PRAYER MEETINGS AND OTHER TOPICS. Mr. Moody’s Question-Drawer — “Get Out of the Ruts” — Cottage Meetings — Attracting Non-Church Goers — Mothers with Infants.

Q. WHAT is the best way to conduct the weekly prayer meeting?

A. There is no trouble about getting the people to attend the weekly prayer meeting if it is made interesting. It should be the best meeting of all, and you can make it so. First, you want plenty of fresh air. You can’t do anything in a close, stuffy room. If a farmer comes in after a hard day’s work, and the room is close, he falls asleep. The people say he wants spirituality; what he wants is fresh air. Let the room be clean, neat, cheerful, and well-lighted. Make the place attractive. Don’t have a cold minister behind a box to lead. Sometimes a minister reads a long Scripture lesson and delivers a lecture. He takes pains to say he is unprepared, and you find that out for yourself before he has gone very far. Break up this coldness and lifelessness. Let the leader get out of the ruts and be free and sociable in his manners with the people. If the minister is determined to keep in a rut, invite him to tea with you some evening, and have a serious talk on the subject, so as to break up the monotony. Above all don’t have any long prayers. All the prayers should be brief. We don’t hear of long prayers in the Bible, except at the dedication of Solomon’s Temple, and that comes but once in centuries. No one likes to hear a long prayer, and when a man is making one, very likely the people are praying that he will stop. Long prayers may have been all right in other times, but they are not now. Men think quicker than they used to, and act quicker. A man used to take ten foolscap pages to send an order for goods to New York; today he sends it by telegraph, and puts it into ten words. See how short are the prayers recorded in the Bible. “Lord, help me!” is one. “Lord, save, or I perish!” is another. Why; a man said that if Peter had had as long a preamble as men put into prayers nowadays, he would have been forty-feet under water before he would have got as far as the petition for rescue. Prayer isn’t praise; it is asking God for something. You can ask God for something in a few words. If a man will pray fifteen minutes in a prayer meeting, he will pray all the spirituality out of it. I’d rather have a man pray three times and only five minutes at a time, than to have him take fifteen minutes at once. When I was in charge of a work in Chicago, I used to say: “I am going to take up the Good Shepherd tonight,” and then get the people to quote texts or make remarks on that subject. If the minister leads, he shouldn’t exhaust the subject in his opening address, and leave the people nothing to say. He had much better try to draw them out.

Then again, it is a good thing for him to bring in fresh voices, even if he has to go and hunt them up. That is the way Dr. Kittredge has done in Chicago, and he has an average attendance of 800 at his prayer meetings. I think I never met Dr. Kittredge but he would say: “Where are you going to be Wednesday night? Will you be here?” “Yes.” “Well; I just wish you would come into our prayer meeting.” He is always looking out for help that way. He has kept it up for fifteen years, and I wish you could see his prayer meeting. When you have men ready to speak, there needn’t be any long pauses. These awful pauses will kill any meeting. The minister should put in a word here and there to keep the interest going. But he shouldn’t take up much time. Any minister that preaches twice on Sunday and then gives a long lecture in the prayer meeting will kill any church in this country. Put that down for a fact. It isn’t the man that does everything himself that accomplishes the most work, but it is the man that gets others to work.

Q. How can you get those men from outside?

A. Have the meeting in your mind so much that when you meet any one of the kind you want, you will invite him. Get one on Monday, another on Tuesday, and so on. I wish we had greater variety in our prayer meetings.

Make a plan, and have it all thought out before Wednesday comes. It means work. You can’t get anything in this world without working for it.

There can be life in our churches if we aim for it.

Q. Wouldn’t a man feel a little restraint if he was called upon publicly to speak on a certain subject?

A. You needn’t call upon him publicly. When you see him in advance you can say: “We are going to have such a subject, ‘Grace,’ or ‘Assurance.’

You have a few days to look it up, and I want you to be ready to speak when there is a good chance.” I’d rather not call a man out. Have the meeting so perfectly free that they can’t help getting up. If you like, give a man a whole chapter of the Bible to speak on. That is broad enough, isn’t it? Anything to get men to open their lips. Make it easy for them.

Q. Do you think it is best to have young people’s meetings? Is there not danger of having too many meetings?

A. My experience is that the more meetings we have, the more interest there is. Some people say that if you have one meeting you don’t want another; that you oughtn’t to have too many irons in the fire. But one iron keeps another one hot, doesn’t it? If you have a meeting for the young people on Monday night, and they are fired up, they will come around to your meeting on Wednesday night. What you want is to develop the whole talent in your church. One person has a talent to lead a meeting; others have talents for speaking and singing. If we could get all the talent out that we have got in our churches, there couldn’t be too many meetings.

I believe the time is coming when in many of our churches there will be a meeting every night in the week.

Q. Would you have the pastor lead the meeting all the time?

A. No; for if he leads all the time, the moment he goes away the whole thing will collapse. One man told me that his church had a wonderful minister — he preached twice on Sunday, led the prayer meeting all the time, and did ever so much other work. But that is a very unhealthy state of things. Everything shouldn’t depend on the minister. What you want is to bring out all the talent you have got in the church.

