Preaching – The Lloyd C Douglas Page

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2h: Newspaper Style

Excerpt from Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Second Phase—Preacher and Newspaper,” Christian Century, August 19, 1920.

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He is talking about a minister who wants to enlarge his audience but was taught nothing at seminary about reaching the surrounding community through the local newspaper.]

“If he is of an extremely practical sort in estimating his assets, this preacher can console himself with the thought that whenever he wishes to do so he can use the column of The Morning Star as if he were the editor himself. This is not a negligible consideration to any man who wishes to give his pulpit some publicity. All he lacks now is the ability to use this space in such a manner that the reader will shout, ‘Fine! We must go around and hear this man Blue!’ – instead of muttering, ‘What rot these preachers get off in their churches! What bewildering stupidity!’

“Speaking generally, if the preacher who has been given an opportunity to preach to the public through the newspaper does not contrive to grip his readers with the first line, he had better save his typewriter ribbon. However, in his anxiety to lead his copy with something clever to attract attention, he must not forget that he is not selling shaving soap, or advertising a circus, but attempting to spread the good news of salvation. To spread that good news, it is necessary that he shall be honest with his constituency. To be honest does not mean, necessarily, that he must be dull. Possibly a few illustrations will help here.

“The preacher has talked about the importance of living up to one’s best self – a not infrequent theme among us. Of course, no attempt is made here to phrase the subject for announcement. Any man who would advertise that he was going to preach on ‘Living Up to One’s Best Self’ has really accomplished nothing but a deepening conviction on the part of the public that he has nothing to unload of interest to a populace sated with good advice.

“Whatever he may call the sermon, however, for purposes of arousing interest, this is his thesis – ‘living up to one’s best self.’ He thinks it is good enough to be given to the general public through the press. As he glances over his notes prefatory to composing the abstract, he searches for the one striking incident, anecdote, or ‘human interest fact’ most likely to reach out and grab the casual reader. When his sermon appears in print, next morning, it does not lead with a stiff procession of platitudes, marching along in single file with their chins in the air and their skirts carefully clutched to avoid the mud, but with the simple statement of a concrete fact.

“A study of newspaper style will show that a proper name, in the first line, is not uncommon. The mention of dollars and cents is always attractive to the reader. It interests him to learn that somebody has made some money. He is not much less interested in learning how somebody else lost some money. In the present instance, the sermon abstract begins as follows:

Wedgwood could not afford to lose the $40.00 which he had been offered for the vase. He was just starting in the pottery business and needed the money. But the vase was imperfect, and he ordered it broken and thrown upon the scrap-pile; for he vowed that no man could ever buy a ‘Second’ at his shop. He was going to make no ‘seconds.’ It looked like poor business at first; but Josiah Wedgwood became the most famous potter in the world.

“Now, after that, the preacher can say almost anything he likes about the importance of living up to one’s best self and expect to retain the interest of a considerable percent of his readers. Is there anything claptrap about that? Is it any more undignified to begin with ‘A certain man had two sons; and the elder of them said to his father,’ etc.? Indeed, isn’t this about the same process? Is the preacher to be more dignified than his Master? Is the servant greater than his lord?”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2c: The Crowded Church

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted – A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase – Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. The Reverend D. Preston Blue is excited thinking about increasing the size of his audience.]

“Moreover, Blue has learned upon inquiry that there is no room in the crowded church for such petty annoyances and puerile squabbles as customarily prey upon the frail vitals of the less prosperous. Little rackets which might do serious damage in a puny church are smothered, ignored, and forgotten in the crowd. Deacon Edgewise, peevish because his wishes have been disregarded in some minor manner, may announce to his fellow members of the Fifty-Percent-Efficient-Church that he is going to withdraw – he and his wife, man-servant and maid-servant, heirs and assigns, ox and ass, money, influence, prayers, and presence – thus creating sad havoc in Zion and necessitating the minister to undignify himself, his profession, and the cause he serves by trotting around to the Edgewise headquarters with his trusty molasses bucket. But if the Edgewises belong to a church habitually crowded, they will be somewhat cautious about ‘checking out’ in a moment of irritation, being fully aware that they will be missed about as seriously as a handful of clover blossoms plucked from a forty-acre meadow.

