08-Mid-Week Service
CHAPTER VIII MID-WEEK SERVICES
MANY Catholic and Protestant Episcopalian churches are open every day that individual worshipers may enter for rest and prayer. Some provide, in addition, one or more services of worship daily. The so-called evangelical churches, however, usually maintain but one service between Sundays, designated variously as the “midweek service/’ or the “prayer meeting,” or the “social meeting.” The service, as a rule, is not largely attended. Because of this, it is considered quite as much a problem as the Sundayevening service. As with the evening service, the first long step toward the solution of the problem is to understand clearly the proper function of the service. i. Two great reasons appear to justify a midweek meeting for the church. The first is the need of individual Christians for frequent conference concerning the spiritual life. Among Methodists this need has dominated the service so completely that only the name “prayer meeting” accurately describes its nature. Very properly it differs greatly from the more formal services of the Sabbath.)! The leader usually is the pastor, or one whom he has selected, who gives direction to the meeting without too much insistence upon a prescribed order. The customary features of the service are songs, prayers, a Scripture lesson, a brief address, and testimonies. The notable fact about!the meeting is its democracy. The songs, while “congregational,” are frequently chosen by persons in the audience; the prayers are generally extemporaneous prayers by the laity, both men and women; and the testimonies, having to do with the inner aspirations and longings, or failures and defeats, are made by devout men and women.
94 MID-WEEK SERVICES 95 t/ Non-Methodists are sharply aware of the weakness of this service. Of the “testimony meeting” Gladden writes, “Such a recital, if modestly and honestly made, by persons who are living serious lives, might often have great value; but it is greatly to be feared that those whose lives are most serious are least inclined to give absolutely truthful reports of their own spiritual states; and of that which is most intimate and vital it is hardly possible to tell the story. The danger is that ’experience meetings’ will degenerate into a recital of well-worn phrases which represent no real facts of the inner life. The mischief of such insincerity must be very great. When one who has scarcely thought of spiritual things during the week his mind having been wholly absorbed in the pleasures and strifes of the world goes into the weekly meeting and fluently expresses his deep interest in the great things of the Kingdom, and testifies that he is making steady progress in the religious life, the injury to his own character must be deep, and the effect upon the minds of those who know him well, most unhappy. To this insincerity the cut-and-dried experience-meeting affords a strong temptation. Everyone is expected to give some account of his own spiritual condition, and no one likes to give a discouraging report. It is too easy to assume a virtue which one does not possess, and to avow an interest which is optative rather than actual.’* 1 It is only fair to say that this does not represent Gladden’s whole thought of this type of service. In other connections he is very appreciative.
Many Methodists will thank him, however, for his criticism, for he expresses precisely what they feel, yet hardly dare to say. If the prayer meeting could be rescued from the control of “ignorant, effusive, opinionated persons, who have no wisdom to impart and no inspiration to convey,... who only succeed in gratifying their own vanity or in confirming their own delusions, while they irritate and disgust the sensible people who listen to them,” doubtless thoughtful and substantial people would attend in larger numbers.
% Op. tit, p. 24if. Used by permission of Charles Scribner’s Sons, 96 THE PASTORAL OFFICE This constitutes the great problem of the prayer meeting to save it from the “prayer-meeting killer/’ and make it a source of spiritual power for the whole church, without destroying its democratic character or changing it into a pale imitation of a Sunday service. That the prayer meeting has survived the strain put upon it by its weak, ignorant, insincere, and sometimes pharisaical friends, suggests strongly that it is well designed to serve a fundamental need of the religious life. That need is found in the demand for verbal expression which is made by a genuine religious experience. The redeemed of the Lord ever have felt impelled to say so. Whenever God becomes very real, and the soul is filled with a sense of power, joy, and safety, from conscious fellowship with the Infinite, the lips will not be restrained. An attempt to suppress the feeling only turns it into a “fire in the bones” which threatens to consume one. If any fear that immodesty attaches to the expression of such intimate emotions, let Horace Bushnell, who cannot be accused of Methodist fervor, reassure them: “No one ever thinks it a matter of delicacy, or genuine modesty, to entirely suppress any reasonable joy; least of all, any fit testimony of gratitude toward a deliverer for deliverance... In the same simple way, all ambition apart, all conceit of self forgot, all artificial and mock modesty excluded, it will be the instinct of everyone who loves God to acknowledge him.” 2 And not only is testimony essential to him who knows the “joy of salvation,” but it is exceedingly helpful and interesting to those who hear, provided only that the note of reality appears all the way through. So long as the recital is simple, clear, and unaffected, having to do only with that which the speaker himself has verified or is trying to verify in Christian experience, it has power to encourage the hesitant and faltering as almost nothing else does.
