Open Air Meetings

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R A Torrey (“Methods of Christian Work” (Chapter 6)

Their Importance and Advantages

 

 

They are scriptural

Open-air meetings are portable; you can carry them around
Open-air meetings are more attractive in the summer than hot, sweltering halls or churches
Open-air meetings will accommodate vast crowds

Open-air meetings are economical

You can reach men in an open-air meeting that you can reach in no other way
You can reach backsliders and people who have drifted away from the church
Open-air meetings impress people by their earnestness
Open-air meetings bring recruits to churches and mis­sions
Open-air meetings enable you to reach men
Open-air meetings are good for the health

Where to hold Open Air Meetings

Where the crowds pass
Hold them near crowded tenements
Hold meetings near circuses, baseball games, and other places where the people congregate
Hold meetings in or near parks or other public resorts
Hold meetings in groves
Hold open-air meetings near your missions
Hold open-air meetings in front of churches
Be careful about the little details in connection with the location

Things to Get

Get it thoroughly understood between yourself and God that He wants you to do this work and that by His grace you are going to do it, whatever it costs
Get permission from the powers that be to hold open-air meetings
Get a good place to hold the meeting
Get as large a number of reliable Christian men and women to go with you as possible
Get the best music you can
Get the attention of your hearers as soon as possible
Get some good tracts
Get workers around in the crowd to do personal work
Get a gospel wagon if you can

Don’ts

Don’t unnecessarily antagonize your audience
Don’t get scared
Don’t lose your temper
Don’t let your meeting be broken up
Don’t fight
Don’t be dull
Don’t be soft
Don’t read a sermon
Don’t use “cant” or jargon
Don’t talk too long

Things Absolutely Necessary to Success

Consecrated men and women
Dependence on God
Loyalty to the Word of God
Frequently filling anew with the Holy Spirit
 

 

They are scriptural

  Jesus said, “Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind” (Luke 14:21). Every great preacher of the Bible was an open-air preacher. Peter was an open-air preacher, Paul was an open-air preacher, and so were Elijah, Moses, and Ezra. More important than all, Jesus Christ Himself was an open-air preacher and preached, for the most part, outdoors. Every great sermon recorded in the Bible was preached in the open air: the sermon on the Day of Pentecost, the Sermon on the Mount, the sermon on Mars Hill, etc.

In this country, we have an idea that open-air preaching is for those who cannot get any other place to speak, but across the water they look at it quite differently. Some of the most emi­nent preachers of Great Britain preach in the open air.

 

Open-air meetings are portable; you can carry them around

It would be very difficult to carry a church or mis­sion building with you, but there is no difficulty in carrying an open-air meeting with you. You can get an open-air meet­ing where you could never get a church, mission hall, or even a room. You can have open-air meetings in all parts of the city and all parts of the country.

 

Open-air meetings are more attractive in the summer than hot, sweltering halls or churches When on vacation, I used to attend a country church. It was one of the hottest, most stifling, and sleepiest places I have ever entered. It was all but impossible to keep awake while the minister attempted to preach. The church was located in a beautiful grove where it was always cool and shady, but it seemed never to enter the minds of the people to go out of the church into the grove.

Of course, only a few people attended the church services. One day, a visiting minister suggested that they have an open-air meeting on the front lawn of a Christian man who had a summer residence nearby. The farmers came to that meet­ing from miles around, in wagons, on foot, and every other way. There was a splendid crowd in attendance. The country churches would do well in the summer to get out of their church building into some attractive grove nearby.

 

Open-air meetings will accommodate vast crowds

There are few church buildings, especially in the country, that will accommodate more than one thousand people; but people can be accommodated by the thousands in an open-air meeting. It has been my privilege to speak for several summers in a small country town with less than a thousand inhabitants. Of course the largest church building in the town would not accommo­date more than five hundred people. The meetings, however, were held in the open air, and people drove to them from forty miles around. At one meeting, we had an attendance of fifteen thousand people. Whitefield was driven to the fields by the action of church authorities, and it was well that he was. Some of his audiences at Moorefield’s were said to number sixty thou­sand people.

