Key Place of the Receptionist
First impressions are lasting! That is why it is important that people coming to our evangelistic meetings should be rightly impressed with both the dignity and the reality of our message.
In making up an evangelistic team, it is well to include some who are not actually employed by the conference. Among these, one or two receptionists can be a great help in making the people fed at home when they arrive at the meeting. Not everyone is qualified for this particular work, however. Therefore careful selection is necessary.
Many of our evangelists have proved the value of having good sales help at the bookstand, and if, in addition to these helpers, one or two other sisters can act as receptionists, it greatly strengthens the work. Someone who is used to meeting the public and who is able to dress appropriately, according to the demands of such a position, can do much to bridge the gap between the newcomer and the Bible instructor.
Usually Bible instructors are engaged in conversation with newly interested persons as the crowd is gathering and other folks who come in are often hastily shown to a seat and no particular effort is put forth to make them welcome. The receptionist, however, can step up to them and greet them as a true lady, and inquire in a casual way; "Where would you like a seat tonight? Do you like to sit in the back, or down near the front? Or perhaps we could find you a good place near the middle?" That immediately opens the way for an answer, and a receptionist who is well trained in her work can do a great deal to find out where people come from and how many times they have been to the meetings.
Even this simple contact can be a means of developing a real interest, for after a visitor has come there to a number of meetings. she can ask, "Have you met any of our Bible instructors yet?" Before waiting for a reply, she calls one of the ushers to ask one of the Bible instructors to meet this person, or if she detects a little embarrassment over the question, she can just pass it off in a simple way, while assuring him that the usher will take care of him. Then, finding the place in the songbook, she can wish him well as she hands him over to the usher, who tries to find a comfortable seat for him.
This kind of service is held at a very high premium in the world. It can be and should be a very real part of our soul-winning program.
The receptionist can perhaps do more than anyone else in these initial contacts if she has the right kind of personality and has learned the truth of the wise man's statement that there is "a time to keep silence, and a time to speak." The evangelist, as a net fisherman, has to learn the art of stopping up the gaps. Remember that it was while the first disciples were "mending their nets" that Jesus called them to be fishers of men.
R. A. A.
Preaching That Transforms
The Test of All Trite Preaching is, "Does it help men and women to live better?" We may be engrossed in theological problems, and political and scientific subjects may even come into the scope of our ministry, but as messengers of God our work is not to inform, but to transform.
To know all about the Turk or the papacy or the civilization of Abraham's time may be helpful, but unless we can give this knowledge a practical turn, so that it has application to the lives that we touch in our ministry, ours will be a fruitless effort.
"Letter" preaching kills. It may be oratorical, but unless it is bathed in the love and mercy of God, it would be better if we had never made the attempt. As we uplift Christ before the multitude, we will look into the eyes of men and women to whom the future is dark and despairing. We may have mothers in our audience whose sons have fought and fallen in some farfiung battle line. These sorrowing ones go on living, and yet feel that they have nothing to live for. Young people may attend our meeting who are fighting the dangers of adolescent years, and they need help, too. Merely informing them concerning the politics of the past, present, or future, is to leave them unprepared for the real issues of life. To inform them on the question of hell or even heaven, and yet fail to transform their lives under the moving spell of the Spirit, is to fail in the very objective of our preaching.
Does our preaching inform or does it transform men? In the answer to that is bound up the very future of this movement.
R. A. A.