Increasing Church Attendance

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 25, 1912

Increasing Church Attendance

WHEN the Christian church was yet young, there came in among a certain element a desire for numbers; and that desire was gratified, but at a terrible cost. It brought apostasy and the dark ages, and the Inquisition came as a natural result. We see the same desire manifested to-day on the part of a portion of the church body; and the increase of that tendency is sure to bring with it what it brought in the early days of Christianity.

Some clergymen, more anxious for numbers than conversions, have fitted up dancing-parlors in connection with their churches, or have organized athletic societies and arranged wrestling-matches and boxing-bouts, organizing classes in boxing and wrestling. The following extract from the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin of Jan. 12, 1912, illustrates the tendency, and shows a new method of accomplishing the same result:—

A plan to increase the attendance at the Third German Baptist Sunday-school, Ritner and Tenth streets, will be tried Sunday. The plan consists of a miniature pushmobile-race. A course representing Broad Street from Government Avenue to Erie Avenue has been laid around the room, and miniature pushmobiles will be used in the race, the entire arrangement being suspended from the ceiling by wires. Each class will be represented by one pushmobile. The superintendent is the originator of this plan.

There may be a difference between holding a competitive pushmobile-race in a Sunday-school room on Sunday to draw a crowd and holding a competitive horse-race on the race-track on the same day to draw a crowd; but the difference is not sufficient to guarantee to the pushmobile-race any sort of divine commission as a winner of souls or as a promulgator of the gospel. Such things are no more a part of the divine plan for the evangelization of the world than the “strange fire” offered by Nadab and Abihu, was a part of the sanctuary service of old. Lev. 10:1. That God does not visit his wrath upon such substitutes now as he did then, must not be taken as an indication of his approval. Soon he will cleanse his temple; but not this time with a whip of cords or the summary execution of two priests. The lessons he has given are sufficient so that there is no excuse for such exhibitions in edifices dedicated to his worship.