The big problem in the country is not how to make contacts or find openings for meetings or studies, but how to find time to hold all the meetings and give all the studies asked for.
These openings develop naturally. Coming to a town with several outlying communities, we pitch our tent, get out invitation cards (mailing them to box holders on rural routes) ; use the newspaper as much as possible, with news items and advertisements; and then the effort is on. In these meetings the evangelist comes in contact with the earnest, representative people of the farming districts. As they hear and feel the earnestness and importance of the message given, they express the wish that these things might be preached in their community hall or schoolhouse, Thus they become responsible for the meeting, making all arrangements, and notifying their neighbors that a preaching service will be held the following Sunday afternoon.
Friends from other near-by communities come to this afternoon meeting; and as we visit with them after an earnest discourse, they inquire if it would be possible to give this same sermon in their schoolhouse. Thus contacts are made, interests are created, and by the time the regular series is completed, there are several communities eager for a short series. If a man is willing, he can hold a meeting almost every night, and two or three times on Sunday.
No evangelist can afford to overlook the children. From half to three quarters of an hour is devoted each day to children's songs and to nature, Bible, and animal stories. Often the adults come early in order to be present at the children's Story Hour. I make it a point to speak to every child as I do the adults. Even the little tots in arms get so they want to shake hands with the preacher. Of course this friendly contact brings many invitations to meals and to spend the night; and it is around the table and fireside, at the barn or the woodpile, that opportunities come to drop a word which grows until a soul is won to take his stand for Jesus and His truth.
The sermon that most impresses some types of men is to lend a hand for a few hours in the hayfield, and laugh with them when you raise and break a blister. It won't be long until you can talk of the "Lord of the harvest." It is not bad advertising to have them tell the neighbors, "That new preacher sure can milk cows too—just about beat me at it."
Where the evangelist stays in one place during the winter, he can do newspaper work. Occasionally I find an editor and readers who are eager for articles, and some phase of the message can be given each week. The passing out of tracts and papers, such as the Present Truth and the Signs, always helps. An article in the Signs on a subject of general interest gives a reason for calling and a theme for conversation; and after a few visits with the Signs, the way is usually opened for Bible studies and cottage meetings.
Above all plans and methods, we need the love of Christ to constrain us as it constrained Jeremiah till he cried out: "His word was in mine heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, and I was weary with forbearing, and I could not stay." With that burning love in his soul, the evangelist will find it impossible to sit at ease in his home, to pass the days in idleness, to maintain an attitude of careless indifference to the world's need. Love for souls will find a way to reach souls, but, like Paul the worker must "spend and be spent:"
Delta, Colo.
