I believe with all my heart in spearhead campaigns. They should be continually going on, reaping where the seed has been sown through the years in our local churches and by other workers preceding us. However, I also believe that especially in great cities and districts a system of continuous evangelism should be going on. In a large city a man who has a good church, where he can hold Sunday night meetings and other special series, ought to be on the radio every week, or every day, year in and year out, continually feeding into that church or hall.
A great campaign with tremendous expense, then several years of financial panting and exhaustion, and then another great campaign, is not the real answer to the needs of our great cities. I believe we should have powerful preachers in those great cities, on the air every day, and on television once a week, with a good hall or center to which the people can be invited. This continuous work, this continuous pounding, will bring a constant stream of converts to the message. And in stating this I am speaking from experience.
Not long ago I heard the report of a Methodist minister at his conference. He was not a great preacher, but he always had a hundred or more new believers each year. Many who were much better preachers than he, had far fewer converts. They asked him the secret. He said, "I keep preaching. I never stop. My church is alight every Sunday night, even right through the hot summer."
Someone said, "Yes, but sometimes isn't your church almost empty in the summer?" He said, "Certainly it is. Sometimes only fifteen or twenty people are present. But they know there will always be a service in my church. And taking it year in and year out I get more converts than if I had one big meeting and then shut up the rest of the year."
He is right!
Our work in London is having an impact because it continues all the time. Men are changed, but the work goes on. Men of different talents, different appearance, come in and make their contribution. Why should not this plan be more widely copied, even in small places? Why cannot the man in a district with several churches assure the people that once a year they will have a short effort in each church? The church could always know and know a long time ahead when their effort will come. Why cannot the man from a neighboring district come in and do the preaching, with the local pastor upholding his hands in prayer and by joining him in visitation? Then he can go to the other district and do the preaching. Thus a new voice, a new man, comes in. This is an old custom. It worked long ago, and it will work today. Are we too busy doing things that do not need to be done? This is a work that definitely needs to be done and done continuously.
Here is something that may never get into print. [But we are printing it!—EnrroRs.] But if we could have a sabbatical year, just one year in which no councils, no congresses, nothing like that would be held, with no Fall Council, no Spring Council—just let the General Conference Committee run things for a year while we all preach and work for God, and quit running around for a year—wouldn't that be great? Why, we would have more souls than we have ever had before. We would save a million dollars and we would win thousands of souls. It would be a wonderful thing to have such a year, a seventh year of release from these things.
Perhaps that is suggesting too much, but someday something like that will happen. And when it does it will be the beginning of an evangelism that will lighten the world with the glory of the Lord.