Well, for one thing I think our Methodist preachers are better educated
but poorer salesmen. Bill Stedger wrote a book once called
Advertising Jesus and Other Sermons. The point he was making
was that we've got the
best product in the world,
Jesus Christ, the Christian religion, but he said we're the poorest
salesmen he's ever seen. And I think he's got a point. I think that most
people, well, when we had got robed and vested choirs and all that. I
love it. I think it's just great. But if you don't get out and scurry
around, you don't invite people to come. . . . I opened the doors of the
church every Sunday morning and night at Birmingham. One day a man came
down and wanted to be baptized and join the church. And I said, "You've
been baptized before, haven't you?" He said, "Yes sir, I've been
baptized before." I said, "Do you want to really be baptized again?"
"Yes sir, I want to start from scratch. I want to be baptized." I said,
"All right." I knew him. He'd been coming to church steadily. So I had
the baptismal font there. I kept one ready, and I read the service and
he knelt. And I put my hand on his head and I said, "Michael Patrick
O'Malley." Somebody over here on the side said, "Rome lost one that
time."
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[Laughter] He was coming to us from the
Roman Catholic Church. He had been coming to my church for I guess a
year or two, regularly. And he made a good Methodist. He came in and he
made a good Methodist. But you don't see much of that anymore. What
you've got to do now, you've got to go out and drum up a crowd. You'll
be with us on Sunday, such and such a date. We're going to receive new
members. And it's a very formal thing and they do it in a dignified way.
That's fine. I'm not criticizing it except that it doesn't stir up must
evangelistic enthusiasm. It's sort of a routine thing, mechanically
done. Now, I'm not trying to knock that out, don't misunderstand me. But
I just like to see a preacher, every once and a while, we get through
with a good sermon and just say, "I feel like I want to give somebody in
here a chance to come down here and profess your faith and come unto the
church." I'm sorry to lose that.