//^jT Advertising Makes Mission Work Easy Prepares the Minds of the Natives to Receive the Teachings of the Bible By Edith Wilds Issued by The Association for Newspaper Evangelism 25 East Twenty-second Street New York Reprinted from the Japan Advertiser of August 22, 1918. ADVERTISING MAKES WORK EASY. MISSION Prepares the Minds of the Natives to Receive the Teachings of the Bible (By Edith Wilds) all Evangelism that prayed and sang psalms to a few benighted heathen has gone and in its place is Evangelism organized — a business that sends out the Gospel with the morning paper, so that the Japanese husband in hithermost hut may absorb spirituality with his morning rice. The Rev. Albertus Pieters is a business man by instinct and an evangelist by inclina- tion and training. Therefore he thinks spirit- ually in business terms. When he found him- self preaching to only fifteen or twenty peo- ple every Sunday, he decided it wasn’t good business and something must be done. So he canvassed the district and left written notices of the meetings at every door. That worked for a time and then the novelty wore off. He had a church, he hired a good Japanese preacher but the people simply would not come. How to make them come for the goods was a question that tormented him night and day. He reasoned that his business had fundamentally the same problem as any big business, and success rested upon four prin- ciples: a demand rooted deep in the require- ments of human nature; then an article of good quality to supply that demand; then a distributing medium to make that article easy of access, and finally a knowledge on the part of the public at large of their need of the article and of the places where it may be obtained. Given these things Mr. Pieters realized that the rest is easy; that salesman- ship becomes nothing more than handling things over the counter. Well, Evangelism had the deepest, the greatest, the permanent need of humanity — the need of the knowledge of God. It had an article of first class merit to supply the need — the Gospel of Christ. And that article was manufactured in a form in which the Japanese could use it, and there were the local churches and preaching places as local dis- tributing centers, the spiritual equivalent to the corner grocery store, where the people get the article. There was everything but the demand. The Japanese people were not con- scious of their need of the Gospel, some did not know that the Gospel existed; therefore. Evangelism was doing a small business. What ought to be done? Why, precisely, what is done in any big business. Advertise. At this point Mr. Pieters went to America on furlough. He put his proposition up to business men. They jumped at it like a fish after bait. They saw at once that if they were putting a million dollars a year into mis- sionary effort in Japan, it would be a good thing to put a thousand into it for advertising the business. So Mr. Pieters came back to Japan with a thousand dollars in his pocket and a full fledged scheme in his head. The more diffi- cult the proposition, the better he likes it, so he selected as his field Oita Ken, one of the most difficult Provinces to Christianize in all Japan. It was here that the Roman Catholics worked a century or so ago and it was here that they were stamped out in blood. The result is that the people in this district have a traditional horror of everything Christian. It is well within the memory of the older people when every household had to send to the Government a written notification at the end of each month certifying that there was no Christianity in' his family; when at the end of the year the head man of the village had to send in a similar certificate to the head gov- ernors; when once in ten years all the in- habitants, down to the very children in arms, were assembled to defile the cross as an evi- dence that they had no secret leanings toward Christianity. This method being kept up strictly for a century or so has resulted in a settled conviction down to the lowest peasant that there is nothing in the world so much to be despised as Christianity. Mr. Pieters saw his opportunity right here. He would get this people so accustomed to think and talk of Christ that they would become Christians be- fore they knew it. He asked the proprietors of the paper that had the largest circulation if they would have any objection to his putting in a column or a column and a half of Christian doctrine. They replied that if he paid for the space he might put in any old thing he liked so long as it did not violate the rules of the police on the subject of obscene literature. So he made a contract with this paper at $2.50 a column for one insertion. Sometimes, when a reader com- plains about the amount of Christian material. they mark the article Advertisement, generally not. Again following business methods, he made his articles as popular as possible with catchy headlines. A column on the Existence of the Creator bore the heading: “Which was First — the Hen or the Egg?”; another on Family Relations was headed: “The Woman Prob- lem.” Sometimes they are based on current topics. One that attracted a great deal of attention was on the sinking of the Titanic and the singing of the Christian hymn by the pas- sengers. At the end of the article there is always an invitation to any person interested to send his name and address