“All things considered, Blue believes that a crowd would mean the salvation of his church. He resolves to have one, if it is to be achieved by honest means. He lays out a definite campaign. We have seen his early efforts to line up the people who are already of his following. Now he has arrived at a decision to make his pulpit known to the general public. The most natural medium is the newspaper. He is going to avail himself of it. Only one condition holds him back. He hasn’t the faintest idea how to go about it.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2b: Long Step Toward Happiness

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 2 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted — A Congregation!” This second installment was in the August 19, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. It was entitled, “Second Phase — Preacher and Newspaper.” I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. Douglas is talking about a minister who has decided to stay with his current church and seek a wider audience there, rather than going elsewhere.]

“It is worth a great deal to our hero to have found out so much as that. Just to have stopped his continuous chatter about ‘the peculiar conditions which obtain in this town’; just to have ceased poring over the column of ‘Calls and Resignations’ in his weekly church paper, in quest of some utopia where the SRO sign would be hung on the church door Sunday mornings at 10:20; just to have left off petting his fatuous dream of Elsewhere — constitutes Mr. Blue’s first long step toward happiness in his ministry.

“This man has given himself to prayer and fasting over his problem. He knows now that there is just one thing in this world that he wants – a crowd! He is conscious of a message burning in his heart – a message so highly potential that if only he could face a large congregation with it, there could be no doubt in anybody’s mind about its value. He recalls the few times he has occupied a pew in a crowded church; the strangely magnetic quality of the audience; its tense attitude of expectancy; how the congregational singing of the hymns seemed to carry a rich overtone almost supernatural in its uplifting power; how vividly the Book poured out its inexhaustible treasures when read to that responsive crowd – a crowd that had been welded into one solid chunk so that it saw, heard, thought, and felt as with the eyes, ears, mind, and heart of one man!

“And the sermon! Inspired! Nothing less than that! Why, almost anybody could preach under such circumstances! The minister seemed fairly lifted up and borne along by the intense interest of his congregation whose size lent new significance to the belief that the gospel is, in very truth, the hope of the world! With such support, Blue knows that he, too, could preach. With the promise of such a congregation, Sunday after Sunday, he could hurl himself into his task of sermon preparation with all the zeal and abandon of a prophet.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 2a: Growing Where Planted

by Ronald R Johnson

Title page of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted—A Congregation, Second Phase—Preacher and Newspaper,” Christian Century, August 19, 1920.

“Weary of preaching listless sermons to a handful of Laodiceans, the minister whom we shall hereafter refer to as the Reverend D. Preston Blue [pronounced ‘Depressed and Blue’] has determined that he must find a congregation of sufficient size to stimulate his best homiletic efforts. It will require, he thinks, the encouragement of a crowd to vitalize him to the point where he, in turn, may energize his constituency.

“Mr. Blue does not pose as a walking monument to Wisdom, but he is canny enough to understand that by resigning his pulpit at Broad Street Church in Centerville to accept that of The People’s Church of Middlepoint, his problem will be altered only as to its locality. He has quite left off belief in the ancient fallacy that the grass is greener and more succulent on the other side of the fence. Blue suspects that if he cannot draw an audience of respectable size on Sundays in Centerville, neither will he be likely to create much excitement with his pulpit message in Middlepoint, seeing that conditions and people are strangely similar everywhere in their relation to a given individual.

“No; our friend has abandoned the idea that by giving his household furniture an expensive boxcar ride of three hundred miles he can develop some hitherto untested pulpit powers. There has been vouchsafed unto him the wisdom that if ever he is to command the attention of a larger congregation, he may make the adventure of recruiting the same here in Centerville quite as easily and with as much promise of success as anywhere else on earth.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 1f: Second Only to Blood

by Ronald R Johnson

From the first installment of Douglas’s series, “Wanted — A Congregation!” in the 8/5/1920 issue of The Christian Century.

[This is from Part 1 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted — A Congregation!” This first installment was in the August 5, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. He’s talking about a minister who has decided to enlarge his audience.]

“Our friend must be equally on guard now that he does not become so infatuated with the preparation of his sermon that he neglects the other important features of his campaign for a crowd. Much remains to be done. So far, he has lined up his active congregation. He has won the support of his ‘prospectives’ for this particular Sunday morning’s service. And he has a sermon under construction. This is only part of the process. The general public must be given to understand that there is an attraction in the gospel he preaches. How does one reach the public?

“Next to human blood, ink is the most redemptive chemical in the world. Let the preacher keep this in mind. More Americans form their opinions from the public press than by any other process. The minister who draws himself up haughtily, muttering his distaste of what he dubs ‘newspaper notoriety’ has boxed himself in from active contact with the people at the one place of all places where he is sure of access to them.

