“Effective Gospel Meetings”

Monday, May 28, 2018

For those who have grown up around churches of Christ, the term, gospel meeting, will be a familiar one. But for those who grew up with a denominational background or no religious history at all, this term will not have much meaning.

In the past, churches would have a series of gospel messages in consecutive evening (or morning) meetings. So the phrase, gospel meeting, refers to an effort to preach the gospel to both the church and any unbelievers that Christians could convince to attend. Some denominations (and perhaps some faithful churches as well) used the term, revival, to describe such meetings as the hope was to renew and encourage a new sense of spiritual commitment to God.

Years ago, many churches did not have a full-time paid preacher who spoke almost every Sunday. A lot of churches (but not all) in the southern and central Illinois area where I grew up would only have “preaching services” one or maybe two Sundays per month. On the other Sundays, the church would meet for Bible study and then have a short worship service that would include the Lord’s Supper, and maybe, a short talk by one of the men and then everyone would go home until next week.

But once a year, the church would have a gospel meeting. It would often be held in the Summer months because many of the members were farmers and they were busy planting in the Spring and harvesting in the Fall. The Winter always threatened bad weather so the Summer months were usually the best time to have such an effort. In the early and middle parts of the twentieth century, such meetings would be 2-3 weeks or even a month or more long, if the interest remained high. People didn’t have as many distractions as we seem to have now and it was not uncommon for these long meetings to include many sincere people who would visit from their denominational churches and when they heard the true gospel, many of those who were genuinely seeking the truth would respond in obedience. If you invited family, friends, and neighbors, many of them would attend. Even among the local families in the church, some people would wait until the gospel meeting to be baptized and so it was not uncommon to hear of gospel meetings that would last a month and scores of people would be baptized into Christ.

When I was just getting started trying to preach, I preached for a while at a small church in central Illinois one Sunday per month and different members would tell me on Sunday afternoon when it was their turn to feed the preacher about the gospel meeting in the 1970’s when 13 young people were baptized on the same night of a meeting. Although they didn’t have 13 young people attending any more when I was preaching there, their dream was always to repeat the success of that one meeting.

As people’s schedules got fuller and busier, churches began to shorten the length of gospel meetings, but perhaps have two per year, one in the Spring and another in the Fall. Most meetings started on Monday night and went through the following Sunday. Then they switched from Sunday through Friday and now, many meetings run Sunday through Wednesday (or maybe Tuesday). And of course, we now try to encourage people not to wait for anything once they are convinced they need to be baptized. So most people aren’t even baptized during a regular service time, but many are immersed during the week as soon as they know they shouldn’t put it off.

We have very few baptisms these days in gospel meetings (although every one that we have is important and precious in the sight of God). I do not have any scientific research to back up this statement, but I have noted, in the places I have worshiped, that more meetings have no baptisms than those that may have one or two.

I am not writing this to convince us to quit having meetings, but there are a few things we can do to make them more effective.

First, although some preachers will think I am speaking blasphemy, perhaps in some cases, we should not call them gospel meetings. I say that only because most of our unsaved friends won’t know what we mean if we invite them to a gospel meeting. Of course, we can explain it to them and if they come, that is great. But, it is just as appropriate to call them a teaching seminar or a Bible lectureship, or, as the preacher where I worship likes to call them, a guest speaker series. We only call them gospel meetings by tradition (gospel meeting is not a phrase that the Bible uses either) and perhaps a different designation might stir up more interest and bring more sincere people who are seeking the truth. This is just something to consider.

Secondly, we should ask ourselves, what are we wanting to accomplish with this series of Bible lessons? Because our member’s schedules (and those of our lost friends) are so busy, we need to be wise about the time it takes to attend a week-long series (or even one night for some people).  Let’s use the time wisely. Isn’t that what Ephesians 5:16 and Colossians 4:5 teach us? Make it really worth their while to attend and have a theme or series of lessons that really speaks to their every day lives and then show them how that applies to their eternity as well.

Maybe we can use the time as a focused, intensive study time on a particular subject or a book or series of books from the Bible. Perhaps we should have fewer meetings but make them more targeted times of Bible instruction.

Several years ago I was away in a gospel meeting and my wife got a phone call from the preacher at another church where I was supposed to speak in about a month. He told her they didn’t really have a theme in mind but they wanted me to preach lessons that would appeal to non-Christians. That’s a great idea, of course, one I highly recommend, and so she asked him if they typically had a lot of non-Christians attend their meetings. He admitted they almost never had anyone to visit their meetings and so she asked him if they were doing something different this time that might attract non-believers to this meeting. Again he said no, so she kindly and politely asked him why they wanted me to preach sermons for non-Christians if they weren’t going to be there? He told her that they just hoped that maybe this time some might come. (That was in 1986; we had about 250 souls there on Sunday morning and now, 30 some years later, that church has about 40 on a good Sunday morning.)

Wouldn’t it make more sense to preach to the people who typically come to such services or to have a theme or study that might appeal to those who didn’t normally attend? But to just randomly preach lessons that would help unbelievers if they were there, in the empty hope that they might accidentally show up is not wise.

We cannot afford to waste the Lord’s money and the efforts, energy, time and good will of the members, just because 50 years ago, we had a gospel meeting and a dozen people were baptized. Without changing the message, we need to change the methods we are using to try to spread the best news in the universe to those who desperately need it.

--Roger Hillis

RogerLeeHillis@gmail.com

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