Dwight L. Moody was once asked what he considered to be the best method of reaching the multitudes outside the churches. His reply was, "Go to them."
It is an undeniable fact that, for a number of reasons, there are thousands of people who will not attend a church service or an evangelistic meeting held indoors. But many of these will stop and listen to a message given in the open air.
The outdoor meeting is one of the most Scriptural and most effective methods of reaching crowds of people who normally would not be reached by indoor preaching. This type of evangelism is at the very root of all Christian enterprise, for Jesus proclaimed the message of salvation wherever the crowds gathered. His ministry was largely devoted to open-air preaching. We too must go where the people are. We must go into the street to reach the man in the street.
If we are to bring the Advent message in a strong way to the attention of the masses, if we are to force them to think of its challenge, to examine its claims, and to see it as a living force, we must follow in the steps of all the great reformers of the past, and go outside with an earnest, passionate proclamation of the truths of the everlasting gospel. It is a well-recognized fact that nearly every great reform movement and revival of religion in the past has been accompanied by, if not caused by, a vast amount of preaching in out-of-door places where crowds resort. In a previous plea for open-air work I have shown how the Reformation and the Wesleyan movements were built up in this manner. (See MINISTRY, May, 1939, "Open-Air Evangelism.")
World-involving upheavals and the swift evolution of events today herald some fast-approaching further climax in human , affairs. How vital, therefore, that we heed afresh the age-enduring commission of the soon-coming King: "Preach the gospel to every creature.' Bearing that urgent mandate in mind, and the fact that great masses of the people will not come to us, we must go to them.
The present call is for a going out to the people. John Wesley says pointedly that he came to hold it as a settled opinion that those outside the church will not come inside until those who are inside take the message outside. Wesley's opinion in this is as sound as in most other matters. This conviction is true to the apostolic spirit, for the early church was all the while going out—going out with the message. It did not spend itself trying to get people inside buildings. We never hear of such a thing in connection with it. The Christianity of those first days was evangelistic and missionary. It gloried in going out to the people. It loved the open air. its defense was attack. Need we wonder at its achievements?
And it is of the greatest significance and importance to us to remember that the messenger of the Lord, under His leading, placed the seal of approval on this method of labor. Mrs. White was often found preaching in open-air meetings, not only in this country, but also in Britian and Australia. She has this to say of outdoor evangelism:
"In the Lord's great temple, the open air—the heavens our dome, and the earth our floor—we can obtain hearers who otherwise would not hear." "There is no other way to reach these people but by holding open-air meetings... Unless we make de-. cided efforts to go outside our own immediate circle to meet the people where they are, we shall miss the saving of many souls."—Evangelism, pp. 427, 426.
"There are places where the people can best be reached by open-air meetings. There are many who can do this line of work, but they must be clad with the whole armor of righteousness. . . .
"These [open-air meetings] may be held at times, and on special occasions will be the best means of reaching the people."—/bid., p. 586.
"We were confident that open-air meetings would be the means of reaching some who would not attend a service held in a church. And thus they have proved. . . . We expect to continue these open-air meetings. I believe that by them much good will be accomplished. . . . We desire to do all we can to warn those around us of the soon coming of the Saviour."—/bid., p. 405.
We have been guilty of grave neglect in overlooking this effective means of spreading the message. Some of us are so entangled with indoor organizations that we are crippled by a network of activities which cater only to those who are already inside the church. There are so many movements inside that we have no eye for the vast challenge outside. Many of our indoor activities are unquestionably essential, but we must somehow break free from the superfluous for the sake of the bigger issue beyond our doors.
We must abandon the conception which thinks of the church as a store with nicely dressed windows, and the shopkeeper inside, waiting for folks to come in and buy. There has been so little business done in some of the "stores" that the shopkeeper inside is in danger of going soundly to sleep.
Many a church is more like a hospital for spiritual incurables than a barracks where soldiers are trained to go out and wage holy warfare against the devil. The early church was like a go-ahead firm of distributors with an army of enthusiastic travelers determined to capture the markets for their commodities. We must recapture their initiative. We must attack. There is a striking sentence which comes at the end of Lloyd George's War Memoirs: "You cannot fight a winning battle with a retreating mind." Let us be finished with retreatism and defeatism, and be up and out with the message.
And we do not need to fear that our dignity will suffer in taking the message outside. If religious dignity keeps us indoors, it is a false dignity. There is no true dignity sacrificed in consecrated evangelistic aggressiveness. Some preachers are spending the heat of their hidden fires on a mere handful of listeners scattered through the pews of a deserted sanctuary when they might have the exhilaration of proclaiming the glad tidings in ringing tones to hundreds out of doors, and be helping to fill up their empty pews at the same time.
The reflex action on all who take part in outdoor evangelism is enormous. Many of our members and workers sometimes feel that in church they are dealing with people already overfamiliar with everything, and it is hard to feel a freshness of approach. But one gets this "lift" in the open air. The urge of evangelism arises spontaneously in the speaker. The choir and other singers feel also that they are singing their gospel songs as a message of good news, and they lose their routine attitude in the sense of freshness and reality.
Last summer in Boston Commons, in the heart of the city, it was my privilege to lead a band of young ministers and lay members in an open-air endeavor, and we had the thrill of preaching the Advent message to thousands. Hundreds of names of interested listeners have been received, and many valuable contacts have been made. The open-air forum is the finest possible training ground for preparing our young men to preach. If they can grip and interest an audience in an outdoor meeting, where listeners can easily walk away, they will have little difficulty in preaching acceptably indoors.
That the enemy of sonls is awake to the enormous advantages of reaching the crowds in the out-of-doors is evident by the use made of parks and open spaces in large cities every summer by certain religious organizations. The Church of Rome, with all her dignity of worship, is turning more and more to this form of activity, as indicated by the following paragraph appearing in the Review and Herald of August 29, 1946:
"A series of 'street Preaching missions,' located on street corners, residential lawns, and parish yards, has been launched with the aid of priests from seven Roman Catholic parishes in St. Louis. Object of the missions is to acquaint nonmembers with the teachings of the Catholic Church. The open-air religious forums make use of movable pulpits, loudspeakers, and portable lighting equipment, according to the Rev. Philip J. LeFevre, CM., professor of philosophy at St. Louis Preparatory Seminary, in charge of the forums. The missions are conducted along catechism lines, with persons in the audience submitting questions and the 'missionaries' supplying the answers."—Page 2.
That outdoor evangelism is hard and exacting work no one will deny, but the main thing is that it is essential, if we are to reach "every creature." Are we not as much in earnest as the Socialists or Communists? Would Christ go into the open air? Would He seek to reach the multitudes in the crowded resorts of our cities? Yes, He would, and He expects us to do it, for we are in His stead.
Every available method and means must now be used to carry the truth speedily to the people. In addition to evangelism in public halls or theaters, radio evangelism, and colporteur evangelism, let us have a noble army of godly men in whom consecration and culture are happily wedded, who boldly and dauntlessly will stand forth among the people in public places. Let voices ring high over all the land, proclaiming the judgment hour to Christless multitudes. Thus shall we fulfill our Lord's command, "Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and . . . into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in." Thus shall we get the message OUT and get the harvest IN.