to headquarters with the promise that literature will be sent him free of charge. The average number of replies for the last five years is three a day. Some are written from curiosity; many are from school boys. But people having mere curiosity may get interested, and school boys have a habit of growing up, so no letter is left unanswered. When people become much in- terested, two tracts are sent to them which carefully explain what it means to be a Christian and why a person who believes in Christ should receive Baptism and be con- nected with some Church. In these tracts there is a printed form for application for baptism. One thing remains to complete the method — and that is to organize the believers into little societies which will in time develop into an organized church life. To these societies are sent once a week a complete Christian service in printed form, indicating the hymns to be sung, the passages of Scripture to be read, the prayers to be offered, the text of a sermon and the full sermon. After a certain probation time, the society is organized into a church and turned over to the ecclesiastical authorities. Sometime ago a letter was addressed merely “Headquarters Christianity, Oita City,” and although there are several churches and mis- sionaries in the town, the postoffice promptly delivered it to Mr. Pieters’ office — all of which shows the value of advertising. And of the customers who seek this product of Christianity, there are some amusing and some pathetic tales. One day there appeared in the office a man and his wife who said they wished to become Christians. It turned out upon investigation that they were farming peo- ple from a remote country district. One of their relatives had been very sick and every form of magic accessible to them had been tried. When all failed, they somehow got the idea that it would be a good thing to pray to that True God who was advertised in the papers. They did not know exactly how or where to pray, but since he was called The God of Heaven, they stood under the sky, gazed at the stars and prayed for the health of their relative. They made a vow that if the prayer were heard they would make a pil- grimage to God’s Pleadquarters in Oita, and worship him there. The relative recovered and according to their vow they came to Head- quarters. But they were much mystified. This place did not look in the least like a Temple or any place where a man might worship. They were disappointed, and returned home. However an evangelist called upon them and after about six months’ instruction they both were baptised and became Christians. In the same district as these people there lived a blacksmith, very poor, very dissolute, especially given to drunkenness. He saw the advertisement, got some literature, was visited by a traveling evangelist and soundly con- verted. When he applied for baptism, an ap- plication came also from his wife. When Mr. Pieters went up to examine them for baptism, he found that the man had a fair knowledge of Christianity but the woman could not even read, had no idea who Jesus Christ was, where he had lived, how he had died or any other essential thing. “You have asked to become a Christian, to receive baptism, but you do not seem to know very much about Christ,” said Mr. Pieters. She answered: “It is quite true that I do not know anything about the Christian doctrine but I know a good deal about my husband. He was a terrible man ; he would get drunk almost every other day, and used to cuff me and the boy about; we were always in trouble and this home was a hell on earth. About three months ago he noticed your advertise- ment in the paper, got ycur books, and now he is altogether a different man. He never drinks, never beats me nor the boy and has become as gentle as a kitten. I don’t know anything about Christianity, but I know it is a good thing and I want to become a Christ- ian.” Not a sufficient testimony to be bap- tised on, but after instruction she was able to receive baptism. Some months later Mr. Pieters had a curious letter from the man him- self. He felt quite elated over the great victory which he had experienced. A cus- tomer had come to his shop and after transact- ing his business had forgotten a purse contain- ing fifty dollars. He wrote: “If that had happened some months ago I should certainly have stolen that fifty dollars, but as it was I took good care of it and gave it back to him, with the money intact. Please put this in the papers as an example of what Christianity will do.” This work has been going on now for five years and today Oita Ken can fairly claim to be the best evangelized portion of the Japanese Empire, since an average of twenty families in each Township possess all the in- formation necessary to become Christians. A certain brand of cigarettes is advertised in every city and town in Japan. It is the most popular brand of cigarettes in the country, not because of its superior quality but because it is backed by American capital which has brought it to the attention of the smoking pub- lic by prodigious advertising. A Japanese Christian statesman, pointing one day to this advertisement, remarked: “If America would put as much capital into the advertising of Christianity as they put into the advertising of that cigarette they would have the Gospel of Jesus Christ in every hamlet of this Empire within five years.”