Many of Al’s sermons this year have been to encourage the members of GSMCOC to become more active in evangelism. Remember when he challenged the congregation to read the Bible at the beginning of 2008? While I have read the statistics he quoted it appears to me group activities offer encouragement for individuals to engage in individual activities. So, while people may not attend because of the preacher, this was not true for the Billy Graham Crusades, having an activity for the individuals to invite people to just might be worth the effort.
I have the complete series entitled Hardeman’s Tabernacle Sermons or at least I did before termites discovered them and found some of the books quite tasty. A side issue is termites prefer old paper (prior to 1940s) more than the newer paper. In the history and description of the meeting, meetings among the congregations in Nashville are mentioned. Various groups are identified such as finance, publicity, usher arrangements, song preparations, selecting a preacher, selecting a song leader. They even mention establishing an office in Room 234 of the Maxwell house. There was a fair amount of intra-congregational activities.
100,000 blotters (whatever they are) were distributed as well as 65,000 personal invitation cards were sent out. Pages of the telephone book were assigned to various people with the intent that everyone in Nashville having a telephone was to be called and personally invited to attend. The first night on March 28th, 1922 between 6,000 and 8,000 people attended with another 2,000 to 3,000 were turned away. I do not know the population of Nashville at the time so I cannot compute the effectiveness of the efforts.
Hundreds if not thousands of people were involved in preparations for and conducting the series. The picture I get is a lot of people were involved. This would give them something to talk to their neighbors and friends about and something to invite those neighbors and friends to attend.
The results are identified as: “the results of this meeting cannot be measured by any of us during this life. It is believed that the remote results will be far greater than the immediate. While there were two hundred baptisms at the auditorium and the local church houses and some twenty-five restorations, nevertheless it is thought that the influences of this combined effort of forty or more churches of Christ cooperating in a great missionary undertaking will be felt among the churches all over the land and for many years to come. … It is believed that the big scale on which the meeting was planned, advertised, and carried out will help us to see the great interests of the kingdom in a bigger way that ever before and encourage and inspire us too put forth greater efforts to extend its borders than have ever been done in the past. … At the last meeting it was announced that all expenses had been met.” At least J.E. Acuff and Wayne Burton considered it “the greatest meeting conducted by the churches of Christ since New Testament times.”
My point for all of this is that a major group activity encouraged individuals to perform individual acts of evangelism. The sermons are in print eighty-eight years later.
It may not be an activity on such a scale but we need a group activity that is larger than our congregation to encourage and inspire our members to become involved in evangelism. But first we need to get buy-in to the idea that what Al has been saying is relevant to us as GSMCOC. We are a small group. It will take everyone buying in or at least all the men and women who attend the Men’s / Ladies’ Meetings no matter how sporadic.
The Willing-to-Serve summaries identify:
17 -Greet Visitors; hand out bulletins;
21 -Grade Lessons for Bible Correspondence courses;
10 -Lead a Bible Study in the home;
13 -Study with New Converts;
16 -Distribute Literature in neighborhoods, motels, restaurants.
What we need are plans for these people to get involved, leaders to lead and followers to follow. Now what?
No comments:
Post a Comment