult Bible classes to attend the Sunday evening preaching service, and then be there himself to give them a welcome when they come and invite them to come again. By talking the church, the preacher, and the teacher up he will go a long way toward arousing not only interest but enthusiasm in the pupils. He .will select his teachers with evangelism in view. Other things being equal, he will choose the teachers most sympathetic to that work. He will also make the aim of the school "Every member of the school for Christ," and he will organize the school, select the teachers, and prepare the session program to that end. In a word, he will fit his program to his policy. He will invite men to address the Sunday school who have made a success in Hfe, in business, in the professions, to show that religion is a help, and not a hindrance, to success in life. He will have travelers speak whenever he can, who will show what a difference Christianity made in the non- 156 EVANGELISM Christian world, in the establishment of schools and churches, in introducing better sanitary methods, cul- tivating a purer home life, more ethical business methods, a finer patriotism, etc. He will have mission- aries come and tell of the needs of the non-Christian world, and the great opportunity the mission field offers as a life work to young people to help establish the kingdom of God in the earth. He can have a prayer list of the unconverted members of the school, for whom he himself would pray daily and get others to do the same. He can take his teachers when they be- come discouraged, as they often do because their classes are restless, inattentive, or unresponsive, and give them new heart and hope by showing his sympathy for them and his kindly interest in them. He can skillfully re- move teachers that are not effective by giving them some other kind of Sunday school work to do for which they are better fitted. In this, as in all other matters relating to the highest interest of the school, he can be in heartiest cooperation with the pastor. The Session Program The superintendent should prepare his session pro- gram with as much care as the pastor prepares for his pulpit. With the graded lesson system it is not always easy to preserve unity in the day's program, and very difficult to keep an evangelistic unity based on the les- sons because they are so diverse in subject-matter and treatment. While pedagogically it is far better, many think, than the International Lesson system, it has a disadvantage in that there is no unity of thought throughout the school. This fact makes an evangelistic OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 1 57 appeal difficult unless the whole program of the day has been arranged for it, as it would be on Decision Day, or some other special day, like Christmas or Eas- ter or Children's Day. That being so, the superin- tendent can meet the difficulty by having a carefully pre- pared session program, which will give unity to the whole session, independent of how many different kinds of lessons are being taught in the classes. The hymns, the Scripture lesson of the opening serv- ice may be followed in the closing service with a con- clusion which will be the climax of the opening service, and which will provide a natural place for evangelistic emphasis, or even a direct appeal. A cumulative ses- sion plan can be laid out for a quarter or six months, heading up in some kind of a decision service. The superintendent should plan his session program, es- pecially in its evangelistic features, with the pastor, for the pastor's experience and judgment will be of great importance to a layman not so used to such a pro- gram. Of course it would not be well to stress evan- gelism every Sunday, but it should always be the gen- eral atmosphere of the school, so that any teacher might have a Decision Day on any Sunday in his class, and the whole atmosphere and attitude of the school would be favorable to it. The Pastor's Counsel on Soul-Winning The pastor ought to attend the teachers' prayer meet- ings, which ought to be led by the superintendent. At these meetings the pastor could give the teachers valu- able counsel on soul-winning. In this way, many a timid teacher would learn to lead his or her class to 158 EVANGELISM Christ. Most teachers would love to do it if they only knew how. The most fruitful Sunday school revivals are born in teachers* prayer meetings. All special days should be used in some effective way to bring a personal religious message to each pupil's heart. The wise superintendent will have a careful over- sight of the lives of the boys and girls between Sun- days. He needs to make himself such a friend to them that they will make him their confidential adviser and bring to him all their personal problems. He must set a high goal for the school, and then enlist the coopera- tion of pastor, teacher, pupil, and parent to try to reach it. The office of superintendent should not be taken by anyone who only wants it for the honor of it, or if he intends to make it a convenience. Only he who takes it seriously, and considers it a fine field for lay evan- gelism and religious culture, and who proposes to real- ize that end in it, ought to be a Sunday school super- intendent. The responsibility of the office might de- press one, but the glory and opportunity of it will in- spire one. To be the lay pastor of the young life of the church is such a privilege that it should be coveted by the brightest and most consecrated men of the church. . The Teacher's Opportunity The teacher has a responsibihty because he has the best opportunity of any one in the school to come into personal touch with the individual pupil. The teacher is the key person in the Sunday school for dis- cipline, instruction, and evangelism. Nothing worth OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 159 speaking of can be done in the school, either religiously or intellectually, without the cooperation of the teacher. The class is the Sunday school unit, and the teacher is the key to the class. Because religion is so gen- erally neglected in the home the teacher's work be- comes all the more important. He has about the first chance at the child religiously. His work is evangel- istic and cultural. A tactful teacher can keep the evangelistic emphasis always at the front without being obnoxious or ever nagging the pupils. It is easy to put and keep at the front the truth that the chief end of life is to be in right relation to God and man; that life is to find its highest ideal in character and its finest expression in service. With that kind of an emphasis a personal appeal to dedicate the life to that high purpose would never seem farfetched nor unnatural. Some teachers have been very successful in reaching > every member of the class for Christ, by making prayer ■ lists of the unconverted, and praying for them- by name every day, and then putting forth every possible effort, wisely and sympathetically, to answer their own prayers. Frequent private interviews with individual members of the class have often proved successful. The recreation side of life often offers splendid evan- gelistic opportunities. If it is playing games, then to play the game in an honest, manly way is a good intro- duction to saying that life is a game and it should be played so fairly, honestly, and courageously that God, who is looking on, would approve it. Such talk should never be prudish or have the flavor of cant about it. It should be as natural and matter of fact as if it were i6o EVANGELISM concerned with a good clean, honest game of football, baseball, tennis, or golf. Religion is not to be thought of or spoken of as a detached thing that has little to do with life between Sundays. The religious life is the noblest life that can be lived all the days. But it is unreasonable to expect too much of teachers. Many of them are poorly equipped to teach, and that through no fault of their own. Then, too, many of them are very busy people, and have few facilities for lesson preparation, and yet they willingly give of their time and strength, and do the best they can, and for that they have, or ought to have, great commendation. Many of just such teachers have been successful soul- winners. They were not able to give their classes much valuable instruction, but they did lead them to Christ. Of course, when to fine teaching equipment there is added a passion for souls and a devotion to the class, such teachers are the most effective Sunday school evangelists the church has. The teacher's evangelistic program will issue through three avenues of approach : Avenues of Approach (i) Through the Bible. It is unfortunate that so few teachers have their Bibles in the class, and that still fewer require that their pupils use their Bibles in class. Lesson leaves and quarterlies, which are of immense value in lesson preparation, are too generally used in class instead of the Bible. The result is that the pupils do not get acquainted with the Bible as a book, and its gripping messages therefore do not ap- peal to them. To the average Sunday school pupil a OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY i6i lesson leaf has not much authority. When the lesson is over, the leaf can be thrown into the wastebasket, or along the street or road on their way home. They do not have the reverence for the lesson leaf that they would for the Bible, and it is harder to base an appeal on it than if they handled the Bible itself and could turn to its counsels and read them for themselves. Then, too, nothing creates a love for the Bible like the study of it. It is easy to make an appeal to a class when everyone in the class has a Bible open at some lesson which is in itself a strong appeal. The subject of religion is always introduced, and the lesson of the Book can at once be applied to the needs of the class. The Bible is the most fascinating book in the world when it is understood. It makes a strong appeal to the wonder-loving age. Its stories, heroes, ideals, prac- tical maxims; its friendships; its fine courage; its frankness, sympathy, strength, and tenderness ; its clear warnings, inspiring promises; its beautiful poetry, deep philosophy, lofty religion; its picture of God, history of Jesus — all this makes it an irresistible book which the teacher can bring home to the eager-minded youth of the class. When a love of the Bible, through a knowledge of it, has been inspired in a class they are more than half won to Christ. The teacher can make them see that the Bible is a young people's book for to-day, as well as an old people's book for to-morrow. It is a book to live by more than it is to die by. It is an everyday book as well as a Sunday book. There is no part of life to which it does not apply. If they can be made to see its practical value, quite apart from any of its academic difficulties of date, authorship, etc., i62 EVANGELISM their faith would not be so often shaken when they go to college, and under new and larger light have to sur- render many of their traditional beliefs. This shift of intellectual attitude will not affect their faith in the Bible if they have tried it out in practical life and found that it worked. They know and have felt its religious power whether they can solve all its academic problems or not. If they have been brought into a loving fel- lowship with Jesus Christ, and have a rich Christian experience through the study of the Bible, their faith will be strengthened rather than weakened in the Bible by every new ray of light that can be thrown upon it. The Bible is its own best commentary. Many of the Old Testament's difficulties, especially of its ethics, are solved by revelation when it is complete in the New Testament, especially in the life and teachings of Jesus. A broad and sympathetic use of the Bible in the class will give the teacher a weekly opportunity for quiet and tactful evangelism, which will cHmax with great success on Decision Day. (2) The second avenue of approach is through the religious experience of the teacher. The teacher can make the Christian life attractive by being an attrac- tive Christian. Example is always more powerful than precept, especially to young people. The kind of a Christian life their teacher Hves will appeal to them far more strongly than any kind of a life that can be recommended, or any good life that was lived hundreds of years ago. They want to see how religion works to-day. Very often young people think of the Christian life OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 16-, as something very unreal and heavenly that old saints or inspired people lived years ago, that it is an ideal which is well to keep in mind but cannot be lived by one in the world to-day. Perhaps in no place is it more difficult to live an exemplary life and show a real Christian spirit of tact and grace and patience than before a class of restless, inattentive boys or giggling girls, who think of little else than beaus and dress. Both boys and girls will get over that and settle down to be fine young men and women, but in the time of it they test the patience and grace of the average teacher almost to the breaking point. Happy is that teacher who, under such trying circumstances, can show such strength and tenderness, such grace and patience, such tact and sympathy, such humor and reverence, that his life is the ideal of Christianity realized before the class. When the members of the class say, "If what our teacher lives is the Christian life, we want to be Chris- tians," that teacher is a living embodiment of personal evangelism. It is easy for that teacher to invite his pupils to be Christians. His life is a sustained in- vitation. The boys and girls of the "teen" age for the most part are hero worshipers. It is the strong, brave, self- sacrificing life that appeals to them and when they see a Christian actually living those splendid qualities in a natural and winsome way it is not difficult to win them to that kind of a life. But they despise any- thing that is weak, sentimental, or so "other worldly" that it does not touch the ground in this world. They want a religion that fights battles, faces dangers, en- dures hardships, plays games, and does all other things i64 EVANGELISM that are of a high order. When that type of religion is Hved before them, and put to them, they usually respond to it with great readiness. It is not always easy to find a teacher who combines all these fine traits, but many of these traits can be cultivated for the teacher's own sake, as well as for the sake of the class. The superintendent, should be very careful in the selection of his teachers if he ex- pects to have a successful evangelistic policy in his Sunday school. (3) The third avenue of approach is to give the pupils the correct ideas about God. To most people old or young, Christian or not, God does not seem to be anywhere around. He is somewhere above the sky, in heaven — wherever that may be — but certainly he is not down in the everyday life of the world. The teacher is to disabuse the pupils' minds of any such foolish notion. He needs to assure them of God's presence in the class, of his interest in and sympathy for every member of it. Little children have no diffi- culty in believing this. To them God is very real and very near. They talk to him as they do to their own parents, and believe that he will answer their prayers. It is a sad thing when their sky lifts and God recedes into an indefinite "somewhere." The teacher should keep their belief in the nearness and goodness of God as vital and clear as possible, and in no way can that be done better than in practicing the presence of God himself and talking to God in prayer as though he was right there. If the teacher feels the immediate pres- ence of God, it will go a long way toward making the pupils feel it too. OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 165 The pupils must not think of God as an infinite po- liceman or jailor or even a monarch sitting on a throne somewhere off in the universe, no one knows just where; but they do need to think of him as a loving and good Father, as he is seen in Jesus Christ. "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father" (John 14. 