 

Open-air meetings are economical

  You neither have to pay rent nor hire a janitor. They do not cost anything at all. God Himself furnishes the building and takes care of it. I remember that, at a Christian Workers’ Convention, a man was continually complaining that no one would rent a mission hall for him to hold meetings in. At last I suggested to him that he had the entire outdoors, and he could go there and preach until someone rented him a hall. He took the sugges­tion and was used greatly by God. You do not need to have a cent in your pocket to hold an open-air meeting. The whole outdoors is free.

 

You can reach men in an open-air meeting that you can reach in no other way

I can tell of instance after instance where men who have not been at church or a mission hall for years have been reached by open-air meetings. The people I have known to be reached and converted through open-air meetings have included thieves, drunkards, gamblers, saloon­keepers, abandoned women, murderers, lawyers, doctors, the­atrical people, society people—in fact, pretty much every class.

 

You can reach backsliders and people who have drifted away from the church

One day, when we were holding a meeting on a street corner in a city, a man in the crowd became interested, and one of our workers dealt with him. He said, “I am a backslider, and so is my wife, but I have made up my mind to come back to Christ.” He was saved and so was his brother-in-law. 29

 

Open-air meetings impress people by their earnestness

How often I have heard people say, “There is something in it. See those people talking out there on the street. They do not have any collection, and they come here just because they believe what they are preaching.” Remarks like this are made over and over again. Men who are utterly careless about the Gospel and Christianity have been impressed by the earnest­ness of men and women who go out on to the street to win souls for Christ.

 

Open-air meetings bring recruits to churches and mis­ sions

One of the best ways to fill up an empty church is to send your workers out on the street to hold meetings before the church service is held—or better still, go yourself.

When the meeting is over, you can invite people to the church or mis­sion. This is the divinely appointed means for reaching men who cannot be reached in any other way. (See Luke 14:21.) All Christians should hear the words of Christ constantly ringing in their ears: “Go out quickly into the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor.”

 

Open-air meetings enable you to reach men

One of the great problems of most ministers of the Gospel today is how to reach the men. The average church audience is composed very largely of women and children. One of the easiest ways to reach the men is to go out on the streets, where the men are. Open-air meetings are, as a rule, composed of an overwhelming majority of men.

 

Open-air meetings are good for the health

An English preacher was told that he would die, that he had consumption. He thought he would make the most of the few months he had allotted to live, so he went out on the streets and began preaching. The open-air preaching cured his con­sumption, and he lived for many years. The man then became the founder of a great open-air society.

 

Where to hold Open Air Meetings

 

To put it simply, in the area that you wish to reach. But a few suggestions may prove helpful.

 

Where the crowds pass

Find the principal thoroughfare where the crowds gather. You cannot hold your meeting just at that point, as the police will not permit it, but you can hold it just a little to one side of that point. As the crowds pass, they will go to one side and listen to you.

 

Hold them near crowded tenements

In that way, you can preach to the people in the tenements as well as on the street. They will throw open their windows and listen. Sometimes the audience that you do not see will be as large as the one you do see. You may be preaching to hundreds of people inside the building whom you do not see at all. I knew of a poor sick woman being brought to Christ through the preaching she heard on the street. It was a hot summer night, and her window was open. The preaching came in through the window and so touched her heart that she was won to Christ. It is good to have a good strong voice in open-air preaching, for then you can preach to all the tenements within three or four blocks. Mr. Sankey once sang a hymn that was carried over a mile away and converted a man that far off. I have a friend who occasionally uses a megaphone, which carries his voice to immense distances in his open-air meetings.

