Getting People to Church
By Woodrow Wilson
WHEN we say that the way to get young people to the church is to make the church interesting, I am afraid that we too often mean that the way to do is to make it entertaining. Did you ever know the theater to be a successful means of governing conduct? Did you ever know the most excellent concert, or series of concerts, to be the means of revolutionizing a life? Did you ever know any amount of entertainment to go farther than hold for the hour that it lasted? If you mean to draw young people by entertainment, you have only one excuse for it, and that is to follow up the entertainment with something that is not entertaining, but which grips the heart like the touch of a hand. I dare say that there is some excuse for alluring persons to a place where good will be done to them, but I think it would be a good deal franker not to allure them. I think it would be a great deal better to simply let them understand that that is the place where life is dispensed, and if they want life, they must come to that place.—Woodrow Wilson.