9) is a truth that the teacher needs to make very clear. If the boys and girls want to know what God is like, they can be given a description of Jesus, and the teacher can say, **God is like Jesus." They need to think of Jesus as present, not one who lived two thousand years ago and hasn't been on earth since. The teachers must make them feel that Jesus is with them, that he loves them, that he needs them, and that he will use them in the best and happiest service of their lives. That makes an appeal easy. So the teacher's evangelistic approach is through the interpreting of a book, the exemplifying of a life, and the introducing of a person; that is, through the Bible, Christian experience, and God. A class intelligently approached through these three avenues in most cases can be won to the Christian life. The teacher also can do much for the children by visiting their homes and enlisting the parents' cooperation in their behalf. The Parents' Opportunity (4) The parents have responsibilities because they, most of all, have the best opportunities to teach religion to their children and to bring them up in the Christian life. The home too often turns the whole task of the religious training of the child over to the Sunday 1 66 EVANGELISM school. That is unfair to the school, because it is ex- pecting too much of it for the limited time it has with the child, and it is unfair to the child because he has a fundamental right to be taught religion at home, and because the training of the Sunday school is inadequate to meet his religious needs. No parent would think that his child had a fair chance at an education who only had one hour a week schooling. If the mind needs from twenty-five to thirty hours a week for ten months in the year, through fifteen or twenty years, for training to make it capable of having a fair chance in the world for business success, certainly the soul needs more than an hour a week through the same period to give it a fair chance in the world for character-build- ing. Yet parents who want their children to have both success and character will see to it that they get the best that the schools can give them in secular training, and seem to be indifferent to their religious training, except such as may be gotten an hour a week in Sunday school. If they should fail in Hfe for want of an education, all sorts of excuses would be made for them. If they should fail morally, great surprise would be ex- pressed. Parents would say: "Well, we did out duty by them. We sent them to Sunday school. If the Sunday school had done its duty, they would not have gone wrong." It is true if the Sunday school had a better evangelis- tic policy and program, a great many more youths and maidens would be saved, in spite of what little help they get at home. But for parents to say that they did their duty to the children in the matter of religion when they sent them to Sunday school would be funny OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 167 if it were not so serious. It shows how lightly many people hold parenthood. One of the reasons why parents are so reticent about teaching their children religion is that they have no family worship, and it seems a little strange and un- natural for them to introduce the subject when there is nothing to suggest it. Family worship would give an easy and a natural method of approach. To this end there not only ought to be family worship in every Christian home, but it should be made bright and at- tractive to the children, so thay would love religion rather than dread it. Family worship has often failed of the very purpose it was to serve because it was not adapted to the child life of the home. Another reason why parents are reticent about re- ligion is that some of them came into the church when they were children without any training, and they are afraid if their children should ask them any questions about the spiritual life they could not answer them, and they do not like to be put at such a disadvantage. Of- ten their children are better educated religiously than they are ; the children know more about the Bible than the parents do, and the latter are afraid they will not be able to answer a question of information or to hold their own in an argument. Still another reason is that parents know their chil- dren see them at short range and in all their moods, and they feel that their own religious life is not con- sistent or good enough to be a model for their children, therefore they let the Sunday school look after the religious side of child culture. In many cases too the parents are not Christians, and i68 EVANGELISM so can be of no help and often are a hindrance to their children becoming Christians. Many times the chil- dren are sent to Sunday school because it is a perfectly safe place for them, while the parents themselves in- dulge in recreations or make or receive calls. So that altogether children do not get as much religious en- couragement or help in the home as they should, and that makes the task of the Sunday school much more difficult. If the teachers knew that the parents would follow up in the home the religious help which they begin to give the children in the Sunday school, much more would be done. But teachers often fear that the hin- drances in the home would more than offset the help in the class, so it would be better to let the whole matter of evangelism alone, till the children grow up and decide the matter for themselves; then it will be the opportunity and duty of the pastor and the church, and not of the teacher and the Sunday school, to evan- gelize them. Family Worship Now, there are some things that parents, especially those who are members of the church, can do to greatly help the evangelistic policy of the school : I. Have family worship. This may be difficult in many cases, owing to the fact that it is almost impossi- ble to get all the members of the family together at any one time of day. It would be ideal to have family worship twice a day, but that might be expecting too much of the average parents. But it would be far better if they could only have family worship once a OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 169 week, say on Sunday, than not to have it at all. If they could not have it on Sunday morning, then try Sunday evening, at which time some of the work done in the Sunday school could be talked over, and the good impression fastened with good resolutions and Chris- tian decisions. The teacher occasionally could be in- vited to supper and then take part in the family wor- ship. That would be especially opportune if some keen religious interest had been taken that day in the class by the children of that home. Family worship can be greatly simplified, and many families would find it neither difficult nor even incon- venient if the following method were adopted : Make it a part of the morning or evening meal, or, better, both if possible. It would add only five or eight min- utes to the length of the meal, and that would not make it irksome. The family would more likely be together then than at any other hours of the day, and as a rule, there would be less interruption then than at any other time. While all are at the table a chapter could be read, preferably from the New Testament, as, for the most part, it lends itself to devotional reading better than the Old Testament does. This could be followed by a brief prayer, for when devotions are held every day the prayers can afford to be brief. That would keep the subject of religion always before the family, and any time the parents saw fit they might converse with their children about it in a natural and easy way. Thus family worship would create an atmosphere in the home which would be favorable to religion and would ably second any work that the teachers were trying to do toward that end in the Sunday school. In the home I70 EVANGELISM religion can be made so wholesome and natural that children will not think that they have to be odd or old- fashioned if they become Christians, and that will do much toward predisposing them to religion. The home is the best place both to teach and to live "the sweet reasonableness" of religion, 2. The parents occasionally can visit the Sunday school and there find out just what the teachers are trying to do for the religious instruction of their chil- dren. If parents would do that, two false notions that quite widely prevail would be corrected. One is that teachers bring undue pressure upon the children to. make them Christians and thus embarrass them or turn them against religion altogether. When they saw what the teachers were actually doing, how gentle and wise they were, they would see that the first impres- sion was not well founded. The second wrong impres- sion that would be corrected is that the teachers are just entertaining their classes and not teaching them either the Bible or religion. The one impression was that the teachers were too religious ; the other was that the teachers were not religious enough. The parents would find that both impressions were wrong. If either had any truth in it, the best way to bring the teachers to a better mind and method would be the fre- quent unannounced visits of the parents. In that way both parents and teachers would be satisfied. It would be a great stimulus to good teaching to have the parents take interest enough in the school to visit it occasionally and thus show their appreciation for what the school was doing in their children's behalf. A very close and sympathetic cooperation between the OPPORTUNITY— RESPONSIBILITY 171 parents and teachers would do a great deal toward the evangelizing of the children. The Sunday School Helping the Home Home interest could be greatly helped if the super- intendent and teachers visited the homes a little more often than they do, or wrote friendly letters when they could not call. Of course it would mean a good deal of work added to already busy people, but it would be well worth while. Parents ought to be more interested in the conversion and Christian culture of their own children than any teacher or other outside person could be, but that does not always seem to be the case, for often parents will not even cooperate with the teachers in that work. Then if the children go wrong the par- ents often blam^ the Sunday school and say if the teachers had done their duty the children would not have gone wrong. If the parents do not do all in their power to back up what the teachers are trying to do it comes with ill grace from them when they lay the whole responsibility of their children's wrong doing at the feet of the Sunday school teacher. The hearty cooperation of the home and Sunday school would easily double the Sunday school's evan- gelistic efficiency. Parents would be surprised at what could be done for the religious life of their children if they went about it as reasonably and naturally as they do about any other matter of their welfare and culture. CHAPTER II DECISION DAY This is the day that most Sunday schools use as the harvest time for the evangeHstic work of the year. There ought to be several such days in the course of the year. There should be at least two such days — Christmas and Easter, although these days are seldom used as Decision Days. They are given up for the most part to entertainments of some sort. But the natural religious appeal of these two days is greater than of any other two days of the year. Christmas time celebrates God's gift of his Son to the world. It is the time of giving, and the appeal at that time for young people to give God their hearts would be both natural and powerful. Eastertime celebrates Christ's giving of himself. That is the truest test of a friend- ship and the highest expression of Saviourhood. The appeal of Easter is the appeal of the cross, but of the cross that conquered. The services of Christmas week and of Holy Week, both in the church and Sunday school, are such that if rightly used they can be of great evangelistic value. Many times Decision Day is of little value because it has been too hastily gotten up, the work not sufficiently planned, and the workers not properly organized and trained. . For Decision Day there should be a general and a special preparation. 172 DECISION DAY 173 I. General preparation. If the first Decision Day is to be held about Christmas time or on Christmas Sunday, the general preparation should begin as early as Rally Day, which occurs some time near the end of September or the first Sunday in October. On that day the evangelistic program of the year and the ideal of the school can be announced. Both pupils and teachers can be urged to bend all their energies toward the realization of the school's ideal, "Every member of the school for Christ." That strikes an evangeHstic note from the first, and the teachers can easily keep that note prominent in their teaching right along. Dur- ing the early weeks of the fall, every home represented in the school should be visited by the pastor, and each teacher should visit the homes of his class. It is very necessary that the homes should be in harmony with this movement, so that there would be no obstructive forces at work while the general preparation was going on. The session program of the school (not the les- son program) is a special order of exercises which the superintendent arranges with the aid of pastor, and should be planned so as to focus evangelistically on Decision Day. Daily readings should be prepared for the home. These should have a strong evangelistic emphasis. Great examples of heroism, devotion, faith, high ideals, etc., should be the themes for home read- ings. As Decision Day approaches Christmas time the home readings should have to do with God's plan of redemption, the coming of the Messiah, God's love for the world, and similar topics. In those early weeks frequent teacher prayer meet- ings should be held. After prayer for the pupils has 174 EVANGELISM been offered by the teachers, the pastor should give talks on the art of soul-winning, showing the teachers how to present Christ and secure decisions, urging them to receive as many decisions for Decision Day as possible. It is very important that all the teachers be present at those prayer and training meetings. Teachers who will not do it may defeat the whole pro- gram on Decision Day. Whatever literature is to be used on that day ought to be carefully thought out and printed so that nothing may be lacking on Decision Day. Groups of the most tactful older pupils who are consistent Christians and have a wholesome influence in their classes and in the school should be organized into personal workers' bands to win as many of their young friends as they can, whether they are members of their classes or not. The pastor and superintendent should have a list of all the unconverted members of the school. They may get the names from the teachers, and these should be made special subjects for prayer. 2. Special preparation. About a month before De- cision Day a brief teachers' prayer meeting should be held each Sunday after the Sunday school session closes. The pastor can preach strong evangelistic ser- mons both morning and evening. The prayer meet- ing can take the form of an intercession meeting. Group prayer meetings in the homes may be held, and all the activities of the church converge toward evan- gelism. Personal interviews with the pupils who are to be won to Christ should be sought. The last ten or fifteen minutes of the Sunday school session may occa- sionally be devoted to prayer in which teachers and DECISION DAY 175 the older pupils of the school may participate. If some of the strong popular young men of the Bible class will offer prayer, it will be especially effective. The boys of the school keep a close watch on the young men, and they are ready to imitate them whenever they can. Decision Day Program On the Sunday before Decision Day the program of the day should be completed and thoroughly explained to the teachers. There should be no misunderstanding of what each one is to do and when and how to do it. This is especially important if Decision Cards are to be used; the teachers should know just when and how to use them. When Decision Day arrives, an hour before the session all the Sunday School Board should meet with the pastor and the superintendent for final instruction. It would almost amount to a rehearsal ; but unless that is done, some blunder is likely to hinder the highest efficiency of the service. All the detail work of the school, such as records, collections, notices, etc., should be out of the way before the Decision Day program proper begins. Nothing must be left undone which will have to be finished after the service is over. Such an omission can but detract from the interest of the session and take the attention from the main thing that is to be done. All the routine work of the school should be done before the Decision service begins. The teachers are to be in their places promptly and a little before their pupils arrive. This should always be the case, but especially on this day. If decision cards 176 EVANGELISM are to be used, the teachers should have them in their desks, and enough for every member of the class. They should not be given out until the pastor who will con- duct the service on that day tells them to. Then after a bright song service, a Scripture lesson, and a brief, pertinent prayer, the pastor, or some one chosen for the purpose, will give a fifteen- or twenty-minute ad- dress that will be strong and clear, challenging, win- some, and free from cant, one that will directly end up in an appeal for decision. At this point the leader takes up a decision card, reads, and explains it. The card should be briefly drafted, like the card referred to on page one hundred and three. On the one side the simple statement, "I have an earnest desire to be a Christian, and am willing to take whatever help may be given me." On the other side the declaration could be a little stronger: "I ac- cept Jesus Christ as my Saviour, and with his help I mean to live a Christian Hfe." On both sides should be a space for the name and the address of the signer. When the leader makes his appeal and takes the card to explain it, the teachers should give a card to every member of the class so that no one would be made con- spicuous. The pupils look at the card while the leader explains it. Then a few minutes are given so that the teachers can talk the matter over with their classes. Then just before they are asked to sign the cards a brief prayer is offer to get everybody thoughtful and serious, and God's blessing is asked upon what is about to be done. Then the pupils who are not professed Christians or church members are asked to sign. Then after the cards are signed, the pastor should offer a DECISION DAY 177 prayer of consecration that God would set his seal upon what was done, and that the signing of the cards carry with it the dedication of the lives of all those young people to Jesus Christ in loving loyalty and willing service. Then might be softly sung the hymn begin- ning, "Take my life, and let it be, Consecrated, Lord, to Thee." The cards should be made in duplicate, so that the pupil might retain one half and give the other to the teacher, which he would turn over to the pastor. At the close of the service all those who signed cards should be called together with their teachers in another room, where the pastor could give them further in- struction. The use of the card is only an introduction for the teacher, pastor, or parent to do personal work with the