"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message: With his own words which have won thousands for ChristEllis, William T. (William Thomas)
Religion
"Billy" Sunday, the Man and His Message: With his own words which have won thousands for Christ
Ellis, William T. (William Thomas)
Baseball players -- United States -- Biography; Evangelists -- United States -- Biography; Sunday, Billy, 1862-1935
Six months after the Sunday meetings in Scranton I visited Carbondale,
a small town sixteen miles distant from Scranton, and talked with
two of the resident pastors. There are four Protestant churches in
Carbondale, which have already received a thousand new members within
five months. All these converts are either the direct result of
Billy Sunday's preaching, or else the converts of converts. Out of a
Protestant population of nine thousand persons, the Carbondale churches
have received one-ninth into their membership within six months. These
bare figures do not express the greater total of Christian service and
enthusiasm which permeates the community as an abiding legacy of the
Billy Sunday campaign. These converts consider that they have been
saved to serve.
Asked to fix a period after which he would expect a reaction from the
Sunday meetings, a critic would probably say about one year. On this
point we learn that when the evangelist visited the city of Scranton,
which is within an hour's ride of Wilkes-Barre, he found that the
influence of the meetings which he had held a year previously in
Wilkes-Barre were perhaps the most potent single factor in preparing
the people of Scranton for his coming. Night after night Wilkes-Barre
sent delegations of scores and hundreds over to the Scranton
Tabernacle. Investigators from afar who came to look into the Scranton
meetings were advised to go to the neighboring city to ascertain what
were the effects of the campaign after a year. The result was always
convincing.
When the evangelist was in Pittsburgh, McKeesport, where he had been
six years before, sent many delegations to hear him and on one occasion
fifteen hundred persons made the journey from McKeesport to Pittsburgh
to testify to the lasting benefits which their city had received from
the evangelist's visit.
Usually some organization of the "trail-hitters" is effected after the
evangelist's departure. These are bands for personal Christian work.
The most remarkable of them all is reported from Wichita, Kansas, where
the aftermath of the Sunday meetings has become so formidable as to
suggest a new and general method of Christian service by laymen.
The Sunday converts organized themselves into "Gospel Teams," who
announce that they are ready to go anywhere and conduct religious
meetings, especially for men. They offer to pay their own expenses,
although frequently the communities inviting them refuse to permit
this. Sometimes these Gospel Teams travel by automobiles or street cars
and sometimes they make long railway journeys.
The men have so multiplied themselves that there are now more than
three hundred Gospel Teams in this work and they have formed "The
National Federation of Gospel Teams" of which Claude Stanley of Wichita
is president and West Goodwin of Cherryvale, Kansas, is secretary.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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