J.F. Cowan: I would make a strong plea for monthly missionary prayer-meetings for the whole church. The young people have theirs; the women's missionary societies have theirs. The men are worse neglected at home than the heathen are abroad, except for an occasional missionary sermon or address, unless the church prayer-meeting sometimes deals with missions. The policy of relegating missionary meetings to the women and children is fatal. More than anything else missions need the men, and men need missions.
But if we have missionary prayer-meetings for the church, they must be of the kind that make people fall in love with missions, and not of the kind that make people fall out with missions. It is possible to have,missionary prayer-meetings that will thrill. The fascination, the heroism, the tremendous world-conquest of missions may be so presented as to lift men off their seats. It is the more common experience, however, to have missionary meetings that are stereotyped, and dull, and dreary; these are the meetings that drive men away, resolved never to go to another. The other kind hook them with hooks, and fire their souls with missionary ardor.
Nothing fires the imagination, and makes men's nerves tingle like heroism. Next to war, and love, missions are calculated to appeal to the young mind particularly, but to all minds, for missions are the embodiment of adventure, romance, chivalry, and the marvelous. Missions are the firing-line of civilization's advance around the world. They are the modern Aladdin's lamp, working transformations that need only be shown to astonish and thrill. If missions are not interesting in the young people's prayer-meeting, and in the prayer-meeting of the church, it is because the thrilling, glowing, marvelous facts of missions have been presented in a tame, stupid way.
A missionary meeting that thrills must have its facts presented with something of the vividness, the electric first-handedness of the descriptions of the war correspondent who writes on the field of battle. The missionary facts as presented in many of our missionary prayer-meetings are more like the colorless, lifeless reports that read as if they had been cooked up by the aid of an encyclopedia, in the newspaper office. Missions are the liveliest, nerviest, realest thing in the Christian church. The stupendous blunder of the ages has been that missions have not been so presented as to grip the men of the church - they contain all the elements that in other affairs do grip men.
How shall we make these facts of adventure and daring and conquest stand out, full-orbed, in our missionary prayer-meetings, so that men as well as women shall be fascinated and won?
1. Pack the meeting with fresh facts. Give the stock missionary statements and stories and songs a rest. Some of them have been stale and antiquated ever since you can remember. The missionary magazines and libraries are full of up-to-date, vital facts, that are calculated to whet the edge of interest. No activities of the world have produced a literature so rich in strong, dramatic elements, that pique interest, and make hearts glow, as the picturesque and heroic conquest of tribes and nations to the arts of peace and civilization, through missions. There is no more reason that a missionary meeting should be dull, than there is that a political meeting on the eve of a presidential election should be dull. Get the fresh, vibrating facts.
2. Where are such telling facts available?
(1) Every church, Sunday-school, and young people's society should have a missionary library. The Student Volunteer library of sixteen volumes may be had for ten dollars. The Conquest missionary library, of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, consisting of ten volumes, may be had for five dollars. The mission-study books, prepared by the Young People's Forward Missionary Movement, representing all denominations, are sold at thirty-five cents each, paper, fifty cents, cloth, and cover the entire field. Any of these libraries, or any of a score or two of new, bright, captivating books on China, Korea, Japan, Africa, Alaska, and all the ends of the earth are electric with big facts. Besides, in the public library, the pastor's library, in the Sunday-school library, and in many of the homes of the church are books on the latest phases of missionary work.
(2) Every religious denomination publishes missionary magazines and illustrated reports that abound in the most interesting details of missionary life. A missionary or young people's society that cannot afford a bound library, may make one that will serve,a good purpose. A scrap-book for each important missionary field, a pair of scissors, a pot of paste, and from the missionary magazines, and the denominational and other religious papers, a great abundance of items that would enliven and enrich a missionary meeting may be transferred.
(3) For the young people's missionary meeting, especially, the United Society of Christian Endeavor, Boston, and some of the denominational missionary boards, publish missionary concert exercises for all the prominent mission fields, that have enough material in them to make most interesting missionary meetings. Some of these exercises by the denominational boards are furnished free; others cost from one cent to ten cents a copy. Besides these, the denominational boards have a great variety of interesting leaflets, pictures, mimeographed letters from missionaries, stereoscopes, stereopticon slides, and other helpful material which they are glad to furnish free to societies of their denomination. I have had occasion once or twice to arrange an exhibit of missionary literature, at a summer school for young Christians, and I have been amazed at the great wealth, variety and excellent quality of printed matter available for making missionary meetings striking and impressive. A simple letter of request to the boards, stating the object for which the literature was wanted sufficed to fill all the available space in a good-sized schoolroom. I am sure if the great majority realized what helps are to be had for the asking, their meetings would never be lean or dull.
For the church prayer-meeting as well, a number of programs of missionary meetings will follow this chapter. The materials with which to put flesh upon these skeletons, and make them live, have been indicated already, or will be.
(4) One other source of material with which to make missionary information vibrant with life, is the returned missionary, the travelling secretary of the missionary society, the student volunteer, or others who are living links with missions. This class of speakers should be used, and not abused, in planning missionary prayer-meetings. It is the practice, particularly of some young people's societies located near the headquarters of mission boards, to plan for a speaker from headquarters to take charge of every missionary meeting. This is an enervating practice for the society. One meeting that young people carry through themselves is worth half a dozen in which they have nothing to do but sit still and listen to interesting speakers. It is likewise true of the congregational missionary prayer-meeting. The best all-around meeting will be the one in which the leader distributes the work of preparation among the largest possible number. If there are extracts to be copied from books, it is better for a dozen to do the copying than for one to do it all. If books are to be gathered and searched, it is better to stir up the whole community as far as possible with the hum of preparation. Nothing could do more to pique curiosity concerning the coming missionary meeting, and stamp it as something unusual, than to have it announced in the prayer-meeting that all the books in the community, on the land to be studied, are to be made to pour out their treasures in the meeting. "The advertising man" would instantly recognize the value of these tactics.