pupil until he comes to a real Christian expe- rience adapted to his age and needs. The close of the Decision Day is the beginning of personal work with the signers. The teachers could have oversight of the converts of their own classes. The help of the parents should be enlisted in their behalf. The pastor should organize them into classes for preparatory member- ship as described in Part IV, Chapters I-III. If any other form of decision is adopted, as going forward or standing, the same general principle of concerted action should be observed. When the Christmas Decision Day is over, prepara- tory work for the Easter Decision Day should begin. The same general and special lines of preparation can be followed, of course adapting the message and the appeal to the Easter season and spirit. That will keep the 178 EVANGELISM evangelistic emphasis in the Sunday school the whole year. Conversions will be taking place right along through the year as well as on the Decision Days, and it will be regarded as the normal work of the school not only to teach the Bible but to win the pupils to Christ. Now, if the pastor, the superintendent, the teachers, and the parents all unite in a definite evangelistic pro- gram for the young people of the Sunday school, in- stead of sixty per cent or thereabout going out of the school unsaved, not ten per cent would; and if that were true, the membership of the church would be con- siderably more than doubled in a single year. The Sunday school as a field of evangelism is white unto the harvest. It is to be hoped that the opportunities of this field will be more clearly seen and more faith- fully used in the future than they have been in the past. For a fuller discussion of the whole subject of Sun- day School Evangelism, see the author's recent book — The Sunday School An Evangelistic Opportunity, published by The Methodist Book Concern, 150 Fifth Avenue, New York City. PART IV PRACTICAL EVANGELISM CONSERVING RESULTS CHAPTER I THE CHRISTIAN LIFE Training Young Converts The weakest point in modern evangelism is the failure to properly care for and train those who have been converted. In many places the converts are re- ceived into preparatory, and even full membership without anything being done for them in a construc- tive way either in character-building or training for service. They are too often left to themselves, and for want of proper training they either lapse and drop out of the church altogether or they become nom- inal members who are neither happy nor useful. At last they become a sort of insulating zone between the real spiritual members in the church and the non- Christians on the outside. When such a condition exists it is difficult to have a revival or to do any very successful evangelistic work. The man on the outside says that he is as good as some of the church members are, and that may be true; but he does not always distinguish between the real Christian and the nominal church member. But it will not do to be too hard on the nominal members ; others are as much or more to blame than they are. When they were converted, instead of being trained in Christian life and service they were left to themselves with but little more than a good resolution to lead a i8i i82 EVANGELISM Christian life, and after a while when that good reso- lution chilled a little, or a good deal, they had nothing that was vital left, so they remained church members without a Christian experience. The pastor or the church was more to blame than they. After they had been members for years it was very hard for them to do first works over again. That would be very nat- ural, for if they admitted that they were not Christians, it would look as though they had been hypocrites all these years, and that is not an easy admission to make when there was no intention of being hypocritical. So there they are — the church is weaker because of them, and they themselves are not happy, exemplary, or useful. The whole fault lay in somebody's failure to train them and help to ground them in a real Chris- tian experience. The Pastor Should Conduct the Training Class It means a good deal of work to train young con- verts, and if the pastor does it — and he above all others ought to do it — it will add greatly to his work. But no work of his life will be more delightful or worth while than to take a class of new converts and build them up in Christian character and train them for service. No class of people that he will ever deal with will be as responsive to suggestion, persuasion, or com- mand as they will. The pastor who fails at this point fails at the most vital part of evangelism. If the results of evangelistic efforts are not conserved, the work has been a failure. For even if a few hold out, in spite of the fact that nothing was done for them, those who lapse — and they THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 183 will be far in excess of the others in the long run — will be far harder to reach than they were before. Too much stress cannot be laid on conservation work. In the old days, when there were class meetings and good class leaders, converts were put in their care, and received much valuable training because they were put into classes with mature Christians and got the benefit of their wider experience. But that condition no longer exists in many quarters, and some one else better trained must do for them, and do it better than the old class meeting did. Those were the days of short pastorates, and some persons other than the pas- tor had to do that work, but now in the long pastorates the pastor ought to do this work himself both for his own good and for the good of the converts them- selves. The question now arises, How shall this work be done? When the pastor has any considerable number of converts, whether from a revival or from personal work through continuous evangelism, he should put them into a class for training. The night of the week best suited to their convenience should be chosen, for regularity of attendance is very important. Friday night is usually the best night, as it is the freest from school duties and most of the converts will be of gram^ mer- or high-school age. The Training Class Program How shall the work begin? What should be at- tempted in such a class? The first step in training is to teach them what it means to be a Christian. Many have a notion that joining the church is all that is nee- i84 EVANGELISM essary; others think that if the questions that are asked at their reception are answered in the affirmative, the matter is settled; still others think if they do a cer- tain set of duties called religious work, they have met all the requirements. Now they should be taught that none of these things makes them Christians. They do and believe these things because they are Christians. To be a Christian is to be in right relations to God and man, to accept and follow Jesus Christ as personal Saviour and Lord, to live a life of love and loyalty to him and of unselfish service to men, to forsake sin and, by the grace of God freely given, to bring Hfe up to its best in all things. As a result of that surrender and dedication of themselves to God through Jesus Christ they will join the church, believe the doctrines and perform the duties required of a Christian. They should be taught that religion is not a part of the life, much less that it is a mere personal luxury only to be enjoyed. It is the whple^ life at its best, expressing itself in a joyful loyalty to God and a willing service to man. Religion, then, is not a thing to be possessed, but a personal relation to be sustained. Men do not get re- ligion; they become religious. This personal relation to Christ may be illustrated under four general heads, namely. Teacher, Master, Friend, Brother. The term "Saviour" is taken for granted, for he is already their Saviour. They are saved, but now they are to be trained in the deeper meaning of the Christian life. A blackboard may be used so that the following plan can be put upon it and the more easily and clearly ex- plained. For convenience and clearness the terms by THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 185 which Christians are designated in the New Testament may be grouped under the four heads, in order that the different forms of personal relationship will be the more easily understood and applied. Now that Christ is their Saviour, they enter his school to learn how to live the Christian life. Christ becomes their Teacher, and under this head two terms are grouped. I Teacher ( disciple— John 15. 8. I Believer — Acts 5. 14. I. Disciple. To become a disciple is the natural starting point because it means ''a pupil." Every mem- ber of the class will at once recognize what the relation of pupil to teacher means, for they are all pupils under teachers. They now start in the school of Christ to learn how to be Christians. Their first lesson is on how to pray. That is put in a two-fold form, namely (i) how not to pray, and (2) how to pray, (a) For the first see Matt. 6. 5-8. Here Jesus teaches his dis- ciples the forms and the spirit of prayer which they are not to follow. This must be fully explained, so that no blunders in this important matter will be committed at the beginning of their Christian life. As it is always easier to learn a thing that it is to unlearn it, nothing should be learned at one period of the training that would have to be unlearned at any other period. Ac- cordingly, they are to be guarded against false or use- less methods of prayer. (b) The second, or positive, form of prayer is found in Luke 11. 1-13. In verses 2-4 Jesus gives a model of prayer in what is called the Lord's Prayer. This is i86 EVANGELISM a prayer of adoration, confession, and petition. It is a brief, simple, reverent, dignified, but comprehensive prayer and takes less than half a minute to offer. It contains the Christian's social program of the world in epitome. In verses 5-8 Jesus gives an illustra- tion of a prayer of intercession, where the man at mid- night sought help of one friend in behalf of another. This is a very important form of prayer and can be made attractive to young converts, for much was done for them by the prayers of others. Perhaps they were led to Christ through the prayers of intercession of- fered in their behalf by parents, pastor, or friends. Intercession is a very noble and unselfish form of prayer and should be cultivated far more than it is. In verses 9 and 10 Jesus teaches the assurance of prayer. Prayers offered in the right spirit and for worthy things will be answered, if not in the way that they might be expected to be answered, yet in a better way, as God pleases. A very important thing to teach at this point is that there is as much love in God's answer "No" as there is in his answer "Yes." A prayer that is not answered in our way is not always or often an unanswered prayer. Examples where God said "No" with all the love of his nature are in Matt. 26. 39-44 and 2 Cor. 12. 8-10. The greatest achieve- ment in the religious life is to be able to say "Yes" to all of God's answers to prayer, whether they come as his "Yes" or "No." In verses 11 and 12 Jesus teaches the naturalness of prayer, and shows how much more wise and good God as Father is than earthly fathers are. He shows that if earthly parents, out of their limited resources, are THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 187 willing to supply the needs of their children and will not mock them by giving them hurtful things, God, who is perfect and unlimited in his resources, will do far better things for his children. In verse 13 he shows God's willingness to give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him. Another lesson in the school of prayer is found in John 17, this being the Lord's Prayer. Here we have the example of Jesus himself at prayer. In this the process and scope of prayer are seen. In verses 1-5 he prays for himself. That is where all prayer should begin — getting oneself in harmony with the will of God. Many prayers fail because those who offer them are not in a right temper to pray, nor in harmony with God or men. Prayer is to begin with self. In verses 6-20 he offers a prayer of intercession for his disciples, that is, his friends. That is the natural order in the widening scope of prayer. In verses 21-26 he prays for the world, for all that would believe on him through the preaching of the gospel. That is the true climax of prayer, to be world wide in its scope and sympathy. This, then, is the first lesson learned in the school of Christ. It is very important that at the outset of the Christian life the habit of intelligent prayer be estab- lished. The young Christian who begins his Christian life with the habit of prayer will not be apt to go astray. This section on prayer should be carefully and patiently taught till the pastor is sure that every mem- ber of the class understands it. The second lesson in the school of Christ is to learn what the will of God is. That brings the class at once to a study of the Bible, not for devotions alone but also for a practical pro- i88 EVANGELISM gram of Christian duty. The will of God is to be known through prayer and the study of the Bible. Prayer and Bible study are fundamental to the building of Christian character, and the sooner that young con- verts are introduced to these important matters the better, and this method starts with these fundamentals. The following are suggestive passages on the will of God and may be fully explained by the pastor and applied to the various forms of duty as they arise: John 2. 17; 4. 34; 6. 40; 7. 17; 8. 29; 9. 31. Matt. 7. 21-24; i8- 1 7- Mark 3. 35. Acts 5. 29. Rom. 12. I, 2. I Cor. Chapters 12 and 14. i Pet. 4. i, 2. i Tim., Titus, and Heb. 10. 7. So much for the pupil. 2. Believer. The relation is still between pupil and teacher. Here the pupil believes the teacher and the teaching the same as in the school. Little progress will be made by a pupil unless he has confidence in his teacher and in the truth of the thing taught. But here believing takes a very practical form. It leads to faith. Faith in the Christian sense is more than intellectual assent. It means the movement of our whole per- sonality up to Christ, until we become one willed with him. It means confidence in, love for, and obedience to a Person, and that person is Christ. It is the assent of the intellect, the devotion of the heart, and the com- mitment of the will. It is the giving of oneself in utter devotion to Christ. That is what the believer does. Christ is the Teacher from whom he is to learn and in whom he is to believe. lii-.) to For the importance of believing see the following passages, which are to be explained and emphasized: THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 189 Matt. 8. 13; 9. 28. Mark. 9. 23; 11. 22-24. Luke 8. 59. John 5. 25 ; 6. 47- Acts 13. 39. ^_ __ (Follower, Eph. 5. i. XL Master ^ ^^ . ?- \. (Servant, i. Cor. 7. 22. Having been to school and learned from the Great Teacher the two important lessons of prayer and the will of God, the Teacher now becomes Master, and life begins to take on practical aspects, so that the pupils and believers now become followers and ser- vants. But personal relations are still maintained. I. Follower, It is a simple thing to say to new converts, "Now you must follow Christ," but it is not so simple to make them see what following Christ means. "Follow the Leader" is a game which boys easily understand and can readily apply. They love the leader who has the courage to lead them over difficult ways. He is a constant challenge to their courage. They can easily transfer that principle of courage- ous following to the Christian life. So, too, anyone who studies art or music will know what following a master means. To follow a master not only means to imitate his example but to catch his spirit. The fol- lower needs to have sagacity and sympathy like Christ's. There must be that broad generosity and spirit of unselfishness in all that is done in order that Christ in a sense will be reproduced in the lives of his followers. But following Christ has a very practical bearing. It is the regulative principle for all conduct. Many con- scientious young people are perplexed about the moral I90 EVANGELISM quality of certain courses of conduct and go to their pastor with the questions: "What harm is there in this ?" or, "What is wrong about that?'* There is very Httle use in arguing these things with them, for the viewpoint of the pastor and the young people might be so different that no conclusion could be reached. The pastor might silence the objections of the young people and vanquish them in argument without convincing them. They will say : "We think we can take Christ with us here or there. We in no way want to betray Christ, nor be disloyal to him. Why can't we take him with us?" That may be very sincerely said. What is the pastor to answer them? He is just to apply the rule of following Christ. Jesus put the law of disciple- ship into two words : "Follow me" (Matt. 9. 9). These young Christians must be shown what older Christians ought not to forget, that no one can take Christ anywhere. If he is taken, he does not lead, but follows. He says, "Follow me," not "Take me." It is where he leads that they may go. If in their deepest sincerity, and with all the light on the subject that they can get, they honestly believe that Christ is leading them, not permitting or ignoring what they do, but leading them, then that course of conduct is right for them. Conduct, then, falls back on their own con- science under this rule of Christ, "Follow me," and is no longer a matter of a pastor's judgment or prejudice, permission or refusal. It is a matter between the in- dividual's conscience and Christ. That is the way that all moral problems are to be settled, and the sooner our young Christians learn it, the sooner the church will be free from inconsistent living and confused be- THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 191 lieving. If they have to depend upon the varying standards and opinions of men, they will never be settled in character, nor will they ever have a satis- factory and convincing rule of conduct. Christ must be their final authority, and when they are thoroughly grounded in the Bible and brought into a loving loyalty to Jesus Christ, they will have no difficulty on the rules of conduct. Here the pastor can be an invaluable guide to them. Jesus tells us in John 7. 