Then there is the Joy of Ingathering. The true pastor realizes that he is a recruiting officer. His mission is to make disciples, enlist them in the school of Christ, and show them how to win other disciples. He is to "do the work of an evangelist," not send for one once in four or five years. He is to convince men and women that the Gospel is really good news, make them want it, make them eager to spread it. He is to make them realize that Christ is really the Light of Life, that his way of living is the only safe and successful way, that he is the world's true Leader, and that he is the Saviour of society and of the world as well as of themselves. Then they will gladly acknowledge themselves as his followers. They will enter his church naturally and joyfully to throw the whole force of their lives into the work of getting all life, civic and social as well as individual, brought under the mastery of Christ. There is joy in this work of enlistment. One young minister says, "I have received forty new members this fall; I've set my mark at fifty for next time." There was a gleam of joy in his eye when he said it.

Then there is the Joy of Leadership of an organized force to make tremendously effective the impact of the church upon the entire life of the community. The church ought to make a better town. a better state, a better nation, and a better world. To do this it must not only try to make better men and women of its own members, but it must touch the life of the community at every point. It must concern itself with everything that tends to weaken and degrade or that helps to ennoble and strengthen the people. Better housing of the poor, better sanitation, better schools, better recreations, better libraries and playgrounds, better streets, are to be included in the program of the church. It must organize all its work for the incorporation of Christian ideals in every part of the community life. It must make everybody feel its genuine friendliness, sympathy, fraternity. Its relief work, its school for religious education, its Boy Scouts and Camp Fire Girls, its Forum for discussion of public questions, its provisions for athletics and recreation, its outreaching effort to right the wrongs of society, must all contribute to this end. To be a leader in this organized work is wonderfully to enlarge one's life.

Last of all, there is the Joy of Making Things Go. A church is a business. organization with a special work to accomplish. The pastor is the head of this business. He must make it a "going concern." Like the manager or superintendent of a factory or commercial house he must make it pay dividends. As the head of one of the most important institutions in the world, it is up to him to see to it that his institution actually does the work for which it was organized. One of the most successful pastors in the country was called by his people "the business manager," which was an accurate description. He was a fine preacher as well.

All these features of a pastor's activity are of great importance. Not one of them can safely be neglected. But he must remember that he is the "head of the concern," and he must make sure that every department of the church life is kept up to the highest degree of efficiency, and that all of them are working together to ensure a steady and growing success. He must think every problem through. He must plan each needed advance. He must steer his perplexed and discouraged workers through many perilous rapids. In short, he must make things go.

Of course in carrying out his plan he will enlist the active co-operation of all his people. The ablest business talent and the finest social gifts in his congregation are to be yoked up with him in this task. His church will be a hive of busy workers. "All are at it; always at it,'' will be the motto. But he will hold them all to a common plan, so that there may be no scattering of

forces in haphazard work. It is the pastor's task to unify the work, and keep everything moving harmoniously forward.

More ministers find difficulty at this point than at any other. They take too partial a view. They fail to regard themselves as executives of a great business. Their salaries fall short and the church is in debt because they do not make sure of a sound and thoroughgoing financial method in the church. The church life languishes because they are so busy on a single department that they forget the whole. The Every Member Canvass fails because they are too timid to push it. The benevolent offerings fall short because they are ignorant or indifferent about it. Result: discouragement and short pastorates. These same men could transform their work and make it a delight by remembering that they are executive officers of the "King's business" and must make every department contribute toward its success.

For these reasons we may claim that the pastorate is a delightful vocation for those who are fitted for its work. In spite of the handicap of too meagre salaries, so that, as Billy Sunday says, "a prize-fighter can earn more in fifteen minutes than a preacher in fifteen years," there is a peculiar satisfaction in the ministry. Consecratoin to unselfish service brings its own reward.

T

THE PHILOSOPHY OF A CROWD

By Mr. W. H. Richardson, Jersey City, N. J.

HE philosophy of a crowd is very curious. What gets a crowd together? What holds it? We do not spend much time in analyzing the reasons for the gathering, out of the air apparently, of a large audience to see a couple of collided automobiles pried apart and the mangled victims extricated from the wreckage, nor why another multitude assembles and sits and yells for hours at an amateur sparring exhibition where knockouts are prone to happen quite frequently. We simply know that people are built that way.

In these days a church crowd is something of a curiosity to some people. By a church crowd I mean a bunch of such folks as will fill it, so that were the building some other kind of a building, they would bulletin board it with a "S. R. O." sign. It is not an uncommon thing to see a crowd at the First Congregational Church of Jersey City, but it is a subject of comment by the sojourner, and by some Jersey citizens, too, for the Protestant section of the town is not what you would call churchgoing. Those of us whose earlier life was spent in an acquaintanceship with a countryside where churchgoing was really the fashionable thing, can appreciate the two situations.

