Campaigning for Christ
Let's quit fiddling with religion and do something to bring the world
to Christ.--BILLY SUNDAY.
His American birthright of plain common sense stands Sunday in stead
of theological training. He is "a practical man," as mechanics say.
Kipling's poem on "The American" hits off Sunday exactly:
"He turns a keen, untroubled face
Home to the instant need of things."
So a Sunday evangelistic campaign is a marvel of organization. It
spells efficiency at every turn and is a lesson to the communities
which do Christian work in haphazard, hit-or-miss fashion. Work and
faith are written large over every series of Sunday meetings.
Sunday never took a course in psychology, but he understands the crowd
mind. He knows how to deal with multitudes. He sees clearly where the
masses must come from, and so he sets to work to bring them out of the
homes of the working people. He goes beyond the church circles for his
congregations, and makes his appeal to the popular taste. He frankly
aims to strike the average of the common people. For he is after that
host which too often the preacher knows nothing about.
People must be set to talking about religion and about the Sunday
campaign if the latter is to succeed. Indifference is the foe of all
foes to be feared by an evangelist. Even hostile criticism really
serves a religious purpose, for it directs attention to the messenger
and the message. Knowledge of this is the reason why Sunday always
devotes his earliest sermons in a campaign to the subjects likeliest
to create comment. These are the discourses that contain the largest
proportion of startling views and language.
Part of the task of a man who would move a city for Christ is to
consolidate Christian sentiment and to create a Church consciousness.
Sunday is at great pains to get his own "crowd" behind him. He evokes
that loyalty which alone makes organized work and war effective.
So he insists that churches must unite before he will visit a city.
Also he asks that they surrender their Sunday services, all uniting in
common worship in the Tabernacle. For these campaigns are not Billy
Sunday meetings: they are an effort toward a revival of religion on the
part of the united Christian forces of a community. If anybody thinks
the evangelist disparages the Church, he need but recall the particular
effort Sunday makes to solidify the Church folk: that reveals his real
estimate of the Church. He would no more attempt a revival without
church co-operation than a general would besiege a city without an
army. This Christian unity which he requires first of all is a sermon
in itself.
Before one has looked very deeply into the work of Evangelist Sunday
he perceives that it is no new message the man speaks, but that it is
his modernization of language and of methods that makes possible the
achieving of great results by the old Gospel.
The preacher of a generation ago would have counted it indecorous
to make use of the public press. Sunday depends largely upon the
newspapers for spreading his message and promoting interest in the
meetings. He does not employ a press agent; he simply extends to the
local press all the facilities and co-operation in his power. He is
always accessible to the reporters and ever ready to assist in their
work in any proper fashion. He makes public announcements frequently
in his meetings of the cordial assistance he has received from the
newspapers.
Without any expense to anybody and without any scientific experience in
this particular field, Sunday has demonstrated the power of Christian
publicity. The newspapers carry his messages all over the world. The
Pittsburgh dailies published special "Sunday Editions." They had
thousands of subscribers for the issues containing the evangelist's
sermons and many persons have been converted by reading the newspaper
accounts of the Sunday meetings. One cherished story tells of a young
man in China who had been converted thirteen thousand miles away from
the spot where the evangelist was speaking. Sunday makes religion "live
news." Editors are glad to have copy about him and his work, and about
anything that pertains to the campaigns. The uniform experience of the
communities he has visited is that the Church has had more publicity
through his visit than on any other occasion.
After Sunday has accepted a city's invitation and a date has been fixed
for the meetings, and the time has drawn near, he gets the Church
people to organize. Before ever a hammer has struck a blow in the
building of the Sunday Tabernacle, the people have been meeting daily
in the homes of the city for concerted prayer for the Divine favor upon
the campaign.
