Note and Comment by Editor

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Sep 26, 1912

Note and Comment

By Editor

Attracting the Public to Religious Services

REGARDING the means which should be employed in drawing the public to the house of God, the editor of the Rochester Post-Express, in a recent editorial entitled “Going to Church,” very sensibly remarks: —

We go to church to worship, and if that purpose is lost sight of, all the social betterment ideas and lectures aiming at the improvement of the mind are beside the point. It would be interesting to compare the attendance at churches in which the idea of making the service border on the character of entertainment has been followed with what it used to be in the days when worship, and worship only, was the thing which drew people to the sanctuary. It is all very well to make the service attractive; but if the service element tends to disappear, then the change is likely to do more harm than good. It is not social enjoyment that people ought to seek in church; the ideal of the minister should not merely be that of getting people away from the temptation of the streets. Recitations from the poets and beautiful music will be of little avail if they do not form part of a direct and unmistakable preaching of the gospel. It is not by alluring people with the bait of enjoyment that their souls are to be won; it is by appealing to their sense of duty. To inveigle people into church under specious pretexts is not likely to win them to prayer; and unless they pray, they might just as well stay at home. Indeed, a man of character may very reasonably resent the trick — for such he is likely to esteem it — of getting him into church with a promise of some entertainment. But the minister with a high ideal of his responsibility, who bids him to come and hear the Word of God, will command respect, and stand a better chance of winning the man for a churchgoer. We have had too much of the meretricious and the ad captandum in our churches; why not try the sound and substantial fare which won the hearts and minds of a generation ago? The Bible, explained by a minister in solemn earnest, is infinitely more interesting than talk about magic-lantern slides. If we want men to come to church for their souls’ good, why not appeal to conscience?