Tent Work Results in a Church
"During the past summer a company of earnest workers for God and man tested the problem of saving men to save New York. They started an open-air and tent campaign. They proceeded on the simple hypothesis that 'Nothing will elevate the man, no matter how good he is morally, except the gospel of Jesus Christ, for it alone is the power of God to change the whole man and save him eternally.' They drove their tent-stakes into the ground in an Italian quarter and began to preach and to sing the gospel of grace triumphant into the ears and hearts of Roman Catholic Italians. Except when the weather was exceptionally bad, from five to six hundred persons were there nightly. They were met just as the foreign missionary would meet them. Not one among them, perhaps, Christian from a purely evangelistic standpoint, and yet, what was the result? In less than one year they expect to have a permanent church building to cost $60,000; something like two hundred are ready to enter and form a Protestant church."
An Ingenious Italian Expedient
Is this a hopeful work, this effort to evangelize the foreigners? Let the following unique instance give its answer, and illustrate also the intertwinings of the home and foreign work. In a quarry at Monson, Massachusetts, where over three hundred Italians are employed, there was among the number a man who had been converted in Italy, through the faithful efforts of an American missionary. When this convert reached the Massachusetts quarry, his heart burned within him as he realized the spiritual condition of his countrymen, who were living without any religious services. He labored so effectively for their salvation that in a few months seventeen of the workmen were converted, and they held regular meetings for prayer and study of the Bible. At length they sent a message, signed by every convert, to a state missionary society: "In God's name, send us a missionary." A missionary was sent to organize them into a church. They had no meeting-place, and in this emergency one of the converts proposed that a room be built on the roof of his cottage. This was done by the little band, and there they worshiped until the place was too small. Then the first story was extended in the rear, giving space for a comfortable chapel, and the family occupied the second story or roof-room. This indicates the ingenuity as well as the generous and self-sacrificing spirit of these Italian Christians, who maintain a regular pastor and full services. How many of our American churches, with much larger resources, could show a better record? What American Christian would have thought of building a meeting-house on his home roof, or would have been willing to do it if he had thought of it? In devotion and liberality the converted aliens often set noble examples for American Christians.[98]
IV. The Call to Great Things
How to Save Our American Churches
Missionaries have been surprised at the eagerness with which they were received by the Italians, Bohemians, Poles, Slovaks, and Lithuanians, and others commonly regarded as most hopeless. The Bohemians have a large number of freethinkers—over 300 societies of them—who have sought to draw their people away from Christianity or any form of religion; but they also have a large number of earnest and devoted Christian converts, who know the power of the gospel to save, and are preaching and teaching it.Missionary Effort the Solution In Pennsylvania, among the Slav peoples, simple-hearted native workers who have found the way of life are making that way known to others, and local churches in many places are becoming revived through their active work for these foreigners. Many churches now extinct would be alive if they had seen their opportunity. If those churches that have lost most of their old-time membership could be filled with missionary zeal, and be sustained as evangelistic centers, the church life of the mining regions would become a different thing once more. The only way to save these American churches is for them to save the immigrants. The same thing is true in all country sections where the foreigners have become numerous. The need everywhere is for money to plant and equip thoroughly, and maintain efficiently, these evangelizing churches in every community. These institutions must be more than meeting-houses, open a few times a week.
A Great Mission Enterprise
The institutional church always open, with something to meet every legitimate need of old and young, so that the evangelical center shall be the center of community life, can alone meet the requirement. A great force of workers must be raised up, and this means training schools. No more important educational work can be done in our country in the present emergency. These schools might be interdenominational, with special classes where required for the specific denominational training, and thus a united Protestantism could be rallied to their support, and make them of size sufficient to impress all with the real consequence of the work.
Church Federation for Service