 

Hold meetings near circuses, baseball games, and other places where the people congregate

One of the most inter­esting meetings I ever held was just outside of a baseball field on Sunday. The game was breaking up inside. We held the meeting outside, just behind the grandstand. As there was no game to see inside, the people listened to the singing and preaching of the Gospel outside. On another Sunday, we drove down to Sell’s circus and had the motliest audience I ever addressed. There were people present from almost every nation under heaven. The circus had advertised a “Congress of Nations,” so I had a congress of nations for my open-air meeting, too. On that day, I had a Dutchman, a Frenchman, a Scotsman, an Englishman, an Irishman, and an American preach. We took care at the open-air meeting to invite the people to the evening meeting at the mission. That night, a man came who told us that he was one of the employees of the circus and that he was touched that after­noon by the preaching of the Gospel and had come to learn how to be a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. He accepted the Savior that night.

 

Hold meetings in or near parks or other public resorts

Almost every city has its resorts where people go on Sunday. As the people will not go to church, the church ought to go out to the people. Sometimes permission can be secured from the authorities to hold the meetings right in the parks. Wherever this is impossible, they can be held nearby. A man who is now a deacon of our church spent his Sundays at Lincoln Park before he was converted; an open-air meeting was held, and there he heard the Gospel and was converted.

 

Hold meetings in groves

It would be well if every coun­try church could be persuaded to try this. Get out of the church into a grove somewhere, and you will be surprised at the number of people who will come who would not go near the church at all.

 

Hold open-air meetings near your missions

If you have a mission, be sure to hold an open-air meeting near it. It is the easiest thing in the world to keep a mission full, even during the summer months, if you hold an open-air meeting in con­nection with it, but it is almost impossible to do so if you do not.

 

Hold open-air meetings in front of churches

A good many of our empty churches could be filled if we would only hold open-air meetings in front of them. Years ago, when in London, I went to hear Newman Hall preach. It looked to me like a very orderly and aristocratic church, but when I left the church after the second service, I was surprised to find an open-air meeting in full blast right in front of the church, and people gathered there in crowds from the thoroughfare.

 

Be careful about the little details in connection with the location

On a hot day, hold the meeting on the shady side of the street; on a cool day, the sunny side. Make it as com­fortable for the audience as possible. Never compel the audi­ence to stand with the sun shining in their eyes. Preach with the wind, not against it. Take your own position a little above the part of the audience nearest you — upon a curb, chair, plat­form, rise in the ground, or anything that will raise your head above others so that your voice will carry.

 

Things to Get

 

Get it thoroughly understood between yourself and God that He wants you to do this work and that by His grace you are going to do it, whatever it costs

This is one of the most important things in starting out to do open-air work. You are bound to make a failure unless you settle this at the start. Open-air work has its discouragements, its difficulties, and its almost insurmountable obstacles.  Unless you start out know­ing that God has called you to the work, and come what will, you will go through with it, you are sure to give it up.

 

Get permission from the powers that be to hold open-air meetings

Do not get into conflict with the police if you can possibly avoid it. As a rule, it is quite easy to get permission to open-air preach if you go about it in a courteous and intel­ligent way. Find out what the laws of the city are in this regard, and then observe them.

Go to the captain of the precinct, tell him that you wish to hold an open-air meeting, and let him see that you are not a disturber of the peace. Many would-be open-air preachers get into trouble from a simple lack of good sense and common decency.

 

Get a good place to hold the meeting

Do not start out at random. Study your ground. You should operate like a general. We are told that the Germans studied France as a battleground for years before the Franco-Prussian war broke out; and when the war broke out, there were officers in the German army who knew more about France than the officers in the French army did. Lay your plan of campaign, study your battlefield, and pick out the best places to hold the meetings, look over the territory carefully, and study it in all its bearings. There are a good many things to be considered. Do not select what would be a good place for someone to throw a big pan full of dishwater upon you. These little details may appear trivial, but they need to be taken into consideration. It is unpleasant, and somewhat disconcerting, when a man is right in the midst of an interesting exhortation, to have a pan full of dishwater thrown down the back of his neck.     