17 how to know the way and will of God. Some passages might be cited here, to show what following Christ involves : ( i ) See Matt. 22. 37-39, Love; (2) 19. 29-23, Obedience; (3) Luke 18. 28, Forgiveness; (4) Luke 21. 19, Sacrifice; (5) Matt. 5. 48, Character; (6) Matt. 28. 18-29, Service. It can thus be seen that following Christ is a very posi- tive and practical rule of conduct. 2. Servant. Here the law of cooperation with Christ can be emphasized. Christ illustrates this life of interdependence by the parable of the vine, in John 15. A life of fruit-bearing may seem a very indefinite thing to young people. What is meant by fruit-bear- ing? In the parable of the vine it is doing something for somebody else. The only part of the vine that is not for itself is the fruit ; that is always for some one else. Point out here the difference between the fruit of the vine in John 15 and the fruits of the Spirit in Gal. 5. The fruits of the Spirit in Gal. 5 are the graces of Christian character, and therefore are for oneself. The fruits of the vine, on the other hand, are service, and therefore for some one else ; that is, the fruit of the vine is the fruits of the Spirit issuing in action for 192 EVANGELISM others. In a word, the fruit of the Spirit is character and the fruit of the vine is service. Another thing that should be made clear to these young people is that they need not engage in a dif- ferent set of duties because they are Christians; it may be they cannot. They are to do the same old duties as they did before, only now they do them with a new motive. They do them now for Jesus' sake ; that gives them a new moral value. Duties are sacred, and all work that is duty if done with right motive can be called religious work. All of a real Christian's work is religious work. If this can be made clear at the outset of the Christian life, it will save the young Christian much confusion and make him feel that the Christian life is not some mystic thing up in the clouds, but a real, wholesome, and useful life lived in the will of God right here in the earth to-day. Religious work is work religiously done. A man's religion is not what he has but what he is. He is a Christian all the time or not at all, therefore whatever he does as a Chris- tian is religious work. The religious element is not in the thing but in the man. Preaching a sermon, teaching a Sunday school class, leading a prayer meet- ing, or even praying may be as secular as digging a ditch, carrying a hod, or plowing a field. It is the motive that determines the moral value of an act. Whatever is done for Jesus' sake is truly religious work. The servant of Christ is to do all duties so as to please him; that in the highest sense is Christian living. Many young people think that if they are to do Christian work, they must go into the ministry, or to THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 193 the foreign field as missionaries, or something of that sort. These things are good to do, but they must be taught that any work done in Jesus*s name and for the extension of his kingdom in the world is Christian service. It is very important that some young men should see not only the religious value of law or medi- cine or teaching or making money, but also the oppor- tunity through these different avenues of service of getting the will of God done in the earth. All legiti- mate and necessary work is to be capitalized for God. Young people are to be trained in usefulness as well as in piety; indeed, that is poor piety which is not useful. The servant is to cooperate with Christ to get the will of God done in all human relations and activities. Accordingly, Christians must engage in all legitimate and necessary forms of work, and an evangelism that does not lead to that kind of practical training will not do much for the church or for the world. See the following passages that relate to service: Matt. 22. 1-14. Luke 14. 16-23. Matt. 10. 1-16; 28. 18-20. Acts I. 7, 8. In these days, when life service is stressed so much, it is well to get young converts committed to some lifework adapted to their ability and ambition, some work that is really worth while. In this class is the best place to do it. It is not a matter to be settled at a convention under the inspiration of a stirring ad- dress, but to calmly face it for several weeks, in which time one can get his bearings and intelligently decide under the careful guidance of a wise and sympathetic leader, who can follow up and help confirm the de- cision with such practical counsel as may be neces- 194 EVANGELISM sary. That makes religion a very practical and work- able thing, and not a mere emotion or a sentimental ideal of hazy indefiniteness. III. Friend ] Friend John 15. 14-15. (Samt, Rom. i. 7. I. Friend. The personal relation is still main- tained, but it becomes a closer and more affectionate relation. To be on terms of friendship with Jesus Christ is an unspeakably great honor, but it also in- volves great responsibilities. Friendship expresses, or at least it implies, a higher confidence and a finer fel- lowship than servanthood. The friendship of Jesus is clearly shown in Rom. 5. 6-10 and John 15. 13; and our friendship is shown for him in John 15. 14. The test of it is obedience. The test of Christ's friendship for man was sacrifice. All the force and beauty of friendship can be used by the leader to illustrate the friendship between the Christian and Christ. Young people very strongly resent anything that looks like being untrue to a friend. To them it is cowardly and ought to be despised. They are .at the friendship- forming age and would do almost anything, however hard or painful, for a friend. Now, if Jesus is set forth as their greatest and best Friend, and as such he desires and deserves their truest loyalty and highest devotion, a great impression can be made on them. Many strong illustrations could be found of pals in the world war who would die for one another. This greatest of all friends died for them, and the plea of fidelity to him almost makes itself. Friendship should THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 195 be capitalized for Christ. There is hardly any more compelling subject than friendship, that can be brought to young people. 2. Saint. This term is apt to be greatly misunder- stood. The word is associated with gray hairs and goodness. To most people, and especially young peo- ple, it never occurs that a young person could be a saint. But sainthood has nothing to do with years. It has to do with consecration. It is as possible to be a saint at sixteen as it is at eighty, and a good deal better for the individual, the church, and the world. It sounds strange to call a person of sixteen or eighteen a saint, but there is no reason why he should not be. A saint is a person wholly devoted to the will of God; that is, a completely consecrated person. It might not be well to apply to young people a term that would be misunderstood by other people, but the point is that these young people should understand that they do not have to be old before they can be thoroughly good. Goodness does not wait on age. Life should be lived at its best all the time. Sainthood, holiness, sanctifica- tion are not for any select few, but for all Christians. Entire sanctification is the complete setting apart of one's life to the service of Christ. That is what Paul means in i Thess. 5. 23. Practically the same thought is also in i Cor. 5. 19, 20 and 10. 31; 2 Cor. 5. 17; 6. 14-18; 7. I, 2. See also i Pet. i. 13-23. What has been called the higher life, which so many people are afraid of and think impossible, should be shown to these young Christians to be as normal and possible to the soul as perfect health is to the body. No one would think it strange for young people (o 196 EVANGELISM have robust bodies and perfect health; neither should they think it strange if these young people should have a robust and healthy soul life. Holiness is soul health. It should be coveted as much as bodily health, and when the laws of the soul are obeyed as the laws of the body are, they may have holiness as a normal experi- ence. One-willed with Christ is both holiness and sainthood. r Brethren, Matt. 23. 8. IV. Brother < Children,John i.i2;Rom.8. 14-17 ( Christian, Acts 11. 26 We come now to the closest relation of all. We started as pupils going to school, then became be- lievers, then followers, then servants, then friends, then saints, and now have become members of the family of God under the names "brethren" and "children." It will not be difficult to explain the privileges, protec- tions, benefits, and responsibilities of family life. These young Christians easily can see that it is as much of an obligation to protect the family name and honor of God as it is to protect their own family name and honor. This gives a good opportunity to train them in fidelity and devotion to the church, which is God's home. All that pertains to the church, the Sab- bath, the Bible, the service should be reverently used. Here it is well to teach them that they came into the family of God by a spiritual birth just as they did into their own family by natural birth. So the pastor needs to explain John 3. 3-6. See also i John 3. 2. They need to realize that now they belong to a royal family. Jesus is King. He is more — he is Saviour. He is THE CHRISTIAN LIFE 197 more — he is Brother. That gives a new meaning to "Our Father, who art in heaven" ; praying that prayer is speaking in terms of family relation. All the above relations are involved in the term ''Christian." By this time these young people begin to see how much more it means to be a Christian than to be a church member. It is a great thing to be a Christian; no life is so dignified, sacred, manifold, use- ful, and happy as the Christian life; and young people ought to be made to see that as early as possible, and they would then understand that it is a great principle to live by rather than a sort of security to die by. If young Christians are grounded in these fundamentals at the beginning of their religious life, the danger of falling away will be almost negligible. They need to be built into the church, where they can grow and work while this holy enthusiasm and the high ideals of youth are at their best. Whatever pastor takes a class of young converts through several weeks or months of such training will have one of the richest experiences of his life. CHAPTER II THE DOCTRINAL BASIS The second step in the training should be to give these young Christians a doctrinal basis for their re- ligious experience to insure its order and stability. But that doctrinal basis must be biblical. It would be use- less at this early stage of their training to do more than just direct their attention to the fact that there are certain fundamental doctrines that are accepted by Christian people with which they should be familiar and to which they should give their intelligent consent when they come members of the church. Any elab- orate teaching in systematic theology in this class would not be necessary, as they would not be prepared either intellectually or religiously for such a course. The training must neither be too elementary nor too advanced, as courses for preparatory members some- times are, but adapted as nearly to the capacity of the age and ability of the class as if it were a class in day school. So here no formulated doctrines will be set forth, but only a mere statement of some of the more fundamental doctrines and some of the great passages of Scripture out of which they spring, the idea being to direct the attention of these young people to a study of the Bible rather than to any system of theology. The doctrines may be discussed very simply, so as to acquaint the class with terms which are so often used in the pulpit and elsewhere, without any clear explana- 198 THE DOCTRINAL BASIS 199 tion. The only attempt here will be to show how the Bible deals with those great truths which are put into doctrinal form by the church. The following discussion deals only with seed thoughts and suggestions, just an introduction to a more complete study later on which might be conducted in an adult Bible class or some such organization. I. The Doctrine of Sin It is not necessary here to deal with any theory of the origin of sin. It is necessary, however, to deal with the fact of sin, its subtleties, disabilities, and dan- ^ gers. The battle royal of life is with sin. It is as universal as man. It begins its siege of and assault on life very early. It haunts and tempts man until death. It dims the vision of God in the soul. It under- mines moral health, it lowers ideals, weakens princi- ples, vitiates tastes, silences prayer, closes the Bible, destroys the capacity for life's best things, breaks friendship, chills enthusiasm, turns love into hate, bru- talizes strength, defeats life's best endeavor, blasts hope, wrecks one's future, makes life intolerable and death terrible. Sin, when it has done its awful work, brings forth a death which is separation from God and the wreck of the soul. To young people sin does not seem very awful, because few of them have noticed its finished work, and most of them fail to reckon with sin's power, so they think that they can sin a little and be none the worse for it. Indeed, some good young people think that the temporary indulgence of some forms of sin adds spice to life and makes them the more interesting. They are afraid to be thought pru- 200 EVANGELISM dish, so they are apt to take chances, or, in other words, to flirt with sin. They do not understand its subtlety or power. In their early experience they need to be informed of the danger of having anything to do with sin. Instead of seeing how near they can come to sin and escape its consequences, they ought, rather, to see how far they can keep from it. Sin showed itself in all its naked horror when it had its way, when it lynched Jesus. To put holiness and perfect and unselfish love to the cross shows that unre- strained sin scruples at nothing. Young people need to see that sin is all of a piece. Any sin may lead to all sin. Sin is the black shadow that falls, not only across the whole Bible but also across the history of the race. Wars, pestilences, famines, crimes, and miser- ies follow in its train. These young people are to be taught to have a horror of sin and to avoid with firm resolution all its forms and defilements. They need to be taught how subtle and plausible temptation is, yet how dangerous. The law of temptation is clearly set forth by James in the first chapter. Seeing, desiring, taking is the order of progress in temptation; that is, the whole personality is involved — the intellect, the emotions, and the will. That chapter will bear a care- ful study with great profit. The principle could be thus stated : "I saw, I coveted, I took." The tempta- tion of Christ in the wilderness involved the same principle. See Matt. 4. i-ii; Luke 4. 2-13. The temptation in the garden. Gen. 3, took the same form ; so also in the case of Achan, Joshua 7. 20, 28. See the same thing in the temptation of David, 2 ; Sam. 11. 2-4. Temptation is dangerous to the unwary because it THE DOCTRINAL BASIS 201 seems so plausible, so natural and right that many people yield before they realize its danger, and do so with no intention of sinning. The consequences of sin are hidden under the glamour of temptation. *'Sin, when it is finished up bringeth forth death" (James i. 15). Paul says that the wages of sin is death (Rom. 6. 2^), and in i Cor. 15. 56 he says that the sting of death is sin. Moral death passed upon man because of sin. Death was the penalty of Achan's sin. Indeed, the whole trend of Scripture teaching is that sin brings death, the only real death, which is separation from God. That is both death and hell. The refuge for the tempted is found in i Cor. 10. 13. Heb. 4. 14-16. Heb. 2. 17, 18; also 6. 17-20. In Isa. I, Micah 6, Amos 5, Mai. 3, and Rev. 3. 17, 18, sin puts itself forth under the forms of piety; but in Rom. i. 18-32, 3. 18-23, and Gal. 5. 19-22 sin is shown in all its hideous nakedness and deforming power. The exposition of these various passages and an explanation of the law of temptation will safeguard these young people against the dangers to which they are often and easily exposed. The distinction between sin and sins needs to be made clear, or there will likely be much confusion which may lead to grave errors. Men are fairly well agreed as to what sins are — such as falsehood, theft, profanity, lust, dishonesty, drunkenness, murder, etc. There will be little difference of opinion here, and if a person is not guilty of any of these and other sins like them, he thinks that he is not a sinner. But what 202 EVANGELISM makes a man a sinner is something that Hes back of these things and gives rise to them. Sin is not an act but an attitude, and that attitude leads to all the acts which men call sins. There is little use trying to correct the acts as long as the attitude remains un- changed. What is that attitude? It is an attitude of rebellion to the rule of God in the soul, to the kingship of Jesus Christ in the life. That rebellion may be passive or active; that is, it may ignore God or defy him. The passive may be more or less unconscious; that is, it may not be deliberate or intentional, but it none the less leaves God out of the life by feeling no need of him or giving no place to him. The other attitude is one of hostility, where the rights of God are not recognized and the laws of God are defied. That type of sinner is called the ungodly. The thing to be borne in mind is that all who exclude God from the life, or those who fail to take him into the life, are sinners in the biblical sense. So that a person may be very circumspect in the sight of men and yet be a sinner in the sight of God. That needs to be made very clear, or else some will rest in their good works to men and neglect their right rela- tion to God. For suggestive passages on failure of good works alone to save see Matt. 7. 