J.F. Cowan: Prayer-meetings on the street, the church lawn, and other open-air spaces, and in the factory, the jail, street-car barn, police and fire engine stations, and other similar places, are growing in favor. The young people, especially, are forward in this mode of worship.
The open-air prayer-meeting would be a distinct gain to many churches, during the hot summer months. Often we hear the cry, "Back to Christ!" this would be going "back to Christ," for His meetings were in the open-air. Such meetings would conduce to the comfort of those that attend, for most prayer-meeting rooms, when artificially lighted, on a hot summer evening, are uncomfortable. Many would attend a prayer-meeting in the open-air, or in a tent, who would not go to the church. People will sit at their doors and listen to singing and prayers, who would not take the trouble to dress and go to a church prayer-meeting in the church. But the purpose here is not so much to make an argument in favor of open-air, tent, and similar prayer-meetings, as to give some practical suggestions for making the most of such meetings, when they are held. It is safe to say that they will grow in favor more and more.
1. As to the place. William Patterson, D.D., pastor of Bethany Presbyterian Church, Philadelphia, gives the following advice for open-air meetings, that will be as applicable to a prayer-meeting, as to an evangelistic meeting (though one ought to apologize for making the distinction): He says:- "Get a wall back of you as a sounding-board. Don't form in a circle; get your audience in a compact body. It will lessen disturbance. Don't let a road or a street divide your audience, or any other obstacle come between you and your hearers." To this might be added: Keep as faraway as possible from passing street-cars, wagons, or noises that will drown the speaker's or singers' voices. When there is a disturbance, don't try to talk or pray; sing.
2. The singing. Dr. Patterson says again, "The singing must be up-to-date, something catchy, and not old-fashioned." By "old-fashioned" he probably means hackneyed. Songs certainly must be popular. The Central Union Mission, Washington, D.C., in the meetings held from its gospel wagon, distributes the songs on a printed sheet, interspersing the songs with interesting religious reading, and thus accomplishing a twofold object.
A good orchestra is a great help in a meeting of this kind, or, where an orchestra is not at command, a cornetist with the organ makes a splendid leading tone. A "baby" organ, or one that can be folded and carried like a suit-case, is a valuable auxiliary. These little organs have powerful tones. A suggestion worth noting is, sing a great deal, and sing to make as much volume of sound as possible. Such singing advertises the meeting. It is heard when nothing else can be heard, and the gospel sung over and over again cannot but have lasting fruit, if everything else fails.
3. About the speakers or leader. The speaker should be elevated above the people. Many of those who lead meetings on the Charles Street Mall of the Boston Common, on Sunday afternoons, carry a box on which to stand. Dr. Patterson says, "I received a degree down in Boston. It was, 'S.B.D.D.' (Soap Box Devil Driver). Often an empty beer-keg will serve as a platform, and will come in handy as an illustration of keeping Satan and his devices under your feet. But be courteous with your audience. Make no discrimination in creeds. Do not answer questions. Turn them off; for they distract attention. Once a man asked me, 'Where did Cain get his wife?' I told him not to be like some men who got into trouble by paying too much attention to other men's wives."
Make no long addresses, and allow none. Let everything be short, sharp, and to the point. A sentence each from many is better than a tedious harangue from one. Don't make the mistake of thinking, because it is a religious service, you must look solemn. Look bright and happy. Smile when you speak. Encourage those with you to look pleasant, as though you were enjoying the service. If you can't enjoy it, how can you expect to make others? The deaf woman in church, who could only "Smile 'em in and smile 'em out," might preach to many of us, whose faces give the impression of suffering from toothache, rather than of enjoying a delightful service.
4. Prayer-meetings in prisons, hospitals,homes, shops, missions. More and more is the church recognizing its obligation to carry religious privileges to those deprived of them in the ordinary form. Perhaps it is natural that the young people's society should lead in supplying such places as those named above with weekly, or at least, monthly services. The time will come when no prison, jail, almshouse, home for the aged, home for children, hospital, fire-engine house, police station, army barracks, training ship, receiving ship, warship, merchant marine vessel, canal boat, street-car barn, or any such place, will be without its regular ministry of song and prayer, through the willing services of the young people and the older Christians. An ideal which every church might well keep before it is this, "No gospel privilege for ourselves without some service to others in seeing that they have gospel privileges." This is the real divine service. What we usually call a" divine service," going to church twice or three times a week to get something for ourselves, may be a selfish dissipation. Churches that are dying of religious dyspepsia would get a new lease of life if they bestirred themselves to give the gospel to the needy.
It is easy to see that when the churches more seriously take up the task of seeing that all these neglected corners have a chance to enjoy divine worship, the question of retaining the young men, and of keeping a grip on the male element, will be in a hopeful way of solution. This kind of unselfish service appeals to men. It strikes a note of chivalry and lofty humanitarianism to which men are wont to respond. It makes them feel that there is really some fighting, and they want to be in it.
In a meeting in a prison or jail, it will be hard for those from the church not to speak in a patronizing tone, and remind their audience that they are of a different class from themselves. It is better, always to put ourselves all in one class, to speak of ourselves as sinners, irretrievably lost but for the grace of God. In selecting songs, the same error needs to be guarded against. Don't use songs that speak of prisoners. Don't think that you have to remind them in any way that they are prisoners, though that is not always objectionable, if the proper tact and sympathy are used.
The same caution needs to be observed in street meetings, and in rescue missions. By the time the parable of the Prodigal Son has been rammed down the throats of an audience of men and woman gathered off the street, three or four times a week, they are nauseated with it. You would be too, were you in their position. No one likes to be put in a class by himself, whether it is in a reform school for girls, a sailors' bethel, or the Tombs. Neither is it necessary. Whatever our culture, or social standing, we are all men subject to temptation, and have spiritual needs much alike. There is always the common ground of dependency upon a common Saviour. We must try to put ourselves in the other man's place, and realize how we should feel if some one assumed a superior tone, and violated all the common courtesies, in an effort to do us good without trying to understand us.
5. The length of such meetings. As a rule they should be shorter than the prayer-meeting you would hold in your own church. If you are holding a shop meeting, during the noon lunch hour, close in good time to let the men get to their places after the whistle blows, or your welcome next time will be abridged. In holding meetings on men-of-war, remember that everything goes by strict, military rules, and that you embarrass the men and lose caste with the officers if you prolong your meeting.
Don't go away without a hearty handshake, man with man, into which all the brotherliness you know how to put shall be expressed. The propriety of young girls shaking hands promiscuously with street loafers, and prisoners, is questionable.
The writer of this has assisted in holding prayer-meetings in almost all of the conditions specified above, and has been connected with a rescue mission in which the Christians of more than forty churches work, and he can testify that such work requires specializing, but that no prayer-meetings give the church more healthy and vigorous heart-throbs, than the prayer-meetings the church holds away from the church portals.
By John F. Cowan, New York, 1906
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By John F. Cowan, New York, 1906
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