TENT-MEETINGS by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 22, 1876

TENT-MEETINGS

By Dudley Marvin Canright

BY ELD. D. M. CANRIGHT.

Tent-meetings are becoming a more and more important branch of our work. Probably this season we shall have not less than fifty tents in the field. Quite a number of these will have to be run by our young brethren, who have little or no experience in this kind of work. I have thought that a few suggestions upon the subject would not be out of place; and as I have had some experience in this work for twelve years, I will give my views of the matter. Others can adopt them as far as they see fit.

SELECTING A PLACE.

The first thing to be done when we start out with a tent is to select a proper place. Having tried this a great many times, the more experience I have had the better I have become satisfied that you can tell but little about it. You may plan, and travel, and search for places, and when you think you have got the most favorable place, and you are sure of success, it may be just the place where you can do nothing at all. My experience has been that we oftener have success where there appears to be little hope of it than any where else. You cannot see the hearts of men, and you cannot tell what circumstances may occur. The conclusion I have come to is simply this: It is best to start out with the tent and pitch it in the first town you come to, unless there is some very apparent and undoubtedly serious objection, and nine times out of ten these objections will not be as great as you imagine. I should say, Pitch your tent in the first place where you can get a location, even if it is nothing more than a four corners in the country. The best audiences I have ever had have been in just such places as that. It is a great place for fishing; you do not know where the fish will bite. You may not be able to accomplish a thing in a town one year, and yet at another time you may have the very best success. I have proved this in my own experience several times. Because a course of lectures has been given in a place once, ten or fifteen years ago, with little or no success, is no reason why you cannot succeed there now.

Last year I was on an auditing committee where a minister brought in six weeks' labor looking for a place to pitch the tent! What a grand mistake that was! He spent time enough to raise up one or two good churches. If he had loaded up his tent, started off, and pitched it in the first place he came to, he might have done something. Brethren, do not spend weeks of time and a large amount of money in traveling long distances to find a place for your tent. Take right hold any where you can find men.

LOCATING A TENT.

Having selected a town, it is much more important to get a good location for your tent in the town. It should be in as conspicuous a place as possible, where everybody can see it. This will be the best means of advertising. It should be easy of access, near the sidewalk. You must be careful to get it in a respectable location; otherwise it will throw discredit upon you. It should be a clean, neat-looking place. Do not put your tent down among pig-stys, barn-yards and lumber piles. If you can possibly obtain a neat, grassy, level piece of ground, do so. Do not get it near a mill, railroad, or something that will annoy you while preaching, or on the Sabbath. You had better pay something for a good location than to get a poor one free.

SEATING THE TENT.

As a tent-meeting usually lasts from four to eight weeks, it is very important that the tent should be seated as neatly and comfortably as possible. Rough boards are hard things for people to sit on who are accustomed to rocking-chairs and cushioned seats. At least one-half the seats in front should have backs to them. This will accommodate all the ladies, old people, and your ordinary audiences. It will secure you the further advantage of bringing your congregation up in front, together.

There are several ways in which you can easily put backs to the seats. One way is this: Lay down a plank for a seat; set up a wide, inch board for a back; then take three strips of hoop iron, one at each end and one in the middle, and fasten under the front side of the seat and over the top of the back. This will be sufficient. Another way is to nail a narrow strip to the riser on which the seat lies, back of the seat, letting it come high enough for the back; to these three strips nail a board for the back. Seats to be comfortable should be as high as an ordinary chair. Very generally the seats in our tents are not high enough. A twelve-inch board is set up edgeways on the ground, and on this an inch board is laid. This would be only thirteen inches at the most, but the riser soon sinks down into the ground an inch or so, which leaves the seat but twelve inches high, while an ordinary chair is seventeen inches high. Hence blocks should be put under the risers to raise them up sixteen or seventeen inches high. The boards should be of a uniform length, and as nearly the same width as possible, and from ten to twelve inches wide. The ends should all be even and the aisles straight and of a uniform width. Generally the middle aisle is thrown either on one side or the other of the center pole, but I do not like this. It makes your whole seating, stand, and every thing considered, one-sided. The better way is to let the center pole stand in the middle of the aisle, and make the aisle wide enough to allow people to pass each side of the center pole, and then everything will be even all over the tent.

Four feet of space should be left between the stand and the first row of seats. The stand should be made as neat and tasteful as possible. The platform should be about as high as the seats, that is, about fifteen inches from the ground. It should be large enough to accommodate your bed, trunks, and chairs. Last year we made the stand itself above the platform only twenty inches high. This we thought a great improvement on the high stands we have generally built. Then a small box can be made and set on this stand, sufficiently high to lay your Bible and place your lamp upon. With a low stand like this, you can easily see your audience, and you can kneel down to pray without a box, and you can sit there and conduct a social meeting. Indeed, it is much pleasanter every way. The stand should be covered with a clean oil-cloth.

LIGHTING THE TENT.