21-23 5 Eph. 2. 8, 9; Rom. 3. 20. In a word, sin is a wrong relation to God, and from that wrong relation all the sins against God and man proceed. 2. The Doctrine of Repentance Most people have an erroneous notion of just what is involved in repentance. That is especially true of THE DOCTRINAL BASIS 203 young people. They think that being sorry for doing a wrong thing is all that there is to repentance. That may mean much or little according to what is meant by being sorry. Some are sorr)/ not because of the thing done but because of the unhappy outcome of it. That was the repentance of Judas, as we shall see below. The old definition of repentance, that it is a godly sorrow for sin, is not adequate unless the godly sorrow is made radical and inclusive enough to cover much more than is ordinarily included in the word "sorrow." To most people repentance is a revulsion of feeling; but unless it goes deeper than that it will have no regenerative force. Forgiveness is granted on the ground of repentance. But forgiveness does not necessarily follow a revulsion of feeling if that is all there is to it. Judas had a revulsion of feeling great enough to drive him to sui- cide, but there is nothing in the New Testament to show that he was forgiven. No matter what we may think took place in the other world, the record is silent on any forgiveness in this world, and it is not safe to presume on the guesses of what might take place in another world. There are two words in the New Testament trans- lated "repent." One means a revulsion of feeling; it means to be sorry or to rue it. That is the word used where Judas "repented himself" (see Matt. 2y. 3). He rued it, but he did not go to the person he injured to make things right, and so his revulsion of feeling counted for nothing. The other word goes far deeper and means a change of mind, carrying with it a right- about-face in the life. It is the word which Jesus used 204 EVANGELISM in Matt. 4. 17 and 12. 41; Luke 13. 3. 5; I5- 7; i?- 3; and is used in Acts 2. 38; 8. 22\ and in Rev. 2. 5; 3. 3; 16. 9. The change which these passages presup- pose is far more radical than change of feeling alone. It means a complete change in the whole life. One of the dangers of the high-pressure revivals is that the conversions which occur under them will be too much emotional and too little rational and voli- tional. When they are, they are not apt to be very stable or vigorous. A conversion is of little moment that does not change the whole character. Conversion is to give the life a new quality, a new value, a new motive, and a new direction. We have seen that sin is a wrong attitude toward God. Now, no matter how great the revulsion of feeling may be, if that wrong attitude is not changed into a right attitude by a complete change of mind and will, no forgiveness nor moral reconstruc- tion can issue on that kind of a repentance; in other words, God will not accept the repentance of any sin that a man does not intend to give up. True repentance, by changing the mind and attitude, turns the life around from indifference or hostility to God to a loving obe- dience and loyalty to him. That is the human side of conversion; indeed, it is conversion which is turning around. Then God meets that turned life with his forgiveness and grace; that is the divine side of con- version. So that God and man cooperate in the work of conversion. The human side, or the turning around, is called conversion, and the divine side, which is the recreation into spiritual excellence, is called regenera- tion. It is important to explain very carefully all that is involved in repentance, for some of the members of THE DOCTRINAL BASIS 205 the class that are being taught may fall away under provocation or through indifference; and if they should be so unfortunate, they ought to know the way back. Some may be held to what they think is conversion only by the power of a good resolution because they did not understand repentance, and their real conver- sion under better light may take place in the class. Every point in the process of salvation is to be made as clear as possible, so that no one will base his Chris- tian life on a false premise. Therefore plenty of time is to be taken in the training class. It is far better to keep them in training for two or three years than to re- ceive them into full membership ill informed or badly grounded in the Christian faith and experience. 3. The Doctrine of Redemption The difference between redemption and salvation needs to be made clear, so that the two things will not be confused in their minds. All men are redeemed, but all men are not saved. Redemption is the provision which God makes for man whether man cooperates or not. Redemption is wholly a work of God. Salva- tion is redemption appropriated by man in cooperation with God. Salvation is a work of God and man to- gether. It would be an interesting study to trace the rising and expanding idea of redemption from the Exodus down to the time of Christ. A brief outline could be made of the main features in the development of the redemptive idea, so that the class could see at a glance the Old Testament preparation for the work of Christ. 2o6 EVANGELISM That would require an outline study of Exodus, Levit- icus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Hosea, Joel, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel. All that would be necessary for beginners would be to select the leading points of the redemptive teaching of these books and arrange them so that immature Bible- students could see their bearing on the work of Christ. 4. The Doctrine of Salvation The key chapter to be studied here is John 3. Christ calls salvation the birth from above, but he makes it clear that what he means is a life lived according to the will of God, and that he had come to live and die, to give man the spiritual power to live such a life. He came to give man a clean heart, a strong will, a noble love, a right motive, a mastery over sin, and a right relation to God and man. Some suggestive passages to study with the class and interpret to them on the subject of salvation are : Isa. 55. 7-9; 44. 22; 52. 3. Psa. 34. 22; 41; 49. 15; 130. 7, 8. Luke I. 68; 24. 21. John 3. 1-22. Rom. Chapters 7, 8; Gal. 3. 13. Eph. 4. 30. Col. i. 14. Heb. 7. 25; 9. 12. Titus 2. 14. I Pet. I. 18. These could be assigned to the class to look up and study and report on. Then their true interpretations could be given. This study could be related back to the first section of the study on the meaning of the Christian life. The saved person is the Christian. Every man is a redeemed man, but the man who has translated God's provision of redemption for him into personal experience is a Christian. THE DOCTRINAL BASIS 207 5. Justification Justification and righteousness are so nearly inter- changeable terms in the New Testament that no dis- tinction between them need be pointed out. Sin, as we have pointed out, was man's wrong relation to God, and justification rights that wrong relation. It is the declaration that a right relation between God and man has been established. Man has laid down his arms and ceased to be at war with the will of God. God now makes terms of peace with him. That peace was made through Christ, so Christ becomes man's ''Right- eouser." Man is brought to Christ's standing before God. This can be made clear by way of illustration. When nations that have been at war enter into peace relations, then all international dealings, political and commercial, are reestablished as though nothing had happened; that is, right international relations have been restored; and so it is in justification — right rela- tions between God and man are restored, and every- thing now proceeds on a peace basis. Justification is a different way of putting conversion. Both, fundamentally, mean the same thing — getting into right relations to God by getting rid of sin, and entering upon a program of service, by which the will of God is done in the life. Conversion, regeneration, justification, sanctification have so often been taught as if they were so many distinct and separate acts or ex- periences that many people have been greatly confused by the use of the terms. Christian experience is a unit, and not a set of water-tight compartment experi- ences, which have little to do with one another. All of 2o8 EVANGELISM those terms only express different aspects of the one experience, and may and ought to exist simultane- ously in the Christian life from the beginning. The life that is in right relation to God and to man, that has Christ's standing before God, and has open access to God through Christ, and therefore has peace with God and happiness in God, is a complete Christian life; and that is the justified life according to Paul (see Rom, 5). It will be very profitable to fully ex- pound that chapter on the nature, privileges, and bene- fits of justification. 6. Faith That was explained above as confidence in, love for, and obedience to, a Person, and that person Christ. It is very practical and simple. It is not a mysterious something that takes possession of them as they come into the experience of the Christian faith. They need to see that if they believed, loved, and obeyed Christ as they do their mothers, they would be nearly ideal Christians. Christian faith is the whole personality going out to Christ in trust, love, and obedience. It thus becomes a practical rule of conduct that can be applied to all things all the time. It is a very workable thing. Christ is absolutely dependable. He never makes a mistake; he is always worthy of the most devoted love and most unquestioning obedience. When that is made clear faith will come down out of the clouds, where it is to most young people, and become a very simple and concrete rule of practice. A good set of passages for the study of faith in its different aspects is: Matt. 15. 28; 17. 20, 21. Mark i. 15; 9. THE DOCTRINAL BASIS 209 2y, 16. 16. Luke 7. 9. John 3. 36; 5. 24; 6. 47. Acts 26. 18. Rom. I. 17; 3. 21, 22; 4. 1-5; 5. 1-5. Eph. 2. 18. Heb. 11. James 2. 21-23. The home, business, society, and civiHzation rest on men's confidence in one another. If they had the same confidence in the infalHble God that they do in falHble men, and acted upon it, the Kingdom of God would be estabHshed in the earth. ReHgious faith must be explained to these young Christians in terms of common confidence, that they may get hold of it and practice it. 7. SONSHIP This takes us back to the last section of the first step in the training, to where the pupil is received ijito the family, and also to the discussion of salvation, which Christ calls the birth from above. The things to be stressed are the privileges and responsibilities of mem- bership in the family of God. To these young people, the church will best express the idea of the household of God on the earth. Appropriate passages for this discussion and for class study are: Matt. 5. 9-45; i3- 38-43. Luke 16. 8. John 3. 3, 8; 8. 36; 12. 36. Rom. 6. 17, 18, 22; 8. 16-18, 21. I Cor. 2. II, 12; 3. 21-23. Gal. 3. 26; 4. 5 ; 6. 13. Eph. 5. i, 8. Phil. 2. 15. Col. 2. 2. I Thess. 5. 5. Heb. 6. 11 ; 10. 22. James i. 18, 25. I Pet. 2. 16. I John I. 1-4; 3. 2, 3. 8. The Doctrine of Holiness There is no doctrine of the Christian faith that has been so perverted by well-meaning but for the most part ill-informed people as this. It has been made so 2IO EVANGELISM obnoxious and some of its professors have been so intolerant that few people want to be known as holy people. So the church has lost immeasurably both in its joy and power because its highest spiritual state has not been sought or attained by the majority of its mem- bers. Holiness must be rescued from this misunder- standing and given the place to which it, as the climax of Christian character, is entitled. It can be set forth in outline, and the pastor can make the steps clear as he goes along. If religious experience were expressed in terms of education, then to discount holiness would be like discounting the higher education and being con- tent with the training of the grammar school or at most the high school. Holiness to the spiritual life is what a university education is to the intellectual life, what perfect health is to the physical life: it is the highest culture and health of the soul. That should be made very plain to the young people who are to be the church of to-morrow. They should not be robbed of the highest Christian excellence because of the extrava- gance of a few people. Holiness is not a thing to get at a meeting as one might get an article at a store. It is not a detached thing which one might easily get and just as easily lose. It is not an obtainment but an attainment. We do not get holiness; we become holy. Holiness may be lost just as health may be, and in very much the same way — by carelessness, neglect, or sin. When the soul is well cared for as to its food and exercise, holiness will be as natural and inevitable as health is when the body is well cared for as to its food and exercise. Holiness, therefore, instead of being THE DOCTRINAL BASIS 211 shunned should be most earnestly sought after, and it will be when it is presented in all its attractiveness and power. This is the pastor's privilege and task in his training class. What now are the steps by which the pastor is to make clear the doctrine or the experience of holiness? I. The Preparation for Holiness This is the preparation or the attitude of mind that will make the experience of holiness either welcome or possible; and it is set forth in i Pet. i. 13-17. (i) Get ready. "Gird up," verse 13. (2) Be sober, that is, be well poised or steady, verse 13. (3) Be hopeful to the end, verse 13. In verse 14, two things are to be noticed, (a) Obedience, (b) Consistency. See for a similar thought Rom. 12. 2. In verse 17, Rever- ence. These then represent the attitude of mind toward holiness before its attainment is possible. Readiness, steadiness, hopefulness, obedience, consistency, and rev- erence. This should all be made as clear and simple and important as possible. 2. The Call to Holiness Under this head there is an opportunity to discuss the importance of a life-service decision, and show that every person should have some definite Christian service in view as a career. But the important thing here is to show that whether all people have a definite call to a career or not, all people are definitely called to character ; that is, all are called to be holy. Here a 212 EVANGELISM study of the following passages will be helpful : Lev. II. 44, 45. Jer. 31. ^s, 34- Ezek. 36. 25. Matt. 5. 48. Rom. I. 17; 8. 28-30. I Cor. i. 2. 2 Cor. 6. 17, 18. Eph. I. 4. I Thess. 4. 7. Heb. 12. 14. i Pet. I. 2. 3. The Obligation to be Holy It is not mere caprice on the part of God to call men to holiness. The call is grounded in the nature of things. 1. It is reasonable. God is holy and to be in fellow- ship with him man must be holy. There can be no true fellowship between uncongenial people. It is reason- able, then, for God to call men to holiness. A study may be made of the following passages: i Cor. i. 2. Eph. I. 4. Phil. I. I ; 4. 21. i Thess. 5. 23, 24. 2 Thess. 2. 12. 2. It is right to be holy. God has a right to de- mand it. That right is grounded in three things : (i) Creatorship, (2) Redemption, (3) Fatherhood. God rests his claim to man's holiness on these things. 4. The Possibility of Holiness Some regard it as an ideal which may be looked up to in this life, but can only be realized in some other life ; that is, the practice of holiness in this world is regarded as impossible. But obligation and duty never extend to the impossible. It is because holiness is possible that God requires it. When Jesus says, ''Follow me," he is calling men to holiness. See Matt. 5. 48; 19. 21. Rom. 8. I, 23-29; 6. 11-23; 12- i> 2. 2 Cor. 3. 18. Col. I. THE DOCTRINAL BASIS 213 5. The Content of Holiness Fundamentally, it means separation, but not separa- tion in space, but in the quality of character. It is (i) separation from sin, (2) separation to God, (3) separation for service. It would therefore include the three terms (i) separation from sin, conversion; (2) separation to God, hoHness; (3) separation for serv- ice, sanctification. The following are helpful pas- sages: Psa. I, 15, 24, 50, 139. Isa. I. Amos 5. Mi- cah 6. Ezek. 26. Jer. 31. i Cor. i. 30. Rom. 6. 19, 20. I Thess. 4, 3-7. 2 Thess. 2. 1-3. Heb. 12. 14. 2 Cor. I. 12; 7. I. Eph. 4. 24. In these passages we have the words "holiness" and "sanctification." The same thought is found in i Cor. 9. 13 and 2 Tim. 3. 15, as "strength" and "reverence"; in Heb. 7. 23, as "piety"; in Phil. 4. 8 and i Tim. 2. 2, as "honor" or "dignity"; in i John 3. 3, as "purity." Putting them together, the holy person is one who is strong, reverent, honorable, dignified, pious, pure, holy. That is so far from the experience that some ranters have that it be- longs in a different world. Holiness must be saved to the young life of the church. 6. The Attainment of Holiness I. Separation. Paul discusses this in 2 Cor. 6. 14- 18. (i) No yokefellowship with moral contradictories. See Deut. 22. 