FRONT ROW CHRISTIANS by Bene-Berak

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Dec 15, 1881

FRONT ROW CHRISTIANS.

By Bene-Berak

EVERY pastor, and, for that matter, every public speaker knows how difficult it is to get the front tier of seats occupied. Oftentimes there is good reason why this should be so. It sometimes happens that it brings the hearers too near the speaker. There are many other reasons why front seats are avoided, but modesty is not one of them. Somewhere near the center of the audience room is the favorite location. This gives the listener an opportunity to see as well as hear, and a great many of even those who go to church had rather see and be seen than to hear. If hearing were the only object in attending church, then it would be desirable to get as near the speaker as possible, in order not to lose any of the sermon.

In some churches, where there are a great many aged people, front seats are in demand. There used to be an Episcopal Church in Baltimore where this was notably the case, and such seats brought in the largest rentals of any. But the young, and even the middle aged, do not take the front seats in church. They like to take their gospel at a respectable distance. Perhaps they think they would not relish the hard knocks they might receive if they were nearer. It is a waste of money, as things go, to have any seats very near the pulpit. But I notice that no matter how much area there may be between the platform and the front tier, it is very seldom that the first row of seats has its proportion of occupants. Perhaps if Christians got a little closer to their pastors in the public services a more reciprocal feeling might be created. We do not telephone our sympathy when it is possible to express it in a less formal manner. Pastors like the sympathy of their people, and better sermons are the invariable result of a close rally around the preacher.

—Bene-Berak, in Herald of Truth.