A tent should be well lighted; it should be so light that you can see the countenances of the farthest persons in the tent. I have been greatly pained many times to see how little taste some manifest in this. Perhaps the seats are made of old boards, which are quite dark-colored themselves; then a black oil-cloth covers the stand, and perhaps the tent is an old one well-mildewed, and, of course, very black; then they will have a couple of small lamps on the stand, and may be a couple of second-rate lamps hung from the center pole, which makes it just about twilight in the tent. A person can scarcely see to read the hymn, and one cannot distinguish the countenances so as to tell one person from another half way across the tent. Let intelligent persons of taste enter such a place and the very first impression is a bad one. They conclude immediately that such persons must be a low, ignorant, shiftless, and poverty-stricken set. Brethren, a little oil does not cost a great deal, and the difference between the cost of a poorly-lighted tent and one well-lighted is but a few cents.

There should be at least four large-sized lamps hung upon the center pole. The farther apart these lamps are, the longer the arm upon which you hang your lamps, i. e., the farther each lamp is from the center pole, the better they will light your tent. Then you should have a good lamp on each end of the stand, and one by your Bible.

Another thing to be considered is the color of your seats. If you have new, clean, white boards, and if your ground is carpeted with clean, bright straw, as every tent should be, unless you have a nice sod, then of course it will take less to light it; and if your tent is new and white it will be lighter. I am of the opinion that the oil-cloth on the stand ought to be white or buff instead of black, as all these things add to the cheerful appearance of the tent.

Then the lamps should be trimmed and cleaned every morning, and be kept as bright as new silver. It is but a small job to do it, but it is very important. I speak within bounds when I say that four times out of five you will find the lamp chimneys in our tents very smutty and dirty. The hardest thing that I have ever had to teach is how to properly clean a lamp chimney. Some will call it clean when it is not clean at all, but is all streaked and grimed over with grease and smut. You cannot be too particular about this matter.

Everything about the tent should be just as neat as a parlor. Let me describe what I have frequently seen in the tent, both during camp-meeting and in the lecture field. Entering the door, you will see a part of the standards leaning this way, and part that way. The wall will be half tied up and hanging in bags here and there; scraps of paper will be seen all over the ground, chips and sticks ditto; the seats uneven, and of all lengths, some lying one way and some another; the lamps will be so dirty you can scarcely see the place; you will see part of the brethren's clothes lying on this seat, and part of them on that chair, and others somewhere else, and dirty pails, dirty wash-dishes, and dirty towels in full sight. Everything looks as though twenty romping children had been in there for a play spell at noon-time.

And yet this is called the house of God, the place where the people are invited to meet with the Lord and worship in his presence. This is the place where the people are to be taught neatness, order, and reverence. My solemn conviction is that the angels of God are grieved away from such a place; and churches brought out under such circumstances are almost sure to be slack and irreverent in all their ways. Refined people of taste, with a good sense of propriety, will not many times visit such a place. Brethren, these things ought not to be so. There is not the slightest excuse for having things in such disorder; for there are always two, and generally three, strong, healthy, active men in the tent, any one of whom could easily keep everything neat and tidy. It is but a few minutes' work.

For your wardrobe, nail up some boards for a rack back of the book stand, on which every extra garment can be hung; then buy a few yards of sheeting to throw over them, so as to keep them both out of sight and out of the dust. Generally our meals are eaten more or less in the tent. Great care should be exercised in keeping everything clean and sweet. Crumbs and pieces of bread should not be dropped in the tent. They attract the flies and bugs; then they mold, rot, and create an unhealthy atmosphere. Water from the wash-dish and pail should not be emptied in the tent. It keeps it damp and rots the straw. In short, the work about the tent should be regularly and neatly done up every morning and just before meeting the same as in a well-kept house.

TENT MASTERS.

Very much depends upon having a good tent master; but like other good things, good tent masters are hard to find. There are always plenty of applications for the place, but most generally those who apply have the idea that it is a very easy place to fill, and entering upon it with that idea they are not usually prepared to do very much. Quite often those are sent as tent masters who have a license and expect to preach a little. They come for the express purpose of learning to preach; this is the idea uppermost in their minds. Anything outside of this they are not particularly interested in. In most cases, these persons make the very poorest tent masters. I think a tent master should come with the idea that he has got something to do, and that that is his business, and he should make a business of it. He will find that if he keeps things about the tent in shape, as he should, it will require one good half day's work every day. It is his business to look after all the things above-mentioned, to clean and light the lamps; make and put away the bed; wash up every pail, cup, wash-dish, and dish, used about the tent, once a day; see that the seats are all straight and square; that the tent is kept up neat and orderly; seat the audience; bring the water, etc.; in short, to look after everything, just as much as a woman would the things of her household. A man who will not do this is not fit to be tent master.

The ground all around the tent should be neatly cleaned, and every stick and stone and piece of paper picked up. It is but a few hours' work to do this. Frequently it rains, and is muddy and wet around the tent. It should not be allowed to go so. Immediate effort should be made to obtain either straw, sawdust, or boards, to cover up the mud. A walk should be made from the tent to the nearest side-walk. By doing this, you will frequently secure scores of hearers who otherwise would not come through the mud and wet. What if it does cost a little work, and even a few dollars in money? Shall we miss securing the attention of the people for such trifling considerations? No; all these things should be looked after carefully and constantly.

(Concluded next week.)