How to Spoil a Meeting by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 25, 1875

How to Spoil a Meeting.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

This is very easily done, as many can testify. Still it is done a great many times ignorantly, when persons are very anxious to make the meeting a success. Having observed some upon this point, I may be allowed to make some suggestions.

1. Commencing meeting. Very much depends upon commencing the meeting promptly. I have been at churches where it was impossible to commence a meeting within half an hour of the time appointed. Many will be sure to be late, and some will come when the sermon is half or two-thirds through. There is no excuse for such miserable slackness as this, and it is nothing but slackness. I have carefully studied this difficulty till I am satisfied that the elder or leader is the one who is largely responsible for it. If you have a prompt leader, he is always on time himself and will commence the meeting on time, and you will always find the church prompt also. But if the elder or leader is behind, and is slack about commencing on time when he is there, you may be sure that the church will always be behind time.

Some good-natured elders, who would naturally be prompt themselves, fall into a habit of waiting for others rather than to commence without them. But this is just the thing that never ought to be done. Let the elder wait for these tardy members ten minutes one Sabbath, and they will be sure to be ten minutes late next Sabbath; for they will reason thus: “Meeting did not commence till ten minutes after time last Sabbath; so I need not hurry this time.” And those who were on time will reason that they got there too early last Sabbath. They do not wish to do it again, and so they will be late next Sabbath; and so it will go on, the meetings commencing a little later every Sabbath. Finally a meeting appointed at half-past ten will commence about half-past eleven. This will ruin any meeting in a few months. Now there is one sovereign remedy for this, and only one, viz.: Let the leader himself be sure to be in his place, ready to commence meeting promptly upon time. Having selected a proper hour, upon which the church are all agreed, let it be distinctly understood that services will commence at the time appointed, whether there are few or many present. If there are but one or two present, or no one but himself, let the elder open the meeting with singing, prayer, and testimony, as usual; and when all have done, dismiss the meeting. Let the tardy ones have the pleasure of coming after the meeting is out. A few Sabbaths of this experience will cure them. Few persons are willing to be always tardy. But if they find you will wait for them they will be sure to wait as long as you will; whereas if they find the meeting always commences on time, they will finally form a habit of hurrying around in time to be there.

2. Continuing the meetings too long, Sabbath after Sabbath is a fruitful source of evil. We frequently hear persons complain that the Sabbath meetings are so long and tedious that they become a dread to them. No time is left them for rest or home reading. The Sabbath meetings should be a pleasure and not a dread. From an hour to an hour and a quarter is as long as a meeting should last ordinarily. Then if there is a Sabbath-school, another hour for that is all that should be taken. If it is carried beyond this, the interest cannot be long maintained.

3. A good many churches are greatly burdened with one or more persons who are wonderfully endowed with the gift of continuance in speaking or praying. You may exhort them to be short; but it avails nothing. You may remind them that there are others to speak, but it is vain. You may tell them that long speaking is ruinous to a meeting, but they never seem to think that this means them. It is all for somebody else. I have tried most every way to cure such persons, but confess that I have utterly failed so far. Probably such persons have no idea what is meant by a long speech. But let us suppose a case. Here is a church of thirty or forty members. Ordinarily there will be twenty or thirty out at a meeting. The meeting should last one hour—sixty minutes. The meeting should be opened with singing and several prayers. Then there should be occasional

singing between the testimonies. All this will consume at least one-half the time, so that we only have about thirty minutes left for speaking. This will give a minute to a minute and a quarter to each one, provided every moment is improved, but less if it is not. Hence ordinarily a testimony of a minute and a half in length is a long testimony. One two and a half long would be very long; and one three to three and a half minutes is tediously long and unbearable, unless the person has something extraordinary to say. Then he should be enough shorter for three or four weeks to make it up.

Now, brother or sister Talkative, if you want to know whether you are accustomed to talk too long or not, just take your watch and time yourself and you will no doubt be astonished to find that you are accustomed to talk tediously every Sabbath. Other points might be readily named, but we forbear lest by too long a lesson we should discourage those who need to reform upon these points. D. M. CANRIGHT.