In our recent Lahore English effort, here in India, we used an attractive bulletin board with movable letters. This was made of Masonite, as described in the June, 1942. number of the Ministry. In addition to the Masonite signboard on which we displayed the lecture titles by means of movable Masonite letters, we used another "board," 3' x 4', made of a sheet of frosted glass, framed and mounted at a suitable height in front and a little to the left of the tent entrance.
On this screen, as it grew dusk before the lecture, and during the lecture, we projected a colored slide, representing some aspect of truth. The projector used was a short-focus one, and it was made to project through an opening in the tent walls onto the glass screen, which was a short distance away outside. By means of a special electrical socket or holder, interposed in the circuit, this picture was kept flashing on and off at intervals of about ten seconds. We found this to be an attractive and instructive advertising device.
Many of the pictures projected on the screen were colored slide reproductions of Sabbath School Worker cartoons. These cartoons in slide form make a pointed teaching and soul-winning device. I systematically use them, in both preaching and teaching. I feel that a preacher who fails to use the Worker cartoons in slide form is perhaps depriving himself of a valuable aid toward the successful presention of our glorious truth to a dying world in the last day.
I do not know whether, in America, there is any recognized standard method of using lantern slides in public efforts, but I feel constrained to write something on what I consider the best method of using slides in public evangelism. One inefficient method is to lecture h the dark. This is most unsatisfactory, because it is essential that the people see the preacher, and more essential that the preacher be able to observe the people and use the influence of the eye to enhance the effect of his preaching.
Another unsatisfactory method is to project the slides at the close of the lecture. Since it is necessary to comment upon each slide as it is thus projected, this makes two lectures instead of one. In my opinion the correct method in using slides is to punctuate the lecture with the pictures, and the best way to do this is to have a switch on the preacher's desk which controls the entire inside lighting of the tent, tabernacle, or auditorium. This control of the lighting ought to be easily arranged in the case of a mission-owned meeting place, which is portable and may be carried from place to place and set up. The speaker, operating the master switch, plunges the hall into darkness at will, and this, of course, is the signal for his helper at the projector to flash on a picture. Thus the lecture proceeds with pictorial high lights, other things being equal, to the great edification of the congregation.