9, 10. (2) No mingling of good and evil. The issue must be clear cut. No averaging up. (3) No communion of light and darkness ; that is, there is to be no twilight experience. (4) No symphony with Christ and Satan. They cannot be harmonized. (5) 214 EVANGELISM No mixing of faith and unbelief. (6) No serving of opposite masters. See Matt. 6. 24. (7) No place in a holy temple for idols. 2. Cooperation. God and man together work out salvation in its completeness, which is holiness. See Phil. 2. 12, 13. 3. Consecration. All one has and is must "be given over to God. See Rom. 12. i and i Thess. 5. 23. 4. The Scope of Holiness. Holiness extends to the whole life in all manner of conduct. Holiness is not a personal luxury which is to be used in a few rare expe- riences of life. It is life at its best operating in the whole program of activity. "The Baptism of the Holy Spirit," as it is called, and is sometimes used as a term equivalent to "holiness," is not the same thing. Holiness is a complete Chris- tian life, or perfect soul health. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a special endument of power for a special kind of service, witnessing, or, as we would put it to-day, soul-winning. See the book of Acts i. 8; 2. 1-4, 38, 39; 4. 8, 13, 31, 33; 5. 32, 33; 6. 5, 8; 7. 55; 8. 15-19, 29-40; 10. 38, 44-46; II. 16-18; 13. 2-4; 19. 1-6; 20. 28. See also Joel 2. 28. John 14. 26; 15. 26, 27; 16. 13-15. The baptism of the Holy Spirit is a study by itself. Holiness can be summed up in this way: (i) It is possible as an attainment. (2) It is ef- ficient as an equipment. (3) It is satisfactory as an experience. (4) It is controlling as an influence. (5) It is unanswerable as an argument. (6) It is powerful as a dynamic. When people old or young fully understand holiness they will want to attain it. THE DOCTRINAL BASIS 215 7. Last Things Under this head the Resurrection, ImmortaHty and the Judgment can be briefly discussed. Nothing elab- orate should be attempted with these doctrines at this stage of training, first, because these doctrines do not immediately relate to the program of everyday life as that program is understood by young people, and sec- ond, because they are a little too abstract for these im- mature minds. But these doctrines should be ex- plained, so the main idea of them could be grasped and they be placed where they belong in the body of the young Christians' faith. On the resurrection the pas- tor would do well to give a simple exposition of Matt. 28, Mark 15, Luke 24, John 11. 23-26; 20-21; and I Cor. 15, Paul's great classic on the resurrection. The different theories of the resurrection might be left for a later period of training. The main thing now is to show them that Jesus conquered death and is alive forevermore, and that because he rose, so all who are his disciples will rise, too, and be with him forever. The resurrection is, of course, closely connected with immortality. Study passages for the subject of im- mortality would be the following: Matt. 25. 34. John 3. 16, 36; 5. 24; 6. 47, 58. Rom. 8. 17, 39; 6. 22. Phil. 3. 20. I Thess. 4. 17. 2 Cor. 5. 1-8. i John 5. II, 12. Closely following upon this a brief discussion on the Judgment can be given. The chief thing to emphasize as a practical problem is that all life tends to fixity of form and direction. "As the twig is bent so is the tree inclined." The main thing in life is to give it a God- 2i6 EVANGELISM ward direction and a spiritual content. Another thing that needs to be pointed out is that character fixes des- tiny. Every man fixes his own destiny ; in a word, he determines his own judgment. God only declares the judgment that man determines for himself. No man has any grievance against God if he falls upon an eternal tragedy, for he brought that tragedy upon him- self in spite of all that God by patient love and bound- less grace did for him in the redemption offered in Jesus Christ. God sends no man to hell; if man ever goes to hell, he sends himself there. If he will not go to the place God prepared for him, he will go to the place he prepared for himself. The lost man is the man that refuses to let God save him. This should be clearly taught to give the young people right thought about God. They must be free from any notion of a monster or jailer God. The following are suggestive study passages: Isa. 28. 17. Matt. 25. 31-46. Luke 16. 19-31. John 5. 22; 15. 1-8; 16. 8-14. Matt. 12. 41. Heb. 9. 27. James 2. 13. Psa. i. 5. A good deal of space has been devoted to this part of evangelistic work because it is fundamental to sane re- ligious experience and efficient Christian work. Young Christians not only should be soundly converted but they should be thoroughly grounded in the funda- mental doctrines of the Christian faith. The outline given above is only a suggestion which the pastors can adapt to the needs of their classes, giving it in a fuller or more simple way as the case may require. CHAPTER III THE CHRISTIAN SERVICE The third section in the program of training may be called practice. The best way to fix religion in character and make it practical is to set it to work. Many things which appear a little hazy in theory be- come perfectly clear in practice. Religion enjoyed as a personal luxury is of little value. It is only as it is applied to the practical problems of life that it shows its worth. If young people have something to do that brings their religion into action, they will rarely either lapse or become indifferent. Young people want action, and they need it to bring them to their best. The more they put their religion into action the better they will love and the more tenaciously they will hold to it. Bringing other people to Christ is the most important and enjoyable part of religious work. Nothing better defines one's own religion and puts it into concrete form than personal work in soul-winning. It is much easier to present religion to a crowd than it is to an individual. Many a person would rather lead a meeting than to talk personally with an individual about his soul. One must be very sure of his own ground when the other person has the privilege of talk- ing back and asking questions. But young people in the enthusiasm of their new-found joy want to talk to others about it if they only know how. They would love to bring their young friends to Christ, and while 217 2i8 EVANGELISM that desire is strong they should be taught how to do it. They are not yet mature enough in their religious experience to answer all the objections that may be raised, but the exuberance of their new life in Christ will often succeed where cold, exact reason might fail. Later on they can add clear and exact reason to their enthusiasm, and then they will be well-nigh irresistible. One of their greatest feelings of need is to know more about the Bible. They know that it contains all that is necessary for instruction in soul-winning, but they do not know where or how to find it. The training class is the place where they should be taught the use of the Bible in soul-winning. Many older people would be far better soul-winners if they knew more about their Bibles. The best personal workers the writer ever had were young people whose ages ranged from sixteen to twenty whom he trained in a class like the one here suggested. Those young people thus trained and employed became very active in all the work of the church. One of the most important things done for those young personal workers was to prepare for them a small personal workers' Bible and to teach them how to use it. This Bible is for the most part made up of familiar passages, and about all are taken from the New Testament, so that the labor of memor- izing them will be very slight. The passages can be put on the blackboard, and the class drilled in their lo- cation, use, and meaning before they are used in per- sonal work. Personal Workers' Bible The value of using the Bible in personal work is that THE CHRISTIAN SERVICE 219 it takes the worker out of the realm of argument. If objections are raised, the worker can say : "These con- ditions are not mine, but God's. I did not make them, and I cannot change them." Every Christian ought to be a soul-winner and it is important that these young Christians should begin that work as soon as they are able to do it. Each person may work in his own way, but he should do something to help save this world. The wise use of the subjoined passages will save many an inexperienced worker from confusion and failure. The plan is so arranged that groups of passages are brought together so as to make them immediately available in personal work. The groups are under four heads : "The Why," "The What," "The How," "The When." Then there follows a group which may be used in meeting the stock objections that are raised by so many people with whom the personal workers will have to deal. The first thing that is to be considered is, Why was it necessary to have salvation at all? The reason for it was that sin had entered the world and alienated man from God. The passages used under "The Why" all show man's sinfulness and sin. The worker's plan is then for convenience put into the following form: The Why r I. Sin < Rom. 5. 12 I John I. 8 Rom. 3. 23. Key verse I John I. 10 Rom. 3. 10 220 EVANGELISM The key verse shows sin in the form of commission and omission ; that is, a man in sin either transgresses the law of God or fails to realize God's purpose in his life. In either case life is a failure. II. Salvation The What . fMatt. I. 21 I John 5. II, 12 Rom. 5. 6, 8, 10 Luke 19. 10. Key verse Isa. 53. 5 Luke 5. 32 I Tim. I. 15 These passages all center in Christ, and the import- ant thing here is not salvation as an abstract doctrine, but Christ as a personal Saviour. Man is not offered a law to be obeyed, but a Saviour to be loved and fol- lowed. God's law remedy for sin failed, but his love remedy in Christ succeeded. The worker is not to present a creed to be believed, but a Saviour to be trusted and loved. The whole matter is to be kept personal. THE CHRISTIAN SERVICE 221 III. The Steps ^ The How Repent Forsake Believe Receive Confess sin Confess Christ ^Matt. 4. 17 Luke 13. 2, 3 Acts 17. 39 ( Luke 14. 33 ^ Prov. 28. 1 3 rjohn 5. 24 J John 6. 47 [Acts 16. 31 ^John I. 12 Acts I. 8 Rom. 5. II I John I. 9 Prov. 28. 13 Rom. 10. 9, 10 Matt. 10. 32 These steps should be carefully explained, so that no part of the human requirement would be over- looked or left undone. When one is asked, "How shall I become a Christian?'* the above steps may be ex- plained as the condition of passing from sin to salva- tion. These are the Scriptural conditions that are to be met sooner or later in the Christian life. This outline looks far more complicated than the experience of be- ing saved really is, but the above are the steps that are actually taken either consciously or unconsciously in any genuine conversion. 222 EVANGELISM IV. Now^ The When Deut. 4. 29 John 6. 2i7 Luke 14. 17 John 5. 24 2 Cor. 6. 2 Jer. 29. 13 God is always ready to save. Whatever delay there is is caused by man. God's time is always now, and when man is ready to meet God's conditions salvation issues at once. For the danger of delay and the attention to other things see Luke 9. 59-62. There are needed now a few passages that will help the worker when objections of one sort or another are raised. So the following are suggested : The Excuses of Man. The Answers of God. Too much to give up. | Mark 8. 36 Isa. I. 18; 55. 7. Heb. 7. 25 I Cor. 10. 13. 2 Cor. 12. 9, 10. Heb. 2. 17, 18; 4. 15, 16 ] Rom. 3. 20. Eph. 2. 8, 9 \ Matt. 5. 20, 48; 18. 3. John / 3- 3-5- 2 Cor. 5. 10 Rom. 8. 35-39. Eph. 3. 20, 21. Phil. 4. 13, 19. 2 Tim. I. 12. Heb. 6. 16- 20; 13. 8. Jude 24 Too bad to be saved Temptation too great Good works will save Good as Christians are Cannot hold out THE CHRISTIAN SERVICE 223 These are the stock excuses and the scriptural an- swers that may be given to them. If the objector will not listen to the promises of Scripture, there is little use for a young personal worker to spend his time try- ing to convince him with arguments. Little is gained by argument any way, except in rare cases. For the most part those who are unwilling to become Chris- tians are not held back so much by intellectual diffi- culties as they are by their unwillingness to give up their sin or because they are not willing to dedicate themselves to a life of unselfish service. The difficulty is not mental but moral. This little personal workers' Bible when judiciously used will meet all the needs of reasonable and earnest people. For convenience the whole above plan may be put together in one form like the following and printed on a card or, better still, on small sheets of paper which can be pasted on the fly leaves of their Bibles or folded and carried in their pocket Testaments. Thus it would be always available for immediate use, and by studying it in their leisure the workers could become perfectly famihar with it. THE PLAN COMPLETE The Why L Sin Rom 5. 12 I John I. 8 Rom. 3. 23. Key verse I John I. 10 Rom. 3. 10 224 EVANGELISM THE PLAN COMFLETE-^Continued The What Matt. I. 21 I John 5. II, 12 Rom. 5. 6, 8, 10 Luke 19. 10. Key verse Isa. 53. 5 Luke 5. 32 ^i Tim. I. 15 IL Salvation ^ in. The Steps ^ The How Repent Forsake Believe Receive Confess sin Confess Christ "Matt. 4. 17 Luke 13. 2, 3 Acts 17. 39 Luke 14. 33 Prov. 28. 13 7ohn 5. 24 John 6. 47 Acts 16. 31 fjohn I. 12 J Acts I. 8 I Rom. 5. II C I John I. 9 I Prov. 28. 13 ( Rom. 10. 9, 10 ) Matt. 10. 32 THE CHRISTIAN SERVICE 225 The W^EN Now Deut. 4. 29 John 6. 37 Luke 14. 17 John 5. 24 2 Cor. 6. 2 Jer. 29. 13 Excuses AND S Answers I Cor. 10. Heb. 2. 17, Rom. 3. 20. 1. Too much to give up. Mark 8. 36 2. Too bad to be saved. Isa. i. 18; 55.7. Heb. 7. 25 3. Temptation too great. 13. 2 Cor, 12. 9, 10. 18; 4- 15. 16 4. Good works will save. Eph. 2. 8, 9 5. Good as Christians are. Matt. 5. 20, 48; 18. 3. John 3. 3-5. 2 Cor. 5. 10 6. Cannot hold out. Rom. 8. 35-39- Eph. 3. 20, 21. Phil. 4. 13, 19. 2 Tim. I. 12. Heb. 6. 16-20; 13. 8. Jude 24 The fourth and last section in the training has to do with church membership. I. The Articles of Faith, or the Creed of the Church. These should be simplified, explained, and as far as possible be put into modern English, so that there would be no doubt in the minds of young people what these articles of faith really mean. The essentials of 226 EVANGELISM the Articles of Religion could be put into some such simple form, as this, for example: (i) The Fatherhood of God. (2) The Saviourhood and Deity of Jesus Christ. (3) the Person and Deity of the Holy Spirit. (4) Sin. (5) Redemption. (6) Sal- vation. (7)* Forgiveness. (8) Man's freedom of the will. (9) The Sufficiency of the Holy Scrip- tures of both the Old and New Testaments as the rule of faith, conduct, and Christian cul- ture. (10) Faith. (11) The resurrection. (12) Im- mortality. (13) Judgment. These different subjects can be explained so that even very young Christians can understand them. 2. The General Rules, or the Conditions of Member- ship in the Church and the Duties Expected of Church Members. The rules are to be interpreted by the pas- tor. 3. The Sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, are to be fully explained as to their nature and mean- ing and their place in the church. 