THIS is the month when the final preparations are to be made, reviewed, and analyzed to make sure that everything will be in readiness for the MISSION 72 meetings to begin March 4. Pages 20 and 21 of the Planning Guide booklet should be carefully studied. Let us consider a few of the items that are especially important, lest, after all the planning, expense, and promotion of the program, we come to the meetings themselves and fail to realize maximum results for God's cause.
Every phase of the advertising and pro motion should now be carefully checked out. The billboard advertising should be gin. Posters, window banners, and bumper stickers should be used. The curiosity of the public should now be aroused. The Reach Out for Life theme should make an impact on the community and raise an interest in the meetings to follow. News paper advertising will be utilized.
Requests to the Voice of Prophecy, Faith for Today, and our missionary journals for the circulation of the handbills to those on their interest lists should already have been made. If this has not been done, it is probably too late. These media will also highlight MISSION '72.
The Interest File
Of special importance to the success of MISSION 72 is the prospect file. By now this should contain the names of many interests gathered from a great variety of sources. Hopefully, these interests have all been nurtured. Each one should have been personally visited, with appropriate re marks of the visit recorded on the prospect card. Before the meetings begin, special plans should be made to ensure that everyone named in the file will be personally visited again, given a handbill, and urged to attend the Reach Out meetings. If the person is out, leave the handbill in the door with a note, but return again and again until the personal contact has been made. Discover what part of the day or night the prospect is most apt to be at home. Record this information on the prospect card for further reference. But be sure that before the opening night, every interest in the file is contacted and personally invited. Where transportation is a problem, see that arrangements are made for someone to pick them up. Where baby sitting is a problem, do whatever is necessary to help meet this need. As far as possible remove every obstacle that might hinder attendance.
All of this is far more than the pastor can manage himself. He should not even at tempt it. But he, with the lay activities leader and MISSION 72 coordinator, should be sure that the plans are well laid so that the laymen themselves will become thoroughly involved. This takes planning ---and planning together, with the laymen involved at every stage. The names will need to be sorted according to geographical areas, then the laymen assigned certain ones to call on. At times the assignments might be guided by the particular age, interests, and background of the one to be visited. But whatever way it is done, it must be well planned and the enthusiastic support of the laymen achieved.
These personal visits and invitations to the meetings will be in addition to the invitations they will receive through the mail, for every name in the prospect file should be circularized also through the mail with a handbill and accompanying letter. Among the names in the file will be, of course, those that have shown an inter est in response to the Reach Out leaflets distributed.
As the meetings draw near there will also be the general mass door-to-door distribution of announcements throughout the area. To gain maximum participation here, it is important to work through every department of the church: the Sabbath school, its various departments, the teachers and classes; the MV Society; the Path finder Club; and the Dorcas and Welfare Society. Enthusiastic leaders of these groups and activities can do much to help get those associated with them involved. This too must be planned ahead and with the lay leaders and officers present in the planning sessions.
A very important instrument, already in stalled and paid for, which can be very helpful in making contacts and getting people out to the meetings is the telephone. Telephone calls cannot always serve as a substitute for the personal visit, but they can do much to augment such a visit. They can also be effective when it may be impossible to make the visit otherwise. During the course of the meetings it can be used as a means of added encouragement to some who perhaps promised to be out but did not show up. A few minutes on the telephone can often turn the tide and get them out to the meetings.
Revival Week—February 5-12
What happens during revival week may go far toward determining what will hap pen during the public meetings to follow. Revival in the church is a necessity. Through Mrs. White we are advised that "the Lord does not now work to bring many souls into the truth."
According to this it is possible that with all our working, promoting, paying, and praying, the Lord still finds it impossible to work with us. This is a solemn and drastic thought! Why is this so? How can it be possible? The answer is clear because of the condition in our churches. They are not spiritually prepared to be used of God to bring others into the church, nor to welcome new members into their fellowship.
The suggested sermons prepared especially for these revival meetings are designed to meet this very need. Whether these sermons are used or not, pray earnestly that this week will be a week of genuine heart-searching, revival, and reformation. If the members of the church do not have the little compilation Consider One Another, prepared for the CONCERN program used last year, this would be a good time to distribute them. If they already have them urge that they be read again. The quotations from the Spirit of Prophecy writings can do much to help prepare the church to welcome and integrate new members.
Our Greatest Opportunity
MISSION 72 presents the greatest opportunity in the history of our church for a major step forward in the accomplishment of its task, to reach every person with the message that is to prepare a people for the coming of the Lord.
We should remind you that the Reach Out for Life meetings will be nationally advertised in four major magazines and on radio and TV with special programs and spots. Our own missionary journals will also carry full-page announcements. So it is vital that meetings should be held in every community where we have a church and wherever else we can arrange a meeting. There can and should be many youth efforts as well as lay efforts. This will enable us to take full advantage of the division-wide advertising.
We must be much in prayer about this program. We must not let this opportunity slip by without accomplishing great things with God and for God. How important, then, that we as fellow workers rededicate our lives to our Saviour, and pledge ourselves to full devotion of all that we have and are toward the consummation of the task. The Ministerial Association staff joins every worker and member of this church in making such a commitment. "Even so, come, Lord Jesus."