It should be said that there is no special virtue in num *In Sermons for the New Life, quoted by Gladden, op. cit fj p.
247.
MID-WEEK SERVICES 97 bers of testimonies as such. One testimony of the right sort is worth many of the mechanical, rapid-fire, sentencetestimonies so much in vogue in young people’s meetings. And this applies to prayers as well as testimonies. They are too fragmentary and too lacking in reflection to be very valuable. On the other hand, there is little profit in the words of one or two individuals, blessed with “the gift of continuance/’ who take all the time available for this part of the service.
After sincerity and reality, the average prayer meeting is in sore need of improvement at the point of its music. The songs, of course, should be simple, but they may be that without being silly and inane. It is not too much to say that a thoughtful Christian cannot join in the singing in many prayer meetings and keep his self-respect. There is an abundance of music in the Methodist Hymnal beautifully adapted to prayer-meeting purposes. One will lose nothing in passing by entirely all compilations which were prepared with an eye more open to the commercial profits of the publisher than the spiritual edification of the worshipers.
“The vulgarization of the tastes and the depravation of the sentiments of worshipers through the use of sensational and sentimental prayer-meeting hymns and tunes has been a grave injury to religion in America.” And after the music, the next great need of many a prayer meeting is more conscientious consideration on the part of the pastor. If he does not regard it as deserving of his time and thought in planning and preparation, he cannot reasonably expect it to be attractive. In any case, scolding the people because they do not attend is not likely to draw them. Make the service as helpful and attractive in itself as possible, invite the congregation pleasantly and cordially, and then believe that where even two or three are gathered together in Christ’s name, Christ himself will be in the midst. And those who do attend will always be glad to go again.
2. The second fact to justify a midweek service arises in connection with the work of the church as a corporate 98 THE PASTORAL OFFICE body. Larger use of the prayer meeting to serve this need has redeemed several midweek services in a notable manner. The work of the church requires trained lay leadership. The membership generally is uninformed concerning the great community problems philanthropy, public health, education, industry, etc. and the proper relation of the church toward them. The missionary task, at home and abroad, is unfamiliar. The Christian Bible is unknown, except in the most superficial way, to most Christians.
These facts, and others, make imperative demands for consideration. When and how may the church intelligently address itself to them? There is no better occasion than the midweek service. So “Prayer-Meeting Night” has become “Church-Training Night” in many churches. The congregation assembles for supper at half-past six, coming directly from their daily labor. An hour is devoted to the meal and social fellowship. This is followed by three quarters of an hour of praise, prayer, and testimony. The company then breaks up into several study groups, the Sunday-school workers to consider their problems, the Epworth Leaguers theirs, others for Bible study, still others for mission study, and yet others for the consideration of community matters, each for another three quarters of an hour. The whole program is completed in two hours and a half. It is easy to see how prayer-meeting night might thus become a real event in the life of the church. This kind of program, of course, requires careful planning. The most important matter is the leadership of the several classes. No groups should be organized which cannot be provided with competent guides. Where the whole number is small, the pastor himself may take charge of them during the study hour as a single group, considering now one and now another subject. Some such combination of warship with instruction can be effected in any church f large or small. A few who do not like innovations may complain at first, but even they will be won at last by the success of the plan.