Following up the same principle, the crudest outline map of a mission land that some member of the congregation or society draws is worth more to the meeting than the most expensive map that could be bought, because it links personality to the meeting. This secret of a successful meeting should be written in bold capitals and kept before the eye:
"The more people you get to take part in the meeting, the greater the interest in the meeting."
3. The more specific your missionary facts are, the more telling they are. Never call your meeting vaguely and tritely "a missionary meeting." Announce it under some definite and taking title as, "An Evening with the Hermit Kingdom," "China's swarming children," "By sledge-train through Alaska," or, "Going to school.with Mountain Whites." The old-fashioned missionary meeting, that tried to cover the entire globe, and each successive one of which travelled pretty much over the same beaten track as all the rest, is responsible for much of the prevalent impression that a missionary meeting is bound to be tiresome. If there are twelve missionary meetings in a year, each one should have as much individuality as each month of the year has. Missionary meetings dull? The Russo-Japanese war [of 1905] would be a dull subject, if we treated it in the same way that we treat missions.
4. The facts prepared for a meeting on China, or Alaska, should be presented in the first person instead of the third. Seldom, if ever, have them read to the meeting. The most interesting facts, droned out in a listless, mumbling, impersonal manner will lose most of their charm. The most commonplace facts, if told in a lively, interested, personal way, will sparkle with interest. Things told are worth ten times as much as things read. Get your speakers to tell the facts about the missionary field to be presented as if they had just come from it. Let them impersonate some missionary, traveller, or writer. Or, let them impersonate natives, wearing the costumes of the country. The Butterick patterns now furnish models of many picturesque foreign costumes, which may be made up in cheap colored stuffs or in crepe paper, at a trifling cost. Even the persons who use needle and thread to make these costumes will be more interested in the meetings, and in missions, because they have had some small part in preparing for the meeting.
5. Harness the enthusiasm of the meeting to some practical work. All that was said on this point in the chapter on temperance prayer-meetings applies with equal force here. There ought to be no feeling without doing. Harness the emotion awakened in the meeting to the giving of the church. If it is a meeting on city missions, harness it to the rescue missions of the community, that need workers and money. If it is a theme that inculcates benevolence, harness the sentiment of the meeting to increasing the number of tithe-givers in the church, or the number of Tenth Legioners in the young people's society. Harness it to the formation of a mission-study class in the young people's society, to the purchase of a missionary library, to the adoption of a native worker, to some attempt to lessen the horrors of the rum traffic among the dependent races.
To summarize, in closing, the missionary prayer-meeting that will make people fall in love with missions, even the men of the church, is the meeting that gives them fresh, vital truths about the inspiring, courageous work of missionaries; it is the meeting that utilizes the largest number of people of the congregation or young people's society in preparing and presenting the program; it is the meeting that presents truth to the eyes as well as the ear; it is the meeting that is as full of definite points as a box of tacks; it is the meeting that utilizes the sentiment it arouses in some definite, practical missionary work-something "worthwhile." We are told that the twentieth century man must be convinced that a thing is "worthwhile."
Is it "worthwhile" to attempt through the prayer-meeting to make missions seem "worthwhile" to the men of the church? If so, then what better plan can we try than: first, presenting the things about missions that are "worthwhile," and, second, giving men something to do for missions that seems "worthwhile"?
Some concrete plans for missionary prayer-meetings
India
Sing, "From Greenland's icy mountains;' "The whole wide world for Jesus," and "The Son of God goes forth to war."
Have an outline map of India on the wall. It need not be an expensive one. Map-drawing is taught in all the grammar-schools, and it will be easy to find a teacher or pupil who can outline a map in black crayon, on muslin or paper. A similar map should be made for each mission field that follows.
Read Isa. 49:8-13 responsively.
Follow with sentence prayers, closing with a prayer that the Holy Spirit may be poured out more abundantly upon missionaries and schools in India, and upon the volunteers waiting to go to India.
Sing, "Here am I, send me."
Secure some one beforehand to prepare a three-minute paper or talk descriptive of India, geographically, politically, its climate, people, etc.
Follow with a three-minute paper on the religions of India: Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Demonolatry, etc.
Distribute beforehand a gilt star for each mission of your denomination in India, and have those to whom they have been given step forward and pin them to the map. The younger people may be enlisted to do this, and should be instructed beforehand as to the proper place for each star.
Follow with sentence prayers for as many of these missions as practical; request those praying to mention definite missions by name.
Sing, "Wonderful words of life."
By previous appointment, have a three-minute discussion of the benefits Christianity has already brought to India.
Pray for the converts, that they may be steadfast. .
Sing, "The morning light is breaking."
Offering (if desired).
Closing prayer.
By John F. Cowan, New York, 1906
Go to next chapter
Go to previous chapter
By John F. Cowan, New York, 1906
Go to Literature Index Page
This URL is www.abcog.org/cowan19.htm