“The editor of the daily newspaper – (At this point, the editor of this paper is reaching for the axe. He says that no one man is permitted to monopolize all of the talk. Not if he can help it.)

“It still remains for us to discuss the further processes by which our anxious friend, the minister-without-a-congregation, is to recruit a crowd, and preach to it with a new kind of fervor, and thrill it to its fingertips, and touch it with the contagion of his faith until it wants to come back – again and again – provided he really has a message to deliver!

“No amount of campaigning, calling, writing, advertising, is going to result in a permanent gain unless he is able to deliver a message touched with the breath of the Holy Spirit.

“This is no wild dream that we are talking about. The best proof that this thing can be done is the fact that it has been done. Not always is it attended with the same degree of success: sometimes a hundred-fold, sometimes sixty, sometimes thirty. Most discouraged preachers will probably feel that is they could only multiply what they have at present by so little as thirty, it would be good business.”

[In my next post, I’ll tell you about the second installment in the series, “Wanted – A Congregation!”]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 1e: But the Sermon

by Ronald R Johnson

“All this time, while the minister is planning to gain access to a crowd on this strategic October third, he must never lose consciousness of the fact that he must make the most of that wonderful opportunity when it arrives. If he is a very, very poor psychologist, he will decide to say in his introduction, ‘It gives us a thrill of joy to see such a large congregation with us today. Customarily, this is a lonely place on Sunday. You might have been surprised at the echoes which caromed back and forth from these hallowed walls only last Lord’s Day,’ etc.

“Such a method of greeting his great opportunity would be very like the psychology practiced by the shop which announced, on a large placard placed beside the display of a modish gown: This is the only thing in the store worth looking at. We have put it out in front to bait you inside; but, in solemn truth, the rest of our stuff is awful.

“No mention need be made by the minister in his sermon that this is a red-letter day in his church. There is no reason why he should waste his time saying it, especially since it would be such a stupid remark to make – if he wishes to retain that crowd and draw a larger one. No, he must plan his sermon as if accustomed every Sunday to a throng that elbowed and pushed and jostled to get inside the front lobby.

“Again – let him not commit the indiscretion of scolding his crowd for failure to attend church services regularly. These people may possibly be induced to return another day if they are attracted to the message. They are not going to be attracted by abuse, either explicit or implied.

“That sermon ought, somehow and somewhere, to touch human life with hope, cheer, faith, optimism, and engender a longing to hear more of this gospel. It should be replete with incident. A whimsical phrase – even if smile-provoking – need not be tossed out of the sermon if it demands admission. It’s a very sick and sour gospel that will not permit the disciples to smile now and again.

“Day and night, that sermon is being built in our minister’s mind and heart. Every time he throws some fresh fuel on the fire of his campaign for a congregation, he hurries back to his study to work on that wonderful sermon. Early morning finds him gazing, unseeingly, out at his eastern window – his pulse pounding in his temples, his fingernails biting deeply into his palms – as he contemplates the message that has taken full possession of his soul. That message is going to be worthy of his office and his opportunity! As he considers it, he wonders how he could have won the consent of his own mind to preach so dully, so listlessly, so dispassionately, upon such themes.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 1d: Keep Your Eye on the Ball

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 1 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted — A Congregation!” This first installment was in the August 5, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. Douglas is talking about a minister who has decided to enlarge his audience.]

“At this point the minister is going to be tempted to spoil the whole scheme by listening to well-meaning counselors who feel that if a spoonful is helpful, the entire bottle should be taken at a gulp. He is going to be advised by the Sunday School superintendent that since October third is to be such a big day, it would be well to put on a general renaissance in that department also, on the specified date. The president of the Young People’s Society sees, in this scheme, a chance to ride through to a larger success in her department. All the auxiliary societies will want to use the campaign for a truck to haul their affairs into more prominence. To each and all, the minister will say, ‘No!’ And again, ‘No! Not by a jugful!’

“Here looms up another example of the wretched psychology that is practiced by churches. Consider the show window at the best store in town and be wise. Is it full to the very eaves with hats, caps, boots, shoes, furnishing goods, gowns, perambulators, parasols, and washtubs? It is not. The display is concentrated upon one or two or three concepts — and these concepts are very closely allied. The window dresser knows something about psychology. It is his business to study people’s mental attitudes.