4. The questions that are asked of all candidates for membership as they are received into the church are to be gone over carefully with the candidates be- fore they are received into membership, so that every part of the service will be perfectly understood. A good deal should be made of the reception into church membership. It should be so dignified and im- pressive that it would never be forgotten. Many peo- ple will remember their initiation into a lodge much longer than they will their reception into the church. That should not be so. Reception into the church of Christ ought to be made the most impressive and THE CHRISTIAN SERVICE 227 beautiful service that any person ever witnesses, for, next to being saved, it is the most important thing one ever does. So, after a careful training, reception into the church should be a red-letter day in the lives of these young people. The aim of this course of training is to make the members of the class (i) spiritual Christians, (2) biblical Christians, (3) active Christians, (4) intelli- gent church members. If this kind of work were done, there would be fewer backsliders, less formality in the church, better church attendance, more work done for the Kingdom, and less ground for the charge of inconsistent Christian living. It is a work that re- quires much tact and patience, but there is no invest- ment of time and strength that makes a larger return in life's higher values. - CHAPTER IV THE ART OF SOUL-WINNING This is one of the most difficult and delicate of all the arts, and it is an art. If it is art to carve a marble block into a beautiful statue, or to paint a landscape so that the river seems to flow and the leaves to move, enabling one almost to smell the flowers in the fore- ground; if it is an art to compose an oratorio that moves the soul, or to write a poem that gives nature a voice, certainly it is an art to help build a soul into the image of God. It is such a difficult art, the material upon which one is to work is so precious, and to blunder is so serious — for nothing is more serious than to dam- age a soul — that many people would rather not at- tempt it at all than to run the risk of doing it badly. Molding character is a serious business. A person must spend time in learning how to ap- proach people on the matter of religion. No standard rule can be given, as people are so different, and each case must be studied by itself. Young enthusiastic per- sonal workers often make a mistake in thinking that the same method of approach will be equally effective with all people, and after they have success with one person and are rebuffed by another, they are apt to get discouraged and give up personal work altogether. Preachers often get discouraged for the same reason. There has to be very much individual work done in 228 THE ART OF SOUL-WINNING 229 what looks like mass work. There is a mass action, of course, where there is not much individual thinking or decision ; but when the mass falls apart into individuals, the individual is very little affected by his mass action. The actions that become habits and grow into charac- ter are individual actions, even though sometimes they may have mass expression. God does not save masses, but individuals in masses. Each individual must make a specific and personal act of surrender and consecra- tion to God. The reason that so many different kinds of invitations are given in any one meeting is that the method that will reach one will not appeal to another. So we must, like Paul, become all things to all men, that by all means we may save some. The same form of invitation might not work with the same individual at different times. We are more or less the creatures, if not the victims, of moods. Men must be approached according to their moods. Men do that in business, in politics, and in recreations. They ought to be wise enough to do it also in religion. In the art of soul-winning two things are to be" con- sidered : first, the qualification of the soul-winner, and, second, the personal example of Jesus (see Part IV, Chapter V). I. In the personal qualification of the soul-winner there are several things that demand attention. I. Goodness. No man long succeeds in trying to make men what he is not himself. If his own religion is not genuine, he may be more or less successful in the conduct of a meeting, but he cannot long be suc- cessful in dealing directly with individuals. The great- est test of personal piety, is to try to win some one else 230 EVANGELISM to Christ. In close contact with another soul, unless one has genuine goodness, his lips are closed. One can- not urge the claims of Christ on another, when he knows that he has not met those claims himself. But one must not only be good ; he must be consistent in his goodness. He must be of unblemished reputation in his community. It may seem very commonplace to say that before he can successfully be a soul-winner he must be both respected and trusted, even by the man on the outside, but that is the fact. A man can very quickly be put to silence if something is known against his moral character, or if he is not clean or self-con- trolled in his personal habits. If a minister does not keep his appointments, pay his debts, or behave him- self with dignity and sincerity, he will never be suc- cessful in personal evangelism. Goodness which is both constant and consistent is the first essential in personal evangelism. 2. Tact. Tactless goodness often does much harm. It often makes itself ridiculous, and that defeats its own end. Sometimes a person is turned against re- ligion permanently by the tactless approach of a well- meaning but tactless soul-winner. That is very un- fortunate. The one is disgusted, the other disap- pointed, and both are defeated. The one sinned against himself for refusing to be helped, even though he was approached tactlessly. He ought to have overlooked the blunder in method because of the sincerity of the motive. The other sinned against his neighbor by not using ordinary common sense in the most important work of God, that of soul-winning; he hindered him in his attempt to help him. THE ART OF SOUL-WINNING 231 No good business house would put on the road or behind the counter a tactless salesman. He might sell some goods, but he would alienate more customers that he would win, and that would not be good busi- ness. It is to prevent tactless people doing just that thing that the pastor must use the greatest care in the selec- tion of his personal workers. In soul- winning not even piety is of greater importance than common sense. There is no place where the Golden Rule can be ap- plied to greater advantage than in personal evangelism. The evangelist should never make the person whom he would win to Christ so conspicuous as to embarrass, much less to humiliate him. Such a thing is inexcus- able. There are known to the writer two most excellent and useful laymen, one of whom was kept out of the church for ten years and the other seventeen years be- cause of the tactless approach of two very sincere and good men, one of whom was a minister. Consecration and earnestness will not atone for a lack of tact.' The practice of the Golden Rule would have saved many a person to the Kingdom who is now lost to it by being treated in a way that was neither wise nor delicate. If fishers of men were as wise as fishermen, they would be far more successful. No fisherman would ever try to make shy fish bite by thrashing the pool with his pole. Yet some fishers of men try to drive men into the Kingdom by rash, and even violent, methods. Men must be won to Christ, not frightened, forced or coaxed into accepting him. The very word "winner" indi- cates delicacy, grace, tact. No one would think of tak- 232 EVANGELISM ing a diamond to a stonemason to set, even though he sets stones. He sets stones, not gems. Who would think of taking a chronometer to a blacksmith for re- pair, though he repairs machines? They are taken to the highest-skilled experts. Yet the soul is more valu- able than the diamond, and more delicate than the chro- nometer, although many people seem to think that almost anybody can blunder with a soul with impunity. The pastor is, or is supposed to be, an expert in this high art of skilled workmanship, and he cannot, without peril, delegate this work to unskilled workmen. He must lead in this work himself, and what he does not do directly he must carefully guard and supervise. A butcher's cleaver is too rough an instrument with which to remove a cataract from the eye. No rough instrument should be used on a human soul that is to be won to Christ. Volunteer soul-winners should be studied with great care and employed with great cau- tion. Many such people do not sense the seriousness of the work for which they volunteer. Before they are set to such a task they should be most carefully trained, especially in the art of approach. If the ap- proach is wisely made, more than half the work is done. The man on the outside is more or less on the defensive. He must not be made to feel that he is going to be at- tacked, but that some one who has found something far better than he has, wants to share it with him. The soul-winner is to approach him as a brother to help, not as a master to conquer him. So that spiritual sagacity, or what might be called sanctified common sense, is of vital importance in per- sonal evangelism. It makes goodness practical. THE ART OF SOUL-WINNING 233 3. Faith. This faith is not a mysterious some- thing that lies outside of the realm of common experi- ence. Christian faith is not something apart ; it is the faith or confidence of common Hfe appHed to higher things or persons. If we trusted God, who is always dependable, as much as we do men, who are often un- dependable, the world would be transformed. It is not a different kind of faith that men need to make them successful soul-winners, but the same kind of faith that makes them successful in any other work in life. It is the persons or things to which the faith is di- rected that makes the difference. Much of the best in both experience and service is missed because most people think that faith in the Christian sense is radically different from faith in the ordinary sense, or that it requires a separate faculty of the soul to exercise it. The Christian life is not another and different Hfe lived alongside of the ordinary life; it is the ordinary life brought up to its best in the will of God. The writer has elsewhere illustrated the faith of per- sonal evangelism by the faith of successful salesman- ship. A salesman must believe in certain fundamental things, or he is a failure from the start. He must be- lieve in at least the following things, or he will have neither enthusiasm nor confidence in his task : ( I ) He must believe in a market. No man can get up much enthusiasm to sell goods if he does not believe there is a market; that is to say, a demand or a need for them. The demand may only be potential, but the need must be actual. If the need is there, he can create the demand by calling attention to the need; but if there is no need, he cannot create a demand, and so 234 EVANGELISM cannot sell goods. That is precisely true of evangelism. The evangelist must believe with all his heart that the world does need the gospel. The demand for the gos- pel may not be very urgent, but he knows that he can create a demand by showing how desperately the world is in need of the good news and that it is the only hope of the world. But he knows well that he cannot work up a fictitious demand for that which is not needed. If the world does not need the truth, if the presenta- tion of Christ as a Saviour will awake no sense of need in men's hearts, there can be no compelling motive in evangelism, and the whole work is doomed from the start. Where there is no sense of need there will be no passion to help. So the evangelist must first be- lieve there is a need for the gospel. (2) He must believe in himself. No matter how keenly a salesman may feel, or how honestly he may believe in a market, he will fail if he does not believe that he can deliver the goods. It will not do for him to discover or create a market, only to leave it to his com- petitor. He takes the order with the full assurance that he is able to fill it. He would be a poor salesman who, after he had represented his house and exhibited his samples, told the prospective buyer that in a few days a more competent man would be along and book the order. Now, the personal evangelist must have the same sort of self-confidence. He must believe that he can present the gospel in such manner that men will accept it. This is especially important for the pastor. How often it is true that the pastor does not believe that con- versions will occur under his own preaching! He can THE ART OF SOUL-WINNING 235 preach for the ordinary culture of his church, but when he wants to win souls he must get somebody that can do it to come and help him. He too often feels that he cannot do it because he never tried. Even when he gives an invitation he is surprised if there is a response to it. He ought to be surprised if there were not a response to it. Every pastor is genuinely glad when men and women are led to Christ and brought into the church, no matter who does the win- ning; but there is no joy so great, and nothing con- tributes so much to steadiness of faith and positiveness in preaching, as conversions under one's own preach- ing. Nothing gives the pastor more encouragement in his evangelistic organization than to have efficient bands of personal workers under his direction and in- struction. If more pastors would believe more in themselves as the agents whom God uses for this work, and practise personal and pastoral evangelism more, there would be far fewer dead churches and dis- couraged pastors than there are to-day. This wholesome self-confidence which makes one successful is very far removed from that obnoxious egotism which invites failure in advance. This self- confidence is the assurance that one is doing what God wants him to do and in the way God wants him to do it. That is a kind of authority which is very hard to resist. (3) He must believe in the genuineness of his goods. A good salesman must believe in the genuine- ness of his goods; that is, that they are according to sample. Otherwise he can neither hope to hold old customers nor make new ones. If the goods are not 236 EVANGELISM up to standard; if they are represented as first class and turn out to be fourth class, the salesman knows that it is of no use for him to go back again. He has been discredited. His goods are a sham and he is a fraud. That is equally true with the evangelist. He must believe in the power of the gospel he preaches, in the love and grace of Jesus Christ whom he offers to the people, or he might as well go out of the work. Will Christ save any man who will give him a chance? It is not hard to believe that Christ will save the fine young people of the Sunday school, but can he save the submerged class that can be reached only by per- sonal work, or by the rescue mission ? Will the pastor have the same confidence with both classes, and know that to Christ no case is hopeless ? The gospel can build the wreckage of human life into self-respecting and efficient men and women again. The evangelist must believe that, before he can make any approach to the so-called ''down and out" class with any hope of success. It would do many a pastor and personal worker a great deal of good to pay frequent visits to rescue missions and watch the transformations that take place as the outcasts of the city enter upon the new life in Christ. It would restore many a shattered faith and give courage to many a timid preacher and hesi- tant worker. They would, at first, be almost shocked at what looked like the holy boldness of the missioner, but they would soon realize that the missioner took God at his word and believed the gospel was what the Bible represented it to be. Any preacher or worker THE ART OF SOUL-WINNING 237 ought to do that. Like good salesmen, they must be- lieve in the genuineness of their goods (see Rom. i. 16; Heb. 7-25). (4) He must believe in his firm. A good salesman must believe in the integrity of the firm he represents, else he cannot sell goods — at least not twice in the same place. Men cannot be enthusiastic for, or confident in, the men in whom they do not believe. What gives a salesman courage is confidence in the reliability of his house. He trades on the reputation of the men who built up the business. He can say — and it is of immense value to him — "if this bill of goods does not prove to be entirely satisfactory, my house will make it good. Return anything that is not up to standard, at our expense, and it will cost you nothing. You can't lose in trading with our house." But before a salesman can say that, he must believe that his house will stand back of him. He must believe that the word of his house is as good as gold. That is what the evangelist must believe. He must believe that when Christ gave his great commission, in Matt. 28. 18-20, he meant what he said; that when he uttered such statements as Luke 19. 10, John 5. 24, 6. 37-47, John 3. 16, he was in earnest. He must believe that John i. 12, i John i. 8-10, 5. 2, 12, Acts 27. 18, Rom,. 5. I, 6, 8, 10, Heb. 7. 25, and a multitude of other passages are true, and that God stands by him in his work, or else he will have neither courage nor con- stancy in the matter. The soul-winner is not working alone. He is doing team work with Christ in help- ing to save the world. His faith, therefore, will ex- press itself in a recognition of the world's need, in self- 238 EVANGELISM confidence, in a conviction that the gospel will do all that it claims it will do, and that God will be with him and give him success. 4. Knowledge. He must know men; he ought to be able to sense the spirit of the times, but above all he must know his Bible. He may not know it as the scholar does, but he must know it experimentally. He must know it as one of the instruments of sal- vation. He must know what the great evan- gelistic passages are, and where they are found, and be able to use them. The use of the Bible in per- sonal work has been treated in a previous chapter, and little more needs to be said here on that subject. But here, again, a good salesman may be able to teach an important lesson. If he is selling a set of books like Dickens, Hugo, Thackeray, or Scott, he does not have to know the whole set, but he must know those salient parts which are the selling points. So he masters his prospectus, and sells his set on a few talking points, which in a way epitomize the value of the set and throw some light on the characteristics of the author. Just so should the personal worker know his Bible. He can- not know it all, but he does need to know those parts of it that are vital to his particular work. A judicious use of the Bible will not only save him from the possi- ble errors of his own judgment, but it will give him an authority which, when backed up by his own experi- ence, will make his word almost irresistible. 5. Prayer. It almost goes without the saying that a soul-winner must be a man of prayer; and this is important, both for the effect it produces on himself THE ART OF SOUL-WINNING 239 and the effect it produces on others. Nothing puts one en rapport with another hke prayer. Many a person who had a cold indifference to the unchurched world, and especially the foreigners in his own land, and also the vast shadowy millions of the non-Christian world, has had an evangelistic passion created in him by mak- ing a prayer Hst of a few unsaved persons, in whom he had no particular interest, and praying for them every day by name. A man will not do that very long before he will seek some opportunity to help answer his own prayers. He will see how incongruous it is to be constantly asking God to do something that he might better do himself. So he and God become partners in the winning of that soul, God always doing what man cannot do, but man always doing the thing he can do. It is in intercessory prayer that men catch the evan- gelistic passion of Jesus. Prayer before, in, and after the evangelistic effort is a safe rule to go by in evan- gelistic work. But prayer also has a wonderful effect upon others. However little it may be understood, the fact tTiat prayer does affect the other person is well known to all who have had any considerable experience in evangel- istic work. Most great revivals have been prayed down by sick or aged saints who could do little else than pray. Many a pastor has been prayed into eloquence by a few godly people in his congregation who were unable to hear him preach. Sometimes he was seized with an unction not his own, and he felt as though God was speaking through him, and afterward he learned that at that very hour his most spiritually gifted saint was praying for him. How many a Sunday school 240 EVANGELISM teacher has had the joy of seeing every unsaved mem- ber of the class yield to Christ's kingship on Decision Day after he or she had prayed for them for weeks by name. Only those who have tried it know what a powerful factor in evangelism is the laying siege to a soul by prayer. Many a soul is won by the siege of prayer who could not be moved by the assault of argument or the subtle form of persuasion. Prayer, especially in- tercessory prayer, is fundamental in evangelism. 