By the Sunday system of work, every few blocks in the city is made
a center for cottage prayer-meetings. No politician ever divided a
community more carefully than do the Sunday workers in arranging for
these prayer-meetings. Every section of the city is covered and every
block and street. By preference, the meetings are held in the homes of
the unconverted, and it is a normal experience for conversions to be
reported before ever the evangelist arrives. In Scranton the city was
divided into nine districts besides the suburbs and these districts
were again sub-divided so that one had as many as eighty-four prayer
groups. The total proportions of this kind of work are illustrated
by the Pittsburgh figures: Between December 2 and December 26, 4,137
prayer meetings in private houses were held, having a combined
attendance of 68,360 persons. The following table covers eight
meetings, as follows:
No. of Attendance Prayers Men Women
Meetings
December 2 562 8,394 3,362 1,658 6,736
December 5 579 8,909 3,667 1,931 6,978
December 9 586 10,667 4,271 2,221 8,446
December 12 410 6,532 2,753 1,410 5,122
December 16 705 16,257 5,588 3,439 12,617
December 19 590 8,580 4,602 2,027 6,553
December 23 398 6,014 2,347 2,381 3,633
December 26 307 5,388 1,983 1,179 4,209
When tens of thousands of earnest Christians are meeting constantly
for united prayer a spirit of expectancy and unity is created which
makes sure the success of the revival. Incidentally, there is a welding
together of Christian forces that will abide long after the evangelist
has gone. These preliminary prayer-meetings are a revelation of the
tremendous possibilities inherent in the churches of any community.
With such a sea of prayer buoying him up any preacher could have a
revival.
Sagaciously, Sunday throws all responsibility back on the churches.
While he takes command of the ship when he arrives, yet he does all
in his power to prevent the campaign from being a one-man affair. The
local committee must underwrite the expenses; for these campaigns are
not to be financed by the gifts of the wealthy, but by the rank and
file of the church membership accepting responsibility of the work. The
guarantees are underwritten in the form of shares and each guarantor
receives a receipt for his shares to be preserved as a memento of the
campaign. True, no guarantor ever had to pay a dollar on his Billy
Sunday campaign subscription, for the evangelist himself raises all of
the expense money in the early meetings of the series.
John the Baptist was only a voice: but Billy Sunday is a voice, plus a
bewildering array of committees and assistants and organized machinery.
He has committees galore to co-operate in his work: a drilled army
of the Lord. In the list of Scranton workers that is before me I see
tabulated an executive committee, the directors, a prayer-meeting
committee, an entertainment committee, an usher committee, a dinner
committee, a business women's committee, a building committee, a
nursery committee, a personal workers' committee, a decorating
committee, a shop-meetings committee--and then a whole list of churches
and religious organizations in the city as ex-officio workers!
Wherever he goes Sunday erects a special tabernacle for his meetings.
There are many reasons for this. The very building of a tabernacle
dedicated to this one special use helps create an interest in
the campaign as something new come to town. But, primarily, the
evangelist's purposes are practical. In the first place, everything has
to be on the ground floor. Converts cannot come forward from a gallery.
In addition, existing big buildings rarely have proper acoustics. Most
of all Sunday, who has a dread of panics or accidents happening in
connection with his meetings, stresses the point that in his tabernacle
people have their feet on the ground. There is nothing to give way with
them. The sawdust and tan bark is warm, dustless, sanitary, fireproof
and noiseless. "When a crowd gets to walking on a wooden floor," said
Sunday--and then he made a motion of sheer disgust that shows how
sensitive he is to any sort of disturbance--"it's the limit."
One of his idiosyncrasies is that he must have a perfectly still
audience. He will stop in the midst of a sermon to let a single person
walk down the aisle. When auditors start coughing he stops preaching.
He never lets his crowd get for an instant out of hand. The result is
that there probably never were so many persons gathered together in one
building at one time in such uniform quietness.
The possibilities of panic in a massed multitude of thousands are best
understood by those who have had most to do with crowds. Sunday's
watchfulness against this marks the shrewd American caution of the man.
His tabernacles, no matter whether they seat five, eight, ten, fifteen,
or twenty thousand persons, are all built under the direction of his
own helper, who has traveled with him for years. He knows that nothing
will break down, or go askew. His tabernacles are fairly panic-proof.
Thus every aisle, lengthwise and crosswise, ends in a door.
So careful is he of the emergency that might arise for a quick exit
that no board in the whole tabernacle is fastened with more than two
nails; so that one could put his foot through the side of the wall if
there was need to get out hurriedly. Describing the building of the
choir platform Sunday says, with a grim shutting of his jaws: "You
could run a locomotive over it and never faze it." His own platform,
on which he does amazing gymnastic stunts at every meeting, is made
to withstand all shocks. About the walls of the tabernacle are fire
extinguishers, and a squad of firemen and policemen are on duty with
every audience.
There is nothing about a Sunday tabernacle to suggest a cathedral.