 

Get as large a number of reliable Christian men and women to go with you as possible

Crowds draw crowds. There is great power in numbers. One man can go out on the street alone and hold a meeting; I have done it myself. But if I can get fifteen or twenty reliable people to go with me, I will get them every time. Please note that I have said reliable Christian men and women. Do not take anybody along with you to an open-air meeting that you do not know. Be sure to leave a man who is in the habit of making a fool of himself at home; he may upset your whole meeting. Do not take a man or woman with you who has an unsavory reputation; prob­ably someone in the crowd will know it and shout out the fact. Take only people who are of established reputation and well balanced. Never pick up a stranger out of the crowd and ask him to speak. Someone will come along who appears to be just your sort, but if you ask him to speak, you may wish you had not done so.

 

Get the best music you can

Get a baby organ and a cornet if you can.Be sure to have good singing if it is pos­sible. If you cannot have good singing, have poor singing, for even poor singing goes a good way in the open air. One of the best open-air meetings I ever attended was where two of us were forced to go out alone. Neither of us was a singer. We started with only one hearer, but a drunken man came along and began to dance to our singing, and a crowd gathered to watch him dance. When the crowd had gathered, I simply put my hand on the drunken man, and said, “Stand still for a few moments. My companion took the drunken man as a text for a temperance sermon, and when he got through, I took him for a text. People began to whisper in the crowd, “I would not be in that man’s shoes for anything.” The man did us good service that night; He first drew the crowd and then furnished us with a text. The Lord turned the devil’s instrument right against him that night. If you can, get a good solo singer. Even a poor solo singer will do splendid work in the open air if he sings in the power of the Spirit. I remember a man who attempted to sing in the open air who was really no singer at all, but God in His wonderful mercy caused the man to sing in the power of the Spirit that night. People began to break down on the street, tears rolled down their cheeks, and one woman was converted right there during the singing of that hymn. Although the hymn was sung miserably from a musical standpoint, the Spirit of God used it for that woman’s conver­sion.

 

Get the attention of your hearers as soon as possible

When you are preaching in a church, people will often stay even if they are not interested. But unless you get the atten­tion of your audience at once in the open air, one of two things will happen: Either your crowd will leave you or else they will begin to ridicule you. In the first half-dozen sentences, you must get the attention of your hearers. I was once holding a meeting in one of the hardest places of a city. There were saloons on three of the four corners and three breweries. The first words I spoke were these: “You will notice the cross on the spire of yonder church,” for there were several Catholic churches nearby. By these means, I secured their attention at once, and then I talked to them about the meaning of that cross. On holding a meeting one Labor Day, I started out on the subject of labor. I spoke only a few moments on that sub­ject, then led them around to the subject of the Lord Jesus Christ. Holding a meeting one night in the midst of a hot election, near where an election parade was forming, I started out with the question, “Whom shall we elect?” The people expected a political address, but before long I got them inter­ested in the question of whether or not we should elect the Lord Jesus Christ to be the ruler over our lives.

 

Get some good tracts

Always have tracts when you hold an open-air meeting. They assist in making permanent impressions and in fixing the truth of the message in the lis­teners’ hearts. Have workers pass through the crowd handing out tracts at the proper time.

 

Get workers around in the crowd to do personal work

Returning from an open-air meeting years ago in the city of Detroit, I said to a minister who was stopping at the same hotel that we had had several conversions in the meeting. He replied by asking me if a certain man from Cleveland was not in the crowd. I replied that he was. This pastor told me that if I looked into it, I would probably find that the conversions were largely due to that man; while the services were going on, this man had been around in the crowd doing personal work. I investigated and found that it was so.

 

Get a gospel wagon if you can

Of this we shall have more to say when we speak of Gospel Wagon Work.

