Successful evangelism in respect to winning people to the third angel's message through our public efforts, centers in particular around three points:
1. How to attract an audience.
2. How to maintain the interest, and keep the people coming through the ten weeks or more needed to educate them in all the principles of the message.
3. How to get the largest number possible to become thoroughly converted, well-established, earnest-hearted Seventh-day Adventists.
These are the points on which the public heralds of the threefold message need special help. None among us have finished our course on any of these points, but every Seventh-day Adventist minister ought to be constantly improving. There are workers whose fruitage in the addition of members could be doubled or trebled by following the best methods on the three points enumerated above. Many young men especially need help.
I do not profess to have any superior wisdom or knowledge, nor have I any final word to say, or any rules to urge upon others. But I will venture to offer a few suggestions which I have found helpful, hoping that others may be stimulated to bring forward suggestions that may be helpful.
The matter of attracting an audience to hear the message in our public efforts varies according to the conditions under which the evangelist is laboring. If he is working in a place where the people have been stirred by a widespread public discussion of certain Biblical teaching, or where the territory has been well covered by a systematic distribution of Present Truth or the Signs of the Times, it will naturally be easier to attract the people to public services where these same truths are to be dealt with.
If he labors in a place where there is a large church of several hundred Seventh-day Adventists, or in a section where there are many Seventh-day Adventist churches nearby, he is sure of a fair-sized audience if he attracts only a few hundred outside people. But when he goes into a new field, where there are only a few Sabbath keepers, or perhaps a very small church, he must attract a large number of outside people if he is to have an audience of any size.
One prime essential in securing an audience is that the tabernacle, theater, auditorium, hall, or tent to be used shall be in a prominent, well-known location, easy of access, and in a commonly followed pathway of travel. A hall or auditorium where people are accustomed to going, is a decided advantage.
In opening a series of meetings, or in planning for the first subject to be given, we must seek to draw the people to the very first meeting by using as our subject title what seems to furnish the widest possible point of common contact at that particular time. For example: The evangelist who was opening a meeting at the time of the Scopes trial at Dayton, Tennessee, when public attention was widely centered on the question of evolution, would naturally draw the largest audience at that time by using evolution as his opening topic. It is a decided advantage to weave our opening address around some outstanding event or condition on which the attention of the people is centered.
In opening a long series of meetings, there is also an advantage to be gained by concentrating on two or three topics in the initial advertising. If you "advertise six or seven subjects in your first display ad, and on the first card noon paper and the Tuesday morning or folder that is taken to the homes of paper, of the subject for the third meet the people, some will think, "If he is going to be talking that many nights, I can wait and attend later," and will put off attending.
On the other hand if in the opening advertisement by cards, folders, radio, newspaper display, or write-up, all the emphasis is placed on two subjects, say for Sunday and Monday nights, more people will make an effort to come to the first meeting. In following this plan it is well to have a program card prepared, setting forth the subjects for the first week from the second meeting on to the close of that first week, and place this card in the hands of your audience at the close of the first meeting after their interest has been aroused by the first address. It is a fine thing to start right at the close of the first meeting to get those present to begin boosting the meeting by taking as many of the program cards as they will to give out to their neighbors and friends. Cards given out in this way are more effective than those our workers may leave at doors.
Of course in advertising only two subjects in the newspaper at the beginning, it is necessary to come right on with notices in the Monday afternoon paper and the Tuesday morning paper, of the subject for the third meeting on Tuesday night.
Perhaps a word at this point on the matter of dropping out nights might not be out of place. In a long series of meetings, or what we might term a regular effort, it seems to me that it is
well to drop out every Saturday night. I know that it is customary with many of our men to drop out Monday night also from the very beginning. Personally I think we lose by dropping out
Monday, at least until we have given the Sabbath question. After spending all we do to get the people to the first meeting on Sunday night, why allow some of the interest aroused to die out by waiting till Tuesday night for the second meeting? I like to follow up the first meeting with the second meeting on the very next night. There is more to be gained and less to be lost
by this plan than by waiting till Tuesday night for the second meeting. After we have given the Sabbath question, and we plan to run the meeting for six or eight weeks longer, it may
be well to drop out Monday night along with Saturday night, so as to give the people two nights' rest each week.
(To be concluded)
Lakeland, Fla.