Q. How should the singing be conducted in the prayer meeting?

A. It is a very good thing to have one leader, because then the people get to understand his ways, and you know he will pitch the tune right. If you leave it to anyone, one person will pitch the tune too high, or another too low. Have one leader if you can. Then it is a very good thing to have such liberty in the meeting that this leader will break right out and sing one verse, or two verses. Have everything short and right to the point. Make it easy for the people to sing everything that is started. Let everyone take part. Then about new tunes. It helps a meeting wonderfully to introduce new tunes as fast as the people will learn them. Say the meeting begins at half-past seven. Give it out that the place will be open at seven o’clock, and that you will spend half an hour in learning new pieces. Sing new tunes as well as old ones. There ought to be more effort made for good music in all our churches and Sabbath Schools.

Q. Would you encourage young people to take part in the prayer meeting, or would you have only staid people take part?

A. “Staid people!” They are exactly the kind we don’t want. Get the young people to take part, of course. That is the very way to break up your stiffness. When we have a “staid” prayer meeting the best thing to do is to break it up. Get out of the ruts. Do you know what a rut is? It is where the wheel gets so deep that you can’t turn it this way or that. What we want more than anything else is to get out of the ruts!

Q. Suppose there are two Scotch elders that are not on good terms, so that one won’t take part if the other does?

A. Ask them to tea with you, and if there is any difference get it out of the way. There is no better man in the world than a Scotchman if he is headed right, but he is very troublesome if he is headed wrong. The best man you can have in your church is a Scotchman if he is right; and you can afford to spend some time to get him right if he is wrong.

Q. What would you do if a man in your church didn’t like to hear young converts testify?

A. I should doubt his Christianity. Of course if a young convert is conceited and egotistical, and talks a great deal about himself, people don’t like that. Tell him it is offensive for anyone to talk much about himself.

But if a convert has the true ring in his testimony, if he has got Heaven in his soul, and some man doesn’t like to hear him, the man hasn’t got the right spirit himself — there must be something wrong.

Q. What would you do with him?

A. Make it too hot for him. If a man doesn’t like to hear the testimony of young converts, make it so that he won’t hear anything else. If he can’t stand it, he ain’t converted. You mustn’t let that man control the church, or have your whole work spoiled because he doesn’t like to hear young people.

Q. Which do you think is the best city missionary, a man or a woman?

A. Give me the women every time. I’ll tell you why. Now, there is a good reason for it. I know all about it, for I was a city missionary for years.

Most of the visiting has to be done in the daytime, when the men are away from home. If a woman goes into a house she can sit down with the wife and family, and talk and pray, and when the man comes home in the evening he won’t get mad and rage as he might if a man had been there. A woman can go into any of the people’s homes anywhere, and talk with the women and children. Not only that, but the women have got more tact.

They have got advantages that men haven’t got. I firmly believe that if we had today in these great cities hundreds where we have one lady missionary, we would soon break up this Nihilism, and Communism, and all such things. I don’t know any agency so powerful as these godly women. They are like angels when they go into dark cellars and garrets, and just hold up Jesus Christ. I tell you. I pray the Lord of the harvest that he will just raise up thousands of women to do this work. When I see so many women that are gay, frivolous — with nothing in the world to do but to go into gay society — and God has given them great talents, I think it is a great calamity, a great pity, that such women do not offer themselves for the work of the Master in this direction. I’d like to see women used a thousand times more than they are. You hear men cursing and swearing, and if a man comes along they don’t stop; but let a woman come, and see the respect they will show her.

Q. Do we want strong-minded women?

A. No; God uses the weak things of the world. Sometimes the weakest women accomplish the most. I suppose the weakest woman in her neighborhood was Mary of Bethany, and yet she has outlived all the women of that age. What she did has outlived all they ever did. I suppose if any of our newspaper reporters had been there, and had seen Mary open that alabaster box and anoint the feet of Jesus, they would have thought it wasn’t worth putting in the papers. They would have said, “There’s nothing in that.” But that act has outlived all the monuments in the world. Mary loved the Master, and at last her heart became so full that she just broke that alabaster box and poured out the costly ointment. As the Scotchman said, it was the only thing she could give to Christ that He could not give away again. If she had given Him the alabaster box, He would have given it away; but she broke it, and poured the ointment on Him as the greatest compliment she could offer. We can all do something.

You can have it said of you: “She hath done what she could.” Let the women do what they can, and righteousness will run through our streets like a river in a very short time. I would like to see more of our women catching the missionary spirit, and consecrating themselves to this work.

Q. How can we get non-church goers to attend church?

A. That is a big question. I would like half an hour to talk upon it. I can only say this: Take this town. In these country towns the difficulty is that people have so far to go that, if they have no conveyance, they think they must stay at home. A year ago, at a meeting we had in the church one Sunday, a plan was suggested that we get some wagons, and you will see them around here now. One was called “Church Wagon No. 1,” and another “Church Wagon No. 2.” We arranged to have the farmers hitch their horses, and then we were all right. There are some people at the foot of the mountain and on the mountainside that have got no horses, and they are two miles away. So we hitch the horses, and just bring sixteen non-church goers in each of those wagons. We have one wagon at this end of the town, and one at the other end, over the river. In that way we get the people out that haven’t been in the habit of going to church. It doesn’t cost much — just the wagons and harness. Take up a subscription in your church to cover the expense. I want to say, that if a man has got a heart to reach these non-church goers, God will open up the way. But you must let these people know that you want them. People won’t come if they think you don’t seem to care for them. If it gets noised around that we want these people, we are going to have them. We must be in earnest about it.

Let these farmers that have got horses go around and carry people that haven’t. Let them put themselves out. If they go out of their way, people will say, “That means business.” Then there is another thing. In our cities this accursed pew system has got to be changed. I call it accursed, and I’ll tell you why. A great many people hire a pew, and then think they own it as much as they own their house. If a stranger comes into the pew, they think he is just as much out of place as if he had gone into their house.

When a church has that system, men say, “I am not going in there, and feel as if I am not welcome.” Did you ever go into a church in some strange place, and have the sexton put you into someone’s pew? The people that own the pew take a good look at you, as much as to say that you are in somebody else’s place, and it gives you a very awkward feeling. I have been there myself. I know just how you feel. I never go into church in my life that I don’t feel very awkward till the services get going. I tell you this is all wrong. The pews should be free. If you think you can’t have free pews, then let us come to a compromise — let us have them free every Sunday night. Let it be known that the seats are perfectly free on Sunday night; let the strangers have the best seats that night; let it be well advertised, and make the people welcome when they come. If you do this, you will soon have all the non-church goers you can deal with. “Oh, but,” says someone, “that will wear the carpets.” What if it does? Did you ever see a church worn out? I would travel all over the world to see a church worn out. You can get the people to come if you want to. But they won’t come and sit in rented pews. I remember hearing a story of a man that owned a pew, and didn’t seem to like it when a stranger took his seat there. He wrote on a slip of paper: “This is my pew,” and handed it to the stranger, who wrote back, “What do you pay for it?” The man wrote, “I pay $75,” and the stranger wrote back, “It’s a good pew. It’s worth it.”

Now, the idea that men have — “I hire this pew; it belongs to me” — stands right in the way of all our efforts to reach non-church goers. The whole system is wrong — no doubt about it. What if some crusty bachelor wants to have things stay as they are — never mind him. Get the people in. It’s no good preaching to empty seats. If a man makes up his mind that he is going to have his church filled, he’ll have it. A good many people are afraid of doing anything out of the regular lines — of doing anything out of order. Now, you will find perfect order in a cemetery. You will find perfect order where there is death. Where there is life you will find something out of order.

Q. How do you start a cottage prayer meeting?

A. The way we used to do in Chicago was this. We would go around from house to house till we found a woman who was willing to have a meeting in her house — it might be an unconverted woman. It takes a good deal of moral courage for any woman to have a meeting in her house, where all the people in the street know her; but if you get her consent, ask the neighbors to come in — a great many people who won’t go to a church will go to a cottage prayer meeting. Some of the best hours I have spent in my life were in the cottage meetings. If I have had any success, that is where I learned to preach. Get twenty or thirty mothers together with their children or their babes in arms. Read a portion of Scripture. Get the children to sing; it will always interest a mother to hear her child sing, even if it doesn’t sing as well as Mr. Sankey. Talk comforting words to the mothers. I tell you what — I’d rather, a thousand times, talk to these mothers than to Gospel-hardened sinners. When a young mother is just beginning to feel her responsibility, it isn’t very difficult to reach her heart. Never mind the babies. When we were holding meetings in London, in the Circus, I remember there was a special meeting appointed for the mothers, and they were told to bring their babies. The meeting was just for mothers and babies — that was the ticket of admission — a baby. Well; I never saw so many babies in my life. If a baby cries, the preacher should raise his voice a little louder than the baby can cry. Encourage the mothers to bring their babies. It is delightful to see a mother with a baby in her arms going right into the house of God. If some fidgety people don’t like to hear a baby cry, let them go. Others will come and fill up the church. When Mr. Sankey and I were in Liverpool we saw a woman in the place where the meetings were held, an hour before the time, and she stayed right through the meeting. She was all worn out; looked like a poor woman, and I suppose she had carried that baby two hours.

During the meeting the baby got restless and began to cry. Some of the people looked cross, and I saw the woman was very uneasy and nervous; she didn’t want to disturb the meeting, and yet didn’t want to go. She did her best to quiet the baby, but it would cry, and at last she started to go out. I said: “Let that baby cry if it wants to. I can speak as loud as the baby can cry. Now, don’t look at that mother, but just pray that the Lord will bless her.