 

Don’ts

 

Don’t unnecessarily antagonize your audience

I heard of a man addressing a Roman Catholic audience in the open air and criticizing the Roman Catholic Church and the Pope. That man did not have good sense. Another man attempted a prohibition discourse immediately in front of a saloon. He got a brick instead of votes.

 

Don’t get scared

Let Psalm 27:1 be your motto: “The lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear”? The lord is the strength of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” There is no need to be scared. You may be surrounded by a crowd of yelling hoodlums, but you may be absolutely certain that you will not be hurt unless the Lord wants you to be hurt; and if the Lord’ wants you to be hurt, that is the best thing for you. You may be killed if the Lord sees fit to allow you to be killed, but it is a wonderful privilege to be killed for the Lord Jesus Christ. One night I was holding a meeting in one of the worst parts of Chi­cago. Something happened to enrage a part of the crowd that gathered around me. Friends near at hand were in fear lest I be killed, but I kept on speaking and was not even struck.

 

Don’t lose your temper

Whatever happens, never lose your temper. You should never get angry under any circum­stances, but it is especially foolish to do so when you are holding an open-air meeting. You will doubtless have many temptations to lose your temper, but never do it. It is very hard to hit a man when he is serene, and if you preserve your seren­ity, the chances are that you will escape unscathed. Even if a tough strikes you, he cannot do so a second time if you remain calm. Serenity is one of the best safeguards.

 

Don’t let your meeting be broken up

No matter what happens, hold your ground if you can, and you generally can. One night I was holding a meeting in a square in one of the most desperate parts of a large city. The steps of an adjacent saloon were crowded with men, many of whom were half drunk. A man came along on a load of hay, went into the saloon, and fired himself up with strong drink. Then he attempted to drive right down upon the crowd in the middle of the square, in which there were many women and children. Some man stopped his horses, and the infuriated man came down from the load of hay, and the howling mob swept down from the steps of the saloon. Somehow or other, the drunken driver got a rough handling in the mob, but not one of our number was struck. Two policemen in citizens’ clothes hap­pened to be passing by and stopped the riot. I said a few words more and then formed our little party into a procession, behind which the crowd fell in, and marched down to the mis­sion singing.

 

Don’t fight

Never fight under any circumstances. Even if they almost pound the life out of you, refuse to fight back.

 

Don’t be dull

Dullness will kill an open-air meeting at once. Prissiness will drive the whole audience away. In order to avoid being dull, do not preach long sermons. Use a great many striking illustrations. Keep wide awake yourself, and you will keep the audience awake. Be energetic in your manner. Talk so people can hear you. Don’t preach, but simply talk to people.

 

Don’t be soft

The crowd cannot and will not stand one of these nice, namby-pamby, sentimental sorts of fellows in an open-air meeting. The temptation to throw a brick or a rotten apple at him is perfectly irresistible, and one can hardly blame the crowd.

 

Don’t read a sermon

Whatever may be said in defense of reading essays in the pulpit, it will never do in the open air. It is possible to have no notes at all. If you cannot talk long without notes, so much the better; you can talk as long as you ought to. If you read, you will talk longer than you ought to.

 

Don’t use “cant” or jargon

Use language that people are acquainted with, but do not use vulgar language. Some people think it is necessary to use slang, but slang is never admissible. There is language that is popular and easily understood by the people that are purest Anglo-Saxon.

 

Don’t talk too long

You may have a number of talks in an open-air meeting, but do not have any of them over ten or fif­teen minutes long. As a rule, do not have them as long as that. Of course there are exceptions to this, such as when a great crowd is gathered to hear some person in the open air. Under such circumstances, I have heard a sermon an hour long that held the interest of the people. But this is not true in the ordi­nary open-air meeting.

 

Things Absolutely Necessary to Success

 

Consecrated men and women

None but consecrated men and women will ever succeed in open-air meetings. If you cannot get such, you might as well give up holding open-air meetings.

 

Dependence