J.F. Cowan: In many prayer-meetings are tongue-tied persons. Their tongues wag fast enough in society, or business, or politics; but in the prayer-meeting they are silent. The perplexing question is to get a larger percentage of professing Christians to give expression to their religious impressions. The prayer-meeting is being talked to death by the few. The same half-dozen voices are sending up the same stereotyped petitions. How can the many be interested in the prayer-meeting?
That is just the point at which leadership comes in. In a well- led meeting the many take part. The led do more than the leader. "Oh," some one says, "I can't get them to; I have to do it all myself." That reminds me of a leader who talked for half an hour about the healing of the ten lepers, frequently repeating the query, "Where are the nine?" When he finally finished, he invited the congregation to use the little time left. The first one to respond said, "I should like to answer the question `Where are the nine?' I think that the first leper who came back talked so long that the other nine had no time left in which to give any account of themselves."
Let us start with this sound principle: nothing can help so much to make a prayer-meeting interesting to any one as to get that one to do something in it to help make it interesting to others. In order to do this,
1. The meeting must be thoroughly planned. The improvised meeting is likely to be either dull or frothy. The following is a recipe for a menu on which any prayer-meeting will starve: "Some hymns chosen at random, some aimless prosings in prayer, an unpremeditated scripture-lesson, and a rambling talk, compounded in haste and served in slovenly style."
In the first place, the leader needs to feel the dignity and importance of his position. It is the opportunity of the year, perhaps, for him to serve twenty, forty, a hundred of the Lord's children. A certain steamship company has this motto for its captains, "In all the world no trip like this." The whole effort of the voyage is to make the passengers believe and enjoy in accordance with this motto. This is the way a leader should feel about his meeting. Like the captain of the steamship, he is the host. He is to see that every guest feels at home, and has a profitable time. The bashful are to be drawn out of their coyness. The dull gaps between the courses are to be filled. Each guest is to feel that he has filled a place of honor. To accomplish this the leader will plan,
(1) His opening. To fail to do this may be virtually to close the meeting by the bungling way in which it is opened. A few years ago a blundering pilot sank his boat in the entrance to the "Soo" canal, and for twenty-four hours the channel that bears the heaviest tonnage of commerce of any waterway in the world was blocked to hundreds of waiting steamers. An unprepared and blundering leader may do as much for his meeting. We have seen meetings of which the leader declared, "The meeting is now open," that were really closed as tightly as the "Soo" canal, because the leader said too much, or not enough, or had not planned for what was to come after he had said his "say." Perhaps he had sucked the subject as dry as an orange that a small boy has had. The better an exhaustive leader speaks on the topic, the worse he speaks, for he intimidates from taking part the very ones whom he should have encouraged.
Or, perhaps, the leader has presented the topic in so vague and intangible a way that others felt, "There is nothing in it for me." One of the best services that a leader can render is to "crack the topic open," leaving the others to pick out the kernel. The opening remarks should leave distinct lines of cleavage; should furnish pegs on which to hang prayers and testimonies; should be suggestive, rather than exhaustive. This may be done by a simple subdivision of the topic into three or four heads, each of which furnishes some handhold for those who are desired to discuss it, or "lead in prayer." Sometimes these subdivisions may be assigned beforehand to members of the young people's society or congregation who might not otherwise take any part in the meeting. Suppose the theme to be, "How May I Know My Bible Better?" Such a division as the following is suggestive:
1. How may busy people get time for Bible study?
2. What I have found to be some of the best helps for Bible study.
3. Why I like topical Bible study.
4. Some prayers in the Bible that have helped me.
(2) Crutches for the lame are good, but litters for the sound should not be sanctioned. One form of crutch found effective in the young people's meeting is a passage of scripture bearing on the topic, handed to the mute member, with the request that he add to it some expression of his own as to the light the passage throws on the topic, or follow it with a prayer for understanding and strength to practice its truth. This leads a timid member beyond the "verse-reader's class." The leader needs to be very quick and generous in his appreciation of every effort on the part of more inexperienced members to give expression to their own inner life. One word of recognition is worth a thousand of scolding. Always. a question, or something calculated to draw out the individual, should accompany the scripture reference; bare verses should seldom if ever be used.
The familiar expedient of distributing clippings from religious papers, quotations and poems for use in the young people's meeting, may be so greatly overworked as to make spiritual paralytics. Like Bible verses, these may be used merely as mouth-openers - to accustom young people to the sound of their own voices. When the quoter finds how easy it is to keep the pledge in this way, the danger is that he will put his whole religious life into quotation marks. The effect of much of this sort of thing is to give the impression of a cheap kind of Christianity. Not that a verse or a quotation is always a cheap testimony. When the heart beats a rat-a-tat against the breast at the thought of standing and doing even so simple a thing as that, it may mean a much more heroic stand for Christ than the glib five-minutes' utterance of some older person. But just so soon as verse-reading and quoting becomes easy and mechanical, then it becomes a cheap testimony, and works harm to the spiritual life of the one who satisfies his conscience that way.