“The minister has decided that he is going to have a crowded church on the morning of October third. Not the evening, but the morning. He must not wreck his scheme by permitting any other motive to get mixed into this process. The Sunday School superintendent is to be given to understand that his only relation to this campaign is to get behind it and boost. The Young People’s Society must keep out of the traffic. No other fact dare intrude itself here. The minister is going to have a crowd on the morning of Sunday, October third — and that’s all there is to it! No other causes need apply. Let us assume that the active membership of the congregation is lined up now and willing to do it honest best to make a success of this adventure. What next?”

[In response, Douglas assumes that his hypothetical minister has been compiling and organizing a list of prospective members, gleaned from conversations in the community. They now go to that list and identify names to contact for the upcoming sermon. (To be continued in my next post…)]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 1c: First at Jerusalem

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 1 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted — A Congregation!” This first installment was in the August 5, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. Douglas is talking about a minister who wants to enlarge his audience.]

“A very good place to begin this campaign of giving his gospel message a longer reach is among the faithful band that constitutes his present congregation. There is no reason why he should consider it a secret that his congregation is too small. Every member of it is quite as fully aware of that fact as he is himself. He need have no hesitancy about confiding to these good people his ambition to increase their number.

“What dreadfully poor psychologists some preachers are! How often they either candidly declare to their small congregations that ‘it is to be greatly regretted so few are out this morning,’ or hint the equivalent of that whine by some veiled allusion to the innumerable absentees, to the tune of a deep-fetched sigh. This is very poor advertising. The stranger who has put in an appearance for the first time that day surely has some justification for feeling that he was almost on the point of attaching himself to a lost cause.

“Let the minister leave off all his whimpering and endeavor to enlist the hopeful cooperation of his people in an attempt to secure a larger congregation. He will do well to take a solemn oath that never again will he commit the blunder of saying on Sunday morning, ‘If you only knew how depressing it is for a little handful to gather in this vasty place on Sunday evenings, you would come out and join us, surely!’ Yes — after an alluring advertisement like that — yes — surely (not). Where, oh where is his knowledge of human psychology who stands in his pulpit and begs his congregation to be more faithful in church attendance? No; one doesn’t get them that way.

“Our harassed friend is about to enter upon a campaign to recruit a congregation. He decides upon a favorable date for the opening of his bombardment. This date should be three or four weeks off, to give him time to plan the event with care. It should be a Sunday when natural conditions are friendly. Probably not on the twenty-second day of August.

“For the same reason that one should begin at Jerusalem before invading all Judea and Samaria and the uttermost parts of the earth, it is better to launch this campaign in a little group of a half dozen trusted men around a lunch table. Let the whole matter be pushed out into the open. The preacher is tired of ambling along at his present gait. He knows he can preach if he can find enough people willing to listen. On October third, he is going to look for a crowd! They must help him to that crowd!

“Then — by personal letter, by personal call, by frequent conferences with selected groups of men and women, this minister should commit his sworn friends to the task of bringing as many people with them to church on Sunday morning, October third, as they can possibly influence.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 1b: Pitiless Self-Search

by Ronald R Johnson

[This is from Part 1 of Lloyd C. Douglas, “Wanted — A Congregation!” This first installment was in the August 5, 1920, issue of The Christian Century. I am continuing where I left off in my most recent post. Douglas is talking about a minister with a big church building but a small congregation.]

“PITILESS SELF-SEARCH

“Instead of planning a series of sad sermons on the decline of faith as exhibited by this generation, wherewith to increase the depression of the remnant that is still left to him, this perplexed brother could do no better thing than attempt a critical examination of his case, in the solitude of his own study. Let him take stock of his own resources. He should ask himself whether he is entirely convinced that the public needs what he has to offer. If he is assured of that, let him ask himself if he really has it in him to hold and interest a crowd were he to contrive the means to find access to a crowd. If confident of that, he should investigate the possible or probable reasons for his failure to achieve a satisfactory hearing.

“Perhaps the public does not know what it is missing by its refusal to listen when he talks. Do not smile. This is not intended as an ironical slap at our discouraged friend. Many a potentially excellent preacher is hacking away, Sunday by Sunday, at a heart-breaking task who, with a little encouragement in the form of a large and alert audience, would surprise himself and his best friends by the sudden release of a volume of unsuspected pulpit power! In many cases, these latent geniuses lack a proper hearing simply because they are undeveloped. They are undeveloped because they are unknown. The problem, for them, would be fully solved if only they were able to sense the tug of that strong undertow which accompanies the tidal wave of magnetism flowing from a densely packed crowd.

