The success of the Christian Endeavor movement in the Protestant churches is due almost solely to their method. The Christian Endeavor Societies have no new message to the world; they advocate no reforms; they do not add anything to the teaching of the church; do not even take it back to any of those sublime truths of the past largely ignored and forgotten by the modern church. But there is one simple reform in the method of carrying on religious meetings to which the Christian Endeavor Societies owe their success, and by means of which alone they have gained more than two million members in little more than a decade. This great and valuable secret is their system of two or three minute addresses, and their requiring participation in the meeting by every member.
Some of us are familiar with the old time Protestant prayer-meetings, composed of five or six old men, from ten to thirty middle-aged and old women, with a scattering boy or girl forced to attend by parents. The prayers were long. The talks were dry. The presence of a young man or woman was always a surprise.
The Christian Endeavor Society with the same theology, the same message, the same hymns, not even having a new impulse, a new moral ideal, or a new hope for the betterment of the world, but merely by requiring each member to say a few words and requiring that they say no more than a few words, has succeeded in joining together over two million young people into a prayer meeting society. Young people and prayer meetings! Always before suspicious of each other! Presto change! Two million young people organize in fifteen years to attend prayer meeting. The explanation of this miracle is ENFORCED BREVITY.
Short speeches, the extinction of bores, and the participation in each meeting in some way by every listener are so far as method goes the essentials for a great popular movement.
Good manners that have been taught to most of the world as regards eating and drinking have begun to be introduced into the world of meetings, religious and political, and when we see a feature, a little reform of this kind, building up in a few years one of the largest and most formidable religious organizations in the way of numbers that the world has ever seen, the organizers and workers of the new Democracy should profit thereby and at least learn the lesson, "Don't bore the people." It were better that the long-winded talker were a Republican or that he were thrown into the sea than that he should be allowed to destroy our meetings by his prolonged and learned discourses. Flee from the long-winded man, or else turn on him and make him sit down when his time is up. Or do with him as you do with the man who displays swinish proclivities when you invite him to dinner, DON'T INVITE HIM AGAIN.
THE BUREAU OF VOLUNTEER SPEAKERS.
A community feels that it needs to be awakened, and desires to arrange a series of meetings.[5] How can suitable speakers be had? So often a mistake is made. A speaker goes off on a tangent; he carries his hearers into a labyrinth of statistics and details, from which he cannot extricate them; he makes one "break" that alienates more votes than his whole speech wins, or in other ways proves himself incapable of accomplishing good for the community that he visits.
Heretofore such a man, by bulldozing prominent politicians into giving him letters of recommendation, might impose himself on one community after another, and continue for years to injure the party. By proper co-operation of the party with the Bureau of Volunteers Speakers, this evil, in a large measure, can be avoided, because this Bureau does not send a man to speak until it is thoroughly acquainted, not only with his character, but his capacities and judgment, and knows his method of argument and what he is to advocate. When young and comparatively inexperienced speakers are sent out, it is known beforehand what is to be said, as their speeches are prepared and rehearsed in advance. They must know what they have to say, and not trust to inspiration, which often results in perspiration for the speaker, and exasperation for the hearers.
Every speaker sent out will present the great fundamental truths of our movement and not waste time in arguing details, which only supplies our enemies with new weapons to use against us. His speech beforehand has been pruned and criticised; the dead branches lopped off; the twigs and vines cleared from the trunk of the tree, and he is prepared to do only such work as will make converts and deepen the convictions of those already with us.
There exists no other Bureau or Headquarters in America, through which Democratic organizations can obtain at all times the best talent, and never fail to get a man who will strengthen their local organization.