All of these methods must be taken with their limitations. The first has worked well, under my personal observation. When a member of the congregation has been asked a week beforehand by his pastor to discuss briefly a subdivision of the topic in the church prayer-meeting, or to make a prayer for the sick of the community, or the Sunday-school, he feels a deeper obligation to contribute his part towards the prayer-meeting, and will usually respond even though he is not in the habit of doing so voluntarily.
In the young people's meeting the same tactics - personal solicitation by the leader and the lookout committee - will induce many to take part. It should be done before the meeting, and not in it. Sometimes a "participation thermometer," or a "weather chart," showing to the eye the relative number who have kept their pledge, has proved a stimulus. "Red and Blue" contests, awarding points to the respective sides for participation, have been reported stimulating.
But when all has been said and done, will there not always be a considerable percentage of Christians who will consider their religious experiences their private property, and who will prefer to obey exclusively the injunction, "When thou prayest enter thy closet" (Matt. 6:6)? In the English young people's societies this condition has been met, and the definitions of prayer and worship much broadened, by inviting members to bring to the meeting flowers, food for the needy, etc. Each bouquet with a binding of Scripture text around it, is counted as real a taking part in the meeting as a verbal prayer or testimony. One could wish that might be true in all our young people's and congregational prayer-meetings. Why not recognize the fact that there are those who can do for Christ better than they can say, and make a larger place in our prayer-meetings for those who have brought their prayers for the naked and sick and hungry in a basket? Why should not a loaf of bread, or a glass of jelly, or a garment, or a magazine or book, or a bouquet, be counted as worship of Him who has said, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these little ones, ye have done it unto Me" (Matt. 25:40)? I would not confuse the prayer-meeting with the relief committee, or poor fund, but I would broaden its scope in every way possible and connect it with practical life.
2. The leader's plans should include a chance for everybody. To insure this is an easier matter than most may surmise. In a young people's meeting having, say, thirty present, let the leader ask one to announce the opening hymn, two to engage in opening prayer, another to give out the second hymn, eight or ten to read or recite each a verse or two of the Scripture lesson, one or two to sing solos or a duet, one to announce, the missionary prayer cycle, one to give the report of the information committee, four to speak on subdivisions of the topic, four more to announce hymns at intervals (not the bare calling of a number, but some word calling attention to the spiritual import of the hymn), and half a dozen to make chain prayers. That provides for the thirty, which is more than is necessary, since there is always a certain percentage that can be depended upon to take part voluntarily. The parts assigned by the leader should never be given to these.
Where a young people's society is too large for such a plan, two courses are open: first, the meeting may be broken up into group meetings, or sectional meetings, as is done in Russell Conwell's church, Philadelphia, with its seven sections of the Christian Endeavour society, and by others that might be mentioned. These divisions may be made on alphabetical lines, or by sexes, or on any plan desirable, each group to hold its own meetings, but all the groups coming together as often as is best for mass meetings. C. E. Bradt, Ph. D., formerly of Wichita, Kan., advocates dividing any society having more than a hundred members. Second, certain ones may be designated to take part one week, others the alternate week.
But where this is not practicable, there is still one resort that may enable a leader to draw from all some expression of their loyalty to Christ, especially in a young people's meeting, though its use might be distasteful to some young people's societies, and to many congregational prayer-meetings. It is the method of closing the meeting by asking all who have not had an opportunity to express their Christian purposes, but would like to do so, to stand with the leader and repeat the Lord's Prayer, the Twenty-third Psalm, the Beatitudes, or some familiar passage of Scripture. Or, they may simply stand. If all that has been said in preceding chapters is utilized, there must result a great improvement in the matter of mute Christians, in all the church prayer-meetings.
3. A word may not be out of place about over-planning a meeting. Many a prayer-meeting has been planned to death. No plan should take up more than a third or half of the hour allotted. Ample room must always be left for the spontaneous participation that ought to be expected, and that must not be planned out. What we want to do is to plan our meetings alive. A plan for a meeting should be like the skeleton of a sermon - "the bones should not stick out." Let the plan be concealed: the results seen and felt.
All our plans should be flexible, and not rigid. If we have planned to develop a certain line of thought in a certain way, and some pious soul runs across our path, there should be no spirit of criticism or chilliness in the atmosphere to make such pious souls as cannot adapt themselves to our plan feel that their efforts are out of place in the meeting. We need, also, a spirit of receptivity to the teachings of the Holy Spirit, so that our plans may become God's plans; for only as the Spirit suggests, owns, and blesses our plans can they glorify God.
By John F. Cowan, New York, 1906
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By John F. Cowan, New York, 1906
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