"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
Behind the platform is the post office, to which the names of
converts are sent for the city pastors every day; and here also are
the telephones for the use of the press. Adjoining the tabernacle
is a nursery for babies, and an emergency hospital with a nurse in
attendance. It seems as if no detail of efficient service has been
overlooked by this practical westerner. So well organized is everything
that the collection can be taken in an audience of eight thousand
persons within three minutes.
While touching upon collections, this is as good a place as any to
raise the point of Mr. Sunday's own compensation. He receives a
free-will offering made on the last day. The offerings taken in the
early weeks are to meet the expenses of the local committee. Mr. Sunday
has nothing to do with this. This committee also pays approximately
half of the expenses of his staff of workers, and it also provides
a home for the Sunday party during their sojourn. Mr. Sunday himself
pays the balance of the expenses of his workers out of the free-will
offering which he receives on the last day. These gifts have reached
large figures--forty-four thousand dollars in the Pittsburgh campaign.
There is a quality in human nature which will not associate money with
religion, and while we hear nobody grumble at a city's paying thousands
of dollars a night for a grand opera performance; yet an evangelist who
has sweetened up an entire city, lessened the police expense, promoted
the general happiness and redeemed hundreds of thousands of lives from
open sin to godliness, is accused of mercenariness, because those whom
he has served give him a lavish offering as he departs.
Although much criticized on the subject of money, Mr. Sunday
steadfastly refuses to make answer to these strictures or to render an
accounting, insisting that this is entirely a personal matter with him.
Nobody who knows him doubts his personal generosity or his sense of
stewardship. Intimate friends say that he tithes his income.
Three important departments of the Sunday organization are the choir,
the ushers, and the personal-work secretaries. Concerning the first
more will be said in a later chapter. The ushers are by no means
ornamental functionaries. They are a drilled regiment, each with his
station of duty and all disciplined to meet any emergency that may
arise. In addition to seating the people and taking the collection,
they have the difficult task of assisting the officers to keep out the
overflow crowds who try to press into the building that has been filled
to its legal capacity. For it is quite a normal condition in the Sunday
campaigns for thousands of persons to try to crowd their way into the
tabernacle after the latter is full. Sometimes it takes foot-ball
tactics to keep them out.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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