6. The Holy Spirit. This has already been implied in section four under "Faith," namely, the cooperation of God in the work of soul-saving. Jesus says in John 1 6 that the first work of the Holy Spirit is to convict of sin. In John 3 he says men must be born of the Spirit. In Acts i. 8 the power of the Holy Spirit such as came on the apostles at Pentecost, and many times later for the purpose of witnessing, which we to-day might call soul-winning, is a special divine help that soul-winners may seek and expect, in that most diffi- cult work of the Kingdom. The power of the Holy Spirit is put at the disposal of all those who endeavor to save those whom Christ has redeemed. Utter dependence upon the guidance and help of the Holy Spirit is essential in successful evangelism. The above personal qualifications are the first considerations in the art of soul-winning. CHAPTER V THE MASTER SOUL-WINNER Jesus used a variety of ways to win disciples. He adapted his message and method to the occasion and person. Sometimes he reached people by healing them, sometimes by feeding them, sometimes by teach- ing them, sometimes by appreciating them, like the woman of the street who anointed him (see Luke 7. 36-47), sometimes by comforting, all the time by serv- ing them. His evangelism was made effective by wise teaching and loving service. No evangelist could do better than to sit at his feet and study his method and catch his spirit; than to watch him in action and see how he did it, and then, with humility, reverence, and faith, try to do likewise. A study of the method of Jesus would correct many of the faults that are committed by honest people who take their own conversion as the norm by which all conversions, and therefore all methods, are to be judged. If a different method is employed from the one by which they were converted, they suspect its utility, and if the resulting conversion expresses itself in a different form than theirs, they suspect its genu- ineness. There must be almost as many methods as men, and there will be as many forms of expression as there are temperaments, training, and peculiarities 241 242 EVANGELISM among the converted. All this could easily be corrected by a study of the methods of Jesus. One interesting study would be the different methods employed by Jesus in healing blind men. One might say that these cases were nearly enough alike to be all healed in the same way. Blindness was blindness, and the way to open blind eyes was to open them; why, then, not use the same method with all? Because to Jesus every man's personality was sacred, and he would do violence to no man's personal feelings or rights, even for the sake of doing him good. With Jesus it was not merely a matter of doing good, but of doing the most good, and doing it in the best way. Jesus connected the healing of the blind men with their dis- cipleship (see Matt. 20. 29-34; Mark 10. 46-52; John 9. i-ii). Jesus approached Nicodemus in a different way than he did Saul of Tarsus. Read John 3. 11-13 and Acts 9. 1-8; note the sick woman in Luke 8. 41-48 and the impotent man in John i. 43-51 ; the thief on the cross, Luke 2-}^. 39-45 ; the calling of his apostles, Mark i. 16- 20; the man with the palsy, Matt. 9. 1-6; the woman of the street in Luke 7. 37-50; the demoniac of Ga- dara, Luke 8. 27-39; Zacchseus, in Luke 19. 1-9; the multitude, John 10. 42. But the best case in which to study the psychology of Jesus as a soul-winner is the Samaritan woman in John 4. 5-42. Few cases ever will come in a man's ministry or in a lay worker's ex- perience more beset with difficulties than this instance. The consummate skill with which Jesus handles this case is a model in the art of successful personal evan- gelism. There were several obstacles in the way to THE MASTER SOUL-WINNER 243 begin with, and she raised several others before she was converted. The approach of Jesus to this woman at the well in the interest of her soul was wholly gratuitous on his part. The initial obstacles in the way, according to the standards of the times, both social and religious, would have excused him from hav- ing anything to say to her or do for her. He owed her nothing, but Jesus recognized a far higher standard than the conventions of his day. He was her Saviour, and his coming was for her and those like her, as much as it was for those like Nathanael, Nicodemus and Saint John. The artificial distinctions that separate men did not count with Jesus. There was a common ground of need among all men — the need of God. Jesus came to meet that need, and to that mission all else was subordinate. That which gave most men an excuse to do nothing Jesus brushed aside and came to the work of helping men into the Kingdom as though no obstacle existed. When he said, "For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Matt. 16. 26) he was stating how precious a human soul was in his sight. None of the trivial things that men count excuses were serious mat- ters with him. What were the obstacles? I. The time and place. It was in an out-of-the-way place with none of the accessories that men deem es- sential for evangelistic work. It was about noon, and being under a hot, midday sun was not conducive to talking religion. It was a time when people avoided any unnecessary effort. It was no time or place to do evangelistic work, men would say. 244 EVANGELISM 2. Sex, The social customs of the day would ab- solve Jesus from any responsibility of speaking to her. Indeed, he would rather be condemned if he did. 3. Social Station. She was poor and probably ig- norant. She would be of no value to the church if she was saved, men would argue. She would be a liability rather than an asset to the church. She could serve on no committee, teach no class in Sunday school, con- tribute no support to the church, therefore, why waste time on her? That would be the attitude of not a few. 4. Race. She was not a Jew, that is, not of his class. She was an alien, and a hostile alien at that. Why at- tempt the impossible ? Churches often sell out and move away because they are surrounded by unsym- pathetic aliens. The church men say, ''Our people are all gone, and we no longer have a constituency," though there may be more people in the neighborhood than before. 5. Religion. She had a religion of her own; then why foist another religion upon her? That objection is sometimes raised against foreign missions. Men say, "These non-Christian people have a religion of their own, adapted to their country; then why disturb them by trying to force Christianity on them?" If Chris- tianity were no better than their religion, there would be no reason why it should be offered to them. If it is better, then there is every reason why it should be offered. So thought Jesus. 6. Character. She was a woman of questionable character, and for Jesus to be found alone with her talking to her might have compromised his own char- THE MASTER SOUL-WINNER 245 acter. Better not run the risk. It is well to be cau- tious, but too much caution may prevent service. What did Jesus do with these obstacles ? He ignored them and proceeded as if they were not. Now, notice the approach of Jesus. "Give me a drink." Here is a common need. Both were thirsty. He asks a sim- ple favor which anyone ought to grant to a tired, thirsty traveler. He asks it in a perfectly courteous manner. But his courtesy was met by her imperti- nence. She creates a fine opportunity to enter into race discussion — Jew and Samaritan. He might have an- swered her with both impertinence and scorn, as many another would. However little or much the Samari- tans had to boast of, certainly she had nothing upon which to base her impertinence. Jesus met her imper- tinence with courtesy, reminding her that if she knew who her petitioner was, she would be his petitioner, and if she was^ he would grant her request. Then he told her that his gift was far greater than anything she had to give. He contrasted their gifts, and in the comparison his was everything and hers nothing. His continued courtesy disarmed her prejudice and over- came her impudence. Now she addresses him with respect. The poise of Jesus was one of the conquer- ing elements of his character. When a man loses his temper he usually loses his case, and that is almost al- ways true in evangelism. If one's religion does not give him self-mastery, he is only wasting words in offering it to another. Jesus sagaciously keeps to the figure of drink. But the drink that he would give would be an inward per- petual satisfaction as compared with the water in the 246 EVANGELISM well, which cost effort and inconvenience, and gave no permanent satisfaction. He is talking about water; she is thinking about water. Religion is not yet men- tioned, and he is not going to introduce* it. Now she introduces a common ancestral ground — ^Jacob. She speaks of his gift to them of the well and of his great- ness, as many a person in modern times, when in rather close quarters, will tell of what wonderful Christian people their grandfather and grandmother were. But people cannot live on the piety of their dead ancestors. Jesus reminded her that Jacob and his sons and ser- vants and cattle, all of whom drank of the well, were dead. There was nothing life-giving in the drink that she could give him, but there was in the drink that he could give her. The soul-winner must show the world that the gospel is greater, has higher value, and gives more permanent satisfaction than anything in the world. He must adorn the gospel. Too much has been said on the loss side of religion, too little on the gain side of it. Jesus made his gift glorious and com- pelling to her. Now she is a suppliant at his feet. The order has been reversed. She forgot her impertinence, her pride, her refusal — all were lost in the glory of this new gift which this unaccountable Gentleman, whose like she never saw before, had to give. Her own sense of need blotted out all else, and now she humbly asks him for a favor, taking him at his own word, which showed her respect for and confidence in him. How quickly he won her ! How easily he might have increased her hostility! He is still talking of drink and water, but he means religion. He means the life of God in her soul. She is thinking in terms of water. THE MASTER SOUL-WINNER 247 If Jesus had suddenly said, "Woman, I mean Jewish reHgion," she would have resented it as an attempt to perpetrate a coarse joke on a poor, hard-working woman, and that would have ended the interview, and Jew and Samaritan would have had less dealing than ever. But how is he going to introduce reHgion ? How will he change the subject? He will not do it. He will make her do it ; and after she has done it she can- not lightly change the subject again. She asks for the water he has been speaking about, and he as much as says: "This gift is so great that it ought to be shared with others. Go call thy husband." That seemed like a very simple and natural statement, but it uncovered her whole checkered life. Her husband! There she saw that wasted, wicked life. How disap- pointing it looked now ! But he was a stranger and a Jew. What did he know about her life as a Samari- tan? Perhaps he is just guessing. He may think that she has a husband, so she thinks that a half truth, which is often more dangerous than a whole lie, would be the easiest way out of an embarrassing situation, so she said, "I have no husband." Then in one short, clear sentence Jesus sums up her career, reminding her that the man she was living with was not her husband. She saw that her life was known, and that nothing could be hidden from that searching eye she now faced. The water and the well and the physical thirst were now lost in the greater need of the soul. She was now only the burned-out cinder of a former deceived and deceiv- ing womanhood; there was nothing left now but a great need. Her soul now spoke, and it spoke about religion. "I perceive that thou art a prophet. Our 248 EVANGELISM fathers worshiped" — That is a long step from the con- tempt with which she started. But up to this time Jesus did not mention religion, for he led her so skillfully that he made her introduce it by throwing her back upon her sinful past. He made her see her own soul and the need of a better life than she had been living. Now she gives the opportunity to raise a religious discussion on the respective merits of the Jewish and Samaritan religions (see verse 20), but Jesus quickly reminded her that the essential thing was a right rela- tion to God which did not depend upon the Samaritan mountain or the Jewish city. Religion was a matter of the heart, not of a locality. The true worshiper whose heart is right with God can worship anywhere, at that well as truly as in Jerusalem, or in the temple on Mount Gerizim. That universality of worship was to be under the reign of the Messiah, and the woman considered the statement of Jesus as an ideal which would be realized when the Messiah came, to which Jesus replied the Messiah was there — 'T that speak unto thee am he" (see verses 25, 26). He did not tell her to go home and think it over and pray about it and come back the next day and report to him what her decision was, as many people do in these days. Many never come back to report ; their enthusi- asm cools, then conviction lessens its power, then sense of need is lost in attention to other things; they are often dissuaded by their friends from making a favor- able decision, and, accordingly, nothing comes of their high resolve. People are often brought right up to the point of decision and then permitted to slip away with- THE MASTER SOUL-WINNER 249 out deciding the matter and settling all other matters later in the light of that decision. That is a great mis- take. Delays between desires and decisions in evan- gelistic work are dangerous. Jesus clinched the decision right on the spot, and in- stead of the woman going home to think and pray it over before she decided, she went home a converted woman and started a revival in her own town. This was the best evidence that she was converted. She be- came a witness for Christ and a soul-winner at once. There has been much written on the art of soul- winning, but for consummate skill in the handling of a difficult case and by patience, gentleness, courtesy, and wisdom, bringing it to a successful issue, there is nothing ever written more masterful than the fourth chapter of John's Gospel. As a study in the method and spirit of soul-winning, this chapter is unsurpassed and unsurpassable. Jesus begins by asking a favor of her ; he is a peti- tioner at her feet (verse 7). She answers him with im- pertinence (verse 8). Jesus meets that impertinence with gracious courtesy (verse 10). Now she becomes polite and interested (verses 11, 12). Jesus then con- trasts his gift with hers and shows its superiority (verses 13, 14). She is now a petitioner at his feet asking a favor of him (verse 15). Jesus throws her back on her sinful past to show her a deeper need than a drink of water (verse 16). The woman now tries to evade the issue by a falsehood (verse 17). Jesus then sums up her history in a sentence and shows that he cannot be deceived (verses 17, 18). The woman calls him a prophet, and introduces religion (verse 19, 20). 250 EVANGELISM Then Jesus explains true religion and the nature of worship under God's Fatherhood (verses 21-24). To this the woman replies that the Messiah in coming, and he will tell the people what they ought to do; and she implies that when he does the people will obey (verse 25). Jesus declares himself to be the Messiah, and takes her at her word (verse 26). The woman is con- verted and goes into the city and witnesses for Christ (verses 28-30) . A revival is started in Sychar through the life and testimony of this woman (verses 39-42). Now see what was done, note the process and the progress. ( 1 ) He was a Jew for whom she had contempt. (2) He was a Gentleman for whom she had respect. (3) He was a benefactor in whom she had confi- dence. (4) He was a Prophet for whom she had rever- ence. (5) He was the Messiah whom she worshiped. (6) He was a Master whom she served. Jew, gentleman, benefactor, Prophet, Saviour, Mas- ter — those were the steps in his self -revelation to her ; and the steps of transformation in her own attitude toward him were contempt, respect, confidence, rever- ence, worship, and service. A careful study of this chapter of John's Gospel will give one in a nutshell the psychology and the religion of soul-winning. It is the earnest hope of the author that those who read this book may be helped by its suggestions to see the value of pastoral and personal evangelism, to give greater care and culture to young converts, and, above all, that by studying the example THE MASTER SOUL-WINNER 251 of Jesus as the Master Soul-Winner, they may be in- spired by his spirit, instructed by his method, and fired by his passion to help establish the kingdom of God in the earth. 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