It has seemed to the writer that many of the crowd attracted to an evening church meeting are actuated at first by reasons of curiosity. The regular membership of a church-our own church, to be specific-would hardly fill it to repletion, so that many not accustomed to attend regularly, transients, or whatever they may be called, come. In the present parish bounds of the First Church are many new apartment houses. Since the church was first occupied by Congregationalists the population has multiplied many times. The seating capacity of the Protestant churches, taken as a whole, has sadly lagged in its multiplication.

The population is of a fleeting, flitting character. It has been a trifle nearer stabilization the past few months because people only move now when they are dispossessed. But the fact remains that too few people here have had a church home like we used to have back there in the hills, to which generation after generation of our folks belonged. Does the average person realize how many thousands of city youngsters there are who never saw a real country churchyard, with its maples and elms and evergreens, and whose hearts can

never throb with the sentiment of home coming that the sight of one's own home church awakens?

In a sense, churchgoing there was a sort of social, ceremonial thing, besides being a worshipful one; and from this perspective it was a wonderful thing to have been ministered to by a man who had served one congregation for fifty-five years and only that one in all his life. These matters are not personal altogether; they are useful illustrations when one is trying to differentiate the country church from the city church ideal.

A very nice thing about our city church crowd is that it has a good many people in it who are not so long from the country that, thank God, they have outgrown the church habit. They have not absorbed the Sunday night "sacred concert;" they are not connoisseurs in "movie" shows; even if they are not church members they attend services to fill in the hiatus between Saturday night and Monday morning.

Now we come to our First Congregational Church of Jersey City and see the crowd there. There is nothing spectacular about the building, either externally or internally. But "back of the beyond" there is a reason, and as I see it, it is the "drag" of a capable ministry. It is such a familiar thing in industrial life to see the world slackening up in productive effort; to see the scramble of much of mankind to get on a fat payroll, with no thought of service, but I have never seen the pastor of this church in a moment of relaxation.

The commonplace necessities of life, like flour or sugar or meat, we accept as a matter of course. When sugar goes up to twenty cents a pound, it gets its name in the public print, to be sure, but it is not usual for us to philosophize upon the millions of dollars involved in the organized and co-ordinate effort to get a measly little three-and-a-half-pound bag of flour on our pantry shelf or to load our teaspoon with granulated sugar for the morning cup of coffee.

In our measure we apply the same thought to our church life here. Just the other evening the pastor preached a sermon on "The Scientific Aspect of Conversing with the Dead." To take up a theme like that and crystallize the psychical researches of a generation in forty minutes is no mean job. The neighborhood turned out to hear about it because they were curious to hear, and, on the side, they anticipated that it would be rather well done.

Then we have good music at First Congregational Church. The community taste in music is high, and there is no disappointment. It does not just happen that the notable recitals are given with such precision and in such exquisite terms. The music has been carefully planned, cultivated and rehearsed, and we of the big crowd sit in our pews and feast upon the finished production.

During the Advent season, the pastor presented on several Wednesday nights lectures which he illustrated by stereopticon reproductions of masterpieces of sacred art, pictures of the Holy Land. On New Year's Eve, a service lasting from eight until twelve, involving a musical program rendered by the Gloria Trumpeters and the Metropolitan Quartette, brought the same typically interested multitudes. We could find no fault with the people who went to the "movies," or the clubs to see the old year out. We could not have accommodated with comfort another single one.

There is really no secret, after all, about getting a big crowd to go to church. It is a matter of salesmanship, of personal faith in the honor of the cause you are representing. People will beat a path to your door in the woods. if you sell mouse-traps, only, as Emerson suggests, they must be good mousetraps.

THE CONGREGATIONAL COMMISSION ON EVANGELISM

SELLING THE GOSPEL

By Ernest Bourner Allen, D. D., Pastor Pilgrim Congregational Church, Oak Park, Illinois, and Member of the Commission on Evangelism.

M

EN who make good in business today must be able to sell their goods or their program. Extending the Gospel of Jesus Christ is in part a selling proposition. It is not so much an auction, where a mass appeal is made, but an individual proposition where one man talks with another. Henry Ward Beecher said after years of experience that the best congregation he knew anything about was that in which one man was the preacher and one man the audience! Jesus Christ thought it worth while to give the major part of his time and personality to twelve men. Bruce says that "the training of the Twelve" was "a landmark in the gospel history."