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3. The class meeting, as a formal organization, has all but disappeared from American Methodism. This fact is an occasion for dismay to some, while others, of equal piety, regard it as natural and inevitable. It came into existence to serve a specific need, but in these days of complex organization, when other agencies do its work, it is no longer vital to the life of the church. In the beginning Methodism was only a “movement” within the Anglican Church. All Methodists were Anglicans, though not all Anglicans were Methodists only that portion of them who were stirred by Wesley’s interpretation of the doctrines of Christian experience, such as justification, regeneration, assurance, and sanctification. These came together in their respective communities for mutual counsel and fellowship after Wesley or his preachers had gone. One of the number was appointed to receive the contributions of the group for the support of the movement. Gradually this leader became a kind of subpastor charged with responsibility for the spiritual care of the society between the rare visits of a “traveling preacher.” Throughout Wesley’s lifetime “the class” was the unit of his movement, and the class leader was as important as the modern pastor.
Likewise for many years in America “the class” and “the class leader” were indispensable elements in the life of the church. There were no “settled” pastors, such as Congregationalists and Presbyterians knew only “itinerant preachers” each of whom was in reality a bishop or superintendent who supervised a large number of classes grouped together into a “circuit,” called his “pastoral charge.”
Though he traveled constantly, the preacher could visit each “point” on his circuit only a few times each year. Meantime he must depend upon the local class leader for that intimate pastoral oversight which settled ministers gave in other communions. And between visits of the preacher, this leader, chosen for his piety and good judgment, would meet the class weekly for prayer, interchange of experience, exhortation, and advice. Out of this simple form ioo THE PASTORAL OFFICE grew the complex organization known as the Methodist Episcopal Church.
To-day the “circuit system” is being rapidly abandoned. At best it was only a makeshift, justified by the poverty of the settlers and the inability of the church to serve otherwise a rapidly advancing and widely scattered population. The ideal of the present is to appoint a trained pastor for each church just as rapidly as the individual churches become able to support them. Thus the pastor takes the place once held by the class leader, and under him a rather extensive corps of lay officials in charge of the several organizations within the church. The weekly prayer meeting affords the opportunity for spiritual culture once provided by the class meeting. The Finance Committee and the collectors receive the gifts of the people. So that, all in all, it would appear that the spiritual nurture of the membership of the church is adequately provided for, even though the class meeting has ceased to function in its old-time way.
Recently the class-meeting idea was revived in the socalled “unit system,” which requires that every member of the church be assigned to a group of ten or twelve. One in the group is appointed “unit leader,” and he, in turn, assigns responsibility to other members for particular tasks. For example, one will distribute missionary literature, another will be stewardship secretary, and yet another will propagate the life-service idea. This was the class meeting galvanized into new life for a special emergency. The unwieldiness of the organization, however, prevents it being popular in a church already elaborately organized, now that the emergency has passed. The real “class” in Methodism to-day is the Sunday-school class, and the “class leader,” the Sunday-school teacher, who has all the responsibility of the former leader and more. In a few churches what is called “the class” in the older sense meets weekly, generally on Sunday before morning worship. This has great value for those who attend in preparing the mind and heart for the service which follows.
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It is likewise helpful to the pastor, who knows that this group of devout persons support him sympathetically as they pray.
4. The Epworth League came into being a third of a century ago to render a manifold service to the young life of the church. Within that period, the organized Bible class has made its appearance and now undertakes in many churches much of the work formerly done by the League.
Nothing, however, has superseded the League as an instrument for devotional culture among young people. If it does no more in the local church, at least it conducts a young people’s prayer meeting, sometimes midweek, but more generally on Sunday evenings. Here immature believers receive most valuable training in expressing religious experience and in leading religious meetings. Besides this, the general organization conducts several score of Summer Institutes in every part of the country each year where delegates from almost every church are trained in the art of lay leadership. No society in the church is doing more to make an effective church in the future than the Epworth League. The wise pastor will bend every effort to secure a large attendance from his church at these summer conferences.
BOOKS RECOMMENDED FOR FURTHER STUDY Committee on Conservation and Advance (pamphlet), Church Training Night.
Dan B. Brtimmitt, The Efficient Epwortkian.
Luccock and Cook, The Mid-Week Service.