It is a big turtle-back barn of raw, unfinished timber, but it has
been constructed for its special purpose, and every mechanical device
is used to assist the speaker's voice. Sunday can make twenty-five
thousand persons hear perfectly in one of his big tabernacles. A huge
sounding board, more useful than beautiful, hangs like an inverted
sugar scoop over the evangelist's platform.
Behind the platform is the post office, to which the names of
converts are sent for the city pastors every day; and here also are
the telephones for the use of the press. Adjoining the tabernacle
is a nursery for babies, and an emergency hospital with a nurse in
attendance. It seems as if no detail of efficient service has been
overlooked by this practical westerner. So well organized is everything
that the collection can be taken in an audience of eight thousand
persons within three minutes.
While touching upon collections, this is as good a place as any to
raise the point of Mr. Sunday's own compensation. He receives a
free-will offering made on the last day. The offerings taken in the
early weeks are to meet the expenses of the local committee. Mr. Sunday
has nothing to do with this. This committee also pays approximately
half of the expenses of his staff of workers, and it also provides
a home for the Sunday party during their sojourn. Mr. Sunday himself
pays the balance of the expenses of his workers out of the free-will
offering which he receives on the last day. These gifts have reached
large figures--forty-four thousand dollars in the Pittsburgh campaign.
There is a quality in human nature which will not associate money with
religion, and while we hear nobody grumble at a city's paying thousands
of dollars a night for a grand opera performance; yet an evangelist who
has sweetened up an entire city, lessened the police expense, promoted
the general happiness and redeemed hundreds of thousands of lives from
open sin to godliness, is accused of mercenariness, because those whom
he has served give him a lavish offering as he departs.
Although much criticized on the subject of money, Mr. Sunday
steadfastly refuses to make answer to these strictures or to render an
accounting, insisting that this is entirely a personal matter with him.
Nobody who knows him doubts his personal generosity or his sense of
stewardship. Intimate friends say that he tithes his income.
Three important departments of the Sunday organization are the choir,
the ushers, and the personal-work secretaries. Concerning the first
more will be said in a later chapter. The ushers are by no means
ornamental functionaries. They are a drilled regiment, each with his
station of duty and all disciplined to meet any emergency that may
arise. In addition to seating the people and taking the collection,
they have the difficult task of assisting the officers to keep out the
overflow crowds who try to press into the building that has been filled
to its legal capacity. For it is quite a normal condition in the Sunday
campaigns for thousands of persons to try to crowd their way into the
tabernacle after the latter is full. Sometimes it takes foot-ball
tactics to keep them out.
Without the assistance of the personal-work secretaries the rush
forward when the invitation is extended would mean a frantic mob.
The recruits have to be formed into line and directed to the pulpit
where they take Mr. Sunday's hand. Then they must be guided into the
front benches and the name and address and church preference of each
secured. While the invitation is being given personal workers all over
the building are busy gathering converts. The magnitude of the Sunday
evangelistic meetings in their results is revealed by the necessity for
systematically handling the converts as vividly as by any other one
factor.
The tabernacle by no means houses all of the Sunday campaign. There
are noon shop meetings, there are noon meetings for business women and
luncheon meetings, there are services in the schools, in the jails,
in the hospitals, and there are special afternoon parlor meetings
where social leaders hear the same message that is given to the men of
the street. In a phrase, the entire community is combed by personal
activity in order to reach everybody with the Sunday evangelistic
invitation.
The personnel of the Sunday party has varied during the years. The
first assistant was Fred G. Fischer, a soloist and choir leader who
continued with the evangelist for eight years. At present the staff
numbers about a dozen workers. Among past and present helpers have been
Homer A. Rodeheaver, the chorister; Charles Butler, the soloist; Elijah
J. Brown ("Ram's Horn" Brown); Fred. R. Seibert, an ex-cowboy and a
graduate of the Moody School, who is the handy man of the tabernacle;
Miss Frances Miller, Miss Grace Saxe, Miss Anna MacLaren, Mrs. Rae
Muirhead, Rev. L. K. Peacock, B. D. Ackley, Albert G. Gill, Joseph
Seipe, the builder, Mrs. and Mr. Asher and Rev. I. E. Honeywell. As
the magnitude of the work increases this force is steadily augmented,
so that the evangelist must not only be a prophet but a captain of
industry.
The Sunday Campaign clearly reveals that as Kipling's old engineer,
McAndrew, says,
"Ye'll understand, a man must think o' things."
[Illustration: BURNING WORDS OF MR. SUNDAY THAT REACH THE HEART.]