“It is the purpose of this writing to suggest a few of the processes by which a preacher who really thinks he has a message may win an audience of sufficient size to waken his slumbering genius. Stated with the utmost brevity, and in a phrase that will doubtless pull the very house down about our ears — what this man’s pulpit needs is advertisement! The public must be let into the secret that here is a preacher who claims the right to attention.”

[To be continued in my next post…]

Wanted: A Congregation, Part 1a: What Ails the Pulpit?

by Ronald R Johnson

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing excerpts from a series of articles Douglas published in The Christian Century in the summer/fall of 1920 under the heading, “Wanted—A Congregation!” (The Christian Century holds the copyright to these essays.) The first of these articles appeared in the August 5, 1920, issue. After a brief introduction in which he mentions John Spargo (and by so doing, reminds readers why Douglas’s name is familiar to them — because he participated in that debate), he launches into his subject:

“WHAT AILS THE PULPIT?

“Every denomination is learning, through its leaders, that the problem of recruiting its ministry is fast becoming acute. The obvious reason for this failure to entice a sufficient number of capable young men to espouse our profession, resides in the fact that there is too much restlessness in our ranks to warrant an ambitious youth in risking his future with an institution whose present employees seem so discontented. If the youth is still unconvinced that this is the case, after reading in the secular press and the religious journals that ministers, in increasing numbers, are trading their pulpits for secretaryships in philanthropic organizations, he need only attend any one of the host of churches where the pulpit is dolefully lamenting the godlessness of this generation and its indifference to Christian duties.

“When the influence of the pulpit grows feeble, and its drawing power enervated, what is the trouble? Is the generation so much to blame? Why should we not look this matter squarely in the face? Who are the dissatisfied preachers? Are they men who habitually face large congregations on Sundays? No; they are men who have lost interest in their pulpits because they are unable to gain a satisfactory hearing. This is a very real problem, and if there is any way to solve it, let the remedy be brought forward without delay.

“No preacher can be expected to invest his finest energies in the preparation of his sermons unless he has an audience in his mind’s eye while he works. If, on Tuesday morning as he settles to his task of planning next Sunday morning’s discourse, he is able only to visualize a congregation of one hundred and fifty people scattered lonesomely over an auditorium built to accommodate six hundred, that fact alone is sufficient to benumb his creative faculties and throttle whatever genius there is within him.

“If he knew to a moral certainty, as he begins to lay out the blueprints for that sermon, that he was to deliver it to a crowded church — to face a compact, alert, shoulder-to-shoulder congregation filling every available seat in the auditorium — he would attack his job with the fine enthusiasm of an artist engaged upon his magnum opus. What he needs to fire his genius is the consciousness of a strong demand for his message. He needs the lift, and drive, and tug of a crowd! His problem is simple enough. Wanted — a congregation!

“Now, this suggestion is going to be riddled to frazzled tatters. I think I can hear the clickity-clack-clack now, of vehement typewriters tapping out the good old warning to beware the seductive temptation to attract crowds. We shall be reminded yet again that the unworthy brother who pats his vanity because he has contrived to pack his church by the bizarre announcement of some sensational theme should indulge himself a sackcloth-and-ashes hour of penitence in which he recalls that a large multitude of people can be collected by a pair of incompatible dogs in the street, or a clown with a monkey on a strap.

“Of course, this is very depressing, and quite enough to make any man thoroughly ashamed of himself who preaches on Sundays in a packed church. To ease his discomfort, however, he can remember that when the crowds that thronged about the Lord grew so congested that the people actually trampled upon one another, the speaker is not reported as having been ashamed. The tug that they made at his great heart was almost more than he could bear, as he viewed with compassion that multitude which reminded him, more than anything else, of sheep — a shepherdless sheep.

“Whoever is ambitious to follow in the footsteps of the Man of Galilee should never speak contemptuously of a crowd! Doubtless there are charlatans to whom a warning might be beneficial. Undeniably there are quacks whose brief vogue has been worn unworthily. But — if a church with a consistency justifying the upkeep of a public auditorium seating six hundred people is unable to draw more than twenty-five percent of that number to the major event of the week, there is something the matter; and the manager of the institution may well inquire of himself whether it is in his power to remedy [the situation].”

[To be continued in my next post…]