FIRST DAYS AT GRACE BAPTIST CHURCH
Early plans for Church Efficiency. Practical Methods for Church Work.
The Growing Membership. Need of a New Building.
The preaching filled the church. Men and women felt that to miss a
sermon was to miss inspiration and strength for the coming week's
work, a broader outlook on life, a deeper hold on spiritual truths.
But it was more than the sermons that carried the church work forward
by leaps and bounds, added hundreds to its membership, made it a power
for good in the neighborhood that gradually began to be felt all over
the city.
The spirit of the sermons took practical form. Mr. Conwell followed no
traditions or conventions in his church work. He studied the needs of
the neighborhood and the hour. Then he went to work with practical,
common sense to meet them. First he determined the church should be
a home, a church home, but nevertheless a home in its true sense,
overflowing with love, with kindness, with hospitality for the
stranger within its gates. Committees were formed to make strangers
welcome, to greet them cordially, find them a seat if possible, see
that they had hymn books, and invite them heartily to come again. And
every member felt he belonged to this committee even if not actually
appointed on it, and made the stranger who might sit near him feel
that he was a welcome guest. When the church became more crowded,
members gave up their seats to strangers and sat on the pulpit, and it
was no unusual sight in the church at Berks and Mervine streets to see
the pulpit, as well as every other inch of space in the auditorium,
crowded. Finally, when even this did not give room enough to
accommodate all who thronged its doors, members took turns in staying
away from certain services. No one who has not enjoyed the spiritual
uplift, the good fellowship of a Grace Church service can appreciate
what a genuine personal sacrifice that was.
After the service, Mr. Conwell stationed himself at the door and shook
hands with all as they left, adding some little remark to show his
personal interest in their welfare if they were members, or a cordial
invitation to come again, if a stranger. The remembrance of that
hearty handclasp, that frank, friendly interest, lingered and stamped
with a personal flavor upon the hearer's heart, the truths of
Christianity that had been preached in such simple, clear, yet
forcible fashion from the pulpit.
Another of Mr. Conwell's methods for carrying out practical
Christianity was to set every body at work. Every single member of the
church was given something to do. As soon as a person was received
into the membership, he was invited to join some one or other of the
church organizations. He was placed on some committee. In such
an atmosphere of activity there was no one who did not catch the
enthusiasm and feel that being a Christian meant much more than
attending church on Sundays, putting contributions in the box, and
listening to the minister preach. It was a veritable hive of applied
Christianity, and many a man who hitherto thought he had done his full
duty by attending church regularly and contributing to its support had
these ideas, so comfortable and self-satisfied, completely shattered.
The membership was composed almost entirely of working people, men and
women who toiled hard for their daily bread. There were no wealthy
people to help the work by contributions of thousands of dollars. The
beginnings of all the undertakings were small and unpretentious. But
nothing was undertaken until the need of it was felt; then the people
as a whole put their shoulders to the wheel and it went with a will.
And because it practically filled a need, it was a success.
The pastor was the most untiring worker of all. With ceaseless energy
and unfailing tact, he was the head and heart of every undertaking.
Day and night he ministered to the needs of his membership and the
community. To the bedside of the sick he carried cheer that was better
than medicine. In the homes where death had entered, he brought the
comfort of the Holy Spirit. Where disgrace had fallen like a pall, he
went with words of hope and practical advice. Parents sought him to
help lead erring children back from a life of wretchedness and evil.
Wherever sorrow and trouble was in the heart or home he went, his
heart full of sympathy, his hands eager to help.
Much of his time, too, in those early days of his ministry was devoted
to pastoral calls, not the formal ministerial call where the children
tiptoe in, awed and silent, because the "minister is there." Children
hailed his coming with delight, the family greeted him as an old, old
friend before whom all ceremony and convention were swept away. He was
genuinely interested in their family affairs. He entered into their
plans and ambitions, and he never forgot any of their personal history
they might tell him, so that each felt, and truly, that in his pastor
he had a warm and interested friend.
His own simple, informal manner made every one feel instantly at home
with him. He soon became a familiar figure upon the streets in the
neighborhood of his church, for morning, noon and night he was about
his work, cherry, earnest, always the light of his high calling
shining from his face. The people for squares about knew that here was
a man, skilled and practical in the affairs of the world, to whom they
could go for advice, for help, for consolation, sure that they would
have his ready sympathy and the best his big heart and generous hands
could give.
Such faithful work of the pastor, such earnest, active work of the
people could not but tell. The family feeling which is the ideal of
church fellowship was so strong and warm that it attracted and drew
people as with magnetic power. The church became more and more
crowded. In less than a year it was impossible to seat those who
thronged to the Sunday services, though the auditorium then had a
seating capacity of twelve hundred.
"I am glad," the pastor once remarked to a friend, "when I get up
Sunday morning and can look out of the window and see it snowing,
sleeting, and raining, and hear the wind shriek and howl. 'There,' I
say, 'I won't have to preach this morning, looking all the while at
people patiently standing through the service, wherever there is a
foot of standing room.'"
[Illustration: THE SAMARITAN HOSPITAL OF THE FUTURE]
The membership rose from two hundred to more than five hundred within
two years. A question began to shape itself in the minds of pastor
and people. "What shall we do?" As a partial solution of it, the
proposition was made to divide into three churches. But, as in the old
days of enlistment when two companies clamored for him for captain,
all three sections wanted him as pastor, and so the idea was
abandoned.
Still the membership grew, and the need for larger quarters faced them
imperatively and not to be evaded. The house next door was purchased
which gave increased space for the work of the Sunday School and the
various associations. But it was a mere drop in the bucket. Every room
in it was filled to overflowing with eager workers before the ink was
fairly dry on the deed of transfer.
Then into this busy crowd wondering what should be done came a little
child, and with one simple act cleared the mist from their eyes and
pointed the way for them to go.