“Appoint a Prayer-Meeting?”
By R. F. Cottrell
At a church meeting it was proposed by some of the members that committees should be appointed to visit and labor with some that were supposed to be backsliding or becoming alienated from the church. To this an aged brother replied, Would it not be better to appoint a prayer-meeting? The suggestion was certainly a good one. If that church was not maintaining a prayer-meeting, the best means of keeping the members in a growing condition and preventing backsliding and apostasy were being neglected. In that case, to appoint a prayer-meeting was better than to appoint a committee. By all means appoint the prayer-meeting first, and invite all the members to attend. If this fails, then appoint the committee. Again, it sometimes happens, and perhaps it was so in that church, that some members take no part in the meetings for prayer and social converse. If they appear at all at these meetings, it is only as silent spectators. And yet at meetings for church discipline they are forward and active to appoint committees to deal with, or give their voices to expel, those they deem delinquents. Such should be especially invited to the prayer-meeting, and to take an active part there, as a necessary preparation and qualification to engage in the discipline of those that are out of the way. And if they do not come up to this work, let them be charged to keep silent in church meetings till their cases are called up, and they are given the opportunity to answer for themselves. R. F. COTTRELL.