The group trained by Jesus consisted of obscure men. They had much to learn. They were "crude Christians." They frequently "fumbled the ball" while learning to "play the game." They sacrificed everything worldly in their loyalty to Jesus Christ and only one of them was "yellow." Any ordinary, obscure man today can qualify for personal service for Jesus Christ if he is willing to do so. Every man with any special ability or training is peculiarly responsible for the task of reaching others.

Men ought to give themselves to the highest service. Why put our work for Christ upon a money basis alone? Why engage in magnificent "drives" to raise money and not set ourselves to share in the task of reaching men with the challenging call of Christ? A great denomination has discovered and methodically reports, that when appeals for money are put up to its constituency the number of additions to the churches decreases. This is because energy devoted to one task cannot be used at the same time with the same force for another. Above all seasons of the year, Easter is the time for the spiritual drive! Great material tasks can be put over when great spiritual energies have been met. The church will inevitably rise to support many causes if spiritual bills have been paid.

Therefore, there ought to be a group of devoted laymen and laywomen in every church who will band themselves together, without particular public announcement, if any, for the sole and supreme purpose of making appeal to those who are not church members, those who are not Christians. Any devoted layman in any church can start the matter. Every pastor will cooperate. It will be better if the layman takes the initiative. Every church of 400 members and beyond, and many with less members, ought to furnish twelve people who will give prayerful, constant, devoted, definitely-directed service for Christ during the Lenten period at least.

Oh, layman, Oh laywoman, will you not initiate this definite personal service for Christ in your church? There are more than 30,000,000 people in the United States who have no church affiliation! There is no religious incentive in their lives big enough to lead them to do it. They are not productive factors in the work of Christ's Kingdom. How shall they be won? How set to work? Can you interest them in the religion and program of Jesus!

The PILGRIM MEMORIAL FUND $8,000,000-To Provide for the Veterans of our Ministry

IMPORTANT CHANGES

By W. W. Scudder, D.D.

I. The Fund

O you notice the change in the figure? All through 1919 the standard has been $5,000,000. Now that is assured. We will run up the new pennant ordered by the National Council at Grand Rapids and call for the full eight millions. Forecasts are not always safe, but it is hoped that before April first, the Pilgrim Fund will have reached seven millions, leaving the last million to be covered by the Congregational World Movement plans. What is our justification for such hopes? It lies in the fact that if the states now simply complete their quotas and go over the top, which they will doubtless all do, we shall have the seven millions pledged. If they continue to overrun their quotas, as so many have done, we shall run past the seven million mark.

II. The Secretary

Dr. H. F. Swartz, who has led the Pilgrim Memorial Fund forces with such brilliant success, has resigned the Secretaryship of that Fund to take charge of the Congregational World Movement Campaign. The outgoing Secretary bears this testimonial to the incoming successor :

"In electing the Rev. Lewis T. Reed, D.D., pastor of the Flatbush Congreagtional Church, Brooklyn, N. Y., to the Executive Secretaryship of the Pilgrim Memorial Fund Commission, the Commision has made a very strong and happy selection of a leader who will take hold of this great enterprise, not only to complete the canvass for the Fund, but also to develop the entire business which rests upon the Fund as a foundation. The work promises to be second to nothing in the denomination in its permanent value and in its wide outlook.

"Dr. Reed's fitness for the work is noteworthy. He possesses to an unusual degree, the confidence and affection of our whole group of ministers. He has had a typical ministerial experience, being familiar with the burdens of the small pastorate and with the large opportunity and heavy labors of a great pastorate. He has been uniformly successful in the organization of his parishes, showing constant and steady administrative ability and shrewd business sense. It is believed that this combination of pastoral experience will make him thoroughly sympathetic and capable as a responsible officer in charge of the denomination's plan for the care of the minister and of his family. At the request of his church, Dr. Reed has not resigned the pastorate, but at the end of six months will decide whether to continue permanently with the Fund or return to the pastorate.

"Dr. Reed has also been elected as the Corresponding Secretary of the Annuity Fund for Congregational Ministers. The Pilgrim Memorial Fund and the Annuity Fund are so closely related that the two offices constitute, in fact, a unit of responsibility."

III. The Teams

The campaigns in the Eastern and Central States are approaching completion and the teams are breaking new ground. Rev. W. S. Beard, after a phenomenally successful campaign that put Connecticut past the million mark, is leading the Pilgrim Fund forces in the Northwest, in the states of Oregon, Washington and Idaho. Dr. H. H. Kelsey is in charge of California, Nevada, Arizona and New Mexico and will have the help of Dr. W. E. Barton and Dr. D. J. Cowling for several weeks. Dr.. F. L. Hayes, with his steady persistence and skill, is operating with his force of helpers, in the states of the Southeast.