Training Converts

Very large proportion of members in our churches count for verylittle except upon the muster-roll. When that roll is called for practical service they do not answer, “Here!” The lamentable statistics of contributions show how small are the pecuniary gifts of those comatose Christians. The thin attendance at prayer-meetings in too many churches, the fewness of those who take part in them, or in any kind of personal effort for souls and the spread of Christ’s kingdom, are illustrations of the same fact. A large portion of the power in the church is a latent power. The stream is diverted upon the waterwheels of the world, or else runs to waste; less than half of it turned upon spiritual machinery. One reason, among many, is that new converts are not trained into Christian activity from the start.

Many converts to Christ are still in the morning of life, although they may have outgrown the Sunday-school. Under thirty years of age the habits of individuals are easily moulded; and during the thirty years after that, they ought to be set to work for their Master. The true time to enlist a Christian in active service is when he enlists in the visible army of Christ by a public confession of Christ. If a new convert does not open his lips in some devotional meeting during the first thirty days, he is apt to remain tongue-tied for life. If he or she is not called into some sort of service, then doth he or she become a drone in the hive. One of the most effectual methods that I know of for training new converts is by the agency of a “Young People’s Association,” organized in the church and under the oversight of the pastor. There has been such an association in the church which I had the honor to serve, for about twenty-five years. Sometimes its membership runs as high as seven hundred.

It embraces three classes of members — active, associate, and honorary. Any member of our church between the ages of fifteen and forty-five may be chosen an “active” member of the association. Any person of good moral character may become an associate member, entitled to all privileges except that of holding office. The fee of membership is fifty cents annually, and ten dollars secures a membership for life. The objects of the Association are to hold weekly devotional meetings, to promote social intercourse, to visit the sick, to search out and bring in young people, to labor for their conversion, and to do whatever will develop the spiritual life of new converts. There is a “Devotional Committee,” which has charge of the Monday evening meeting, which is held in the houses of the congregation. This committee must select the house, have it announced from the pulpit, and see to it that the camp-stools and hymn-books are taken to the said house in season.

That meeting lasts just one hour. The leader of the service is allowed to occupy fifteen minutes in opening the exercises. As soon as possible after a person is converted he is requested to take charge of the meeting; this breaks him into the harness at once. No one is allowed to occupy more than three minutes in an address or a prayer. At the close of the service a half-hour is spent in giving introductions and in social intercourse. In pleasant weather we expect the house to be crowded; but we have seldom had the spiritual thermometer so high as to pack a house on a stormy evening. Only a pleasure-party or a political caucus can do that.

In these social meetings all are made welcome, and new converts are encouraged to take part. There is a freedom felt in a private house which cannot be felt by a beginner in the public lecture-room of the church. Most persons of modesty and common sense are apt to feel a certain diffidence in speaking or praying for the first time. Some of our most effective speakers made an unpromising start, and had one or two break-downs before they could, as the oarsmen say, “pull themselves together.” But it is not simply a public speaking and praying service into which the Association trains its members. They are organized for various kinds of work. There is a Visiting Committee to look after the sick. There is an Entertainment Committee who arrange music, readings, and other pleasant features for a monthly sociable — to which the whole congregation are invited. The monthly entertainments commonly crowd the lecture-room or the Sabbath-school hall. There is a Temperance Committee which oversees that branch of Christian labor. Recently a meeting of our young ladies who are interested in this blessed work was very largely attended. For years we had an efficient corps of tract-distributers in the Association; but the removal from town of its moving spirits has left this department rather feeble at present. There is also a “Relief Committee” for cases of poverty, and another one which provides flowers every Sabbath for the pulpit and then sends them to the rooms of the sick.

I have entered more into the details of this Association because it has yielded such precious spiritual fruits. Its graduates are all over the West as active Christians; some of them have entered the gospel ministry. It has been a training-school for converts, and as such deserves a place beside the Sabbath-school in the affections and prayers of the church. I should almost as soon think of conducting a church without the regular officers as without this educational institution for new-born souls. It helps to solve several such questions as — how to develop the lay element; how to cultivate social intercourse; how to save the young for

Christ and keep them out of the clutch of the devil. In the apostolic churches the new material was put to immediate use. That was one reason why the Word grew mightily and prevailed. If the machinery in those days was simpler than now, still there was organized effort, and that was built on personal consecration to Christ. Give us but that, and we shall have few drones in the hive. Conversion without consecration signifies birth without growth — blossoms without fruit.

I have drawn upon my personal observation in this outline of the work done by the Young People’s Association of the Lafayette Avenue Church; but the same style of work is being done in many hundreds of churches by the admirable “Societies of Christian Endeavor.” Every new convert should enroll himself or herself in such a society if it is within reach. Wherever the circumstances permit I also cordially commend the “Young Men’s Christian Association” as a most excellent training-school in the service of Christ. There need be no clash or collision between the “Y. M. C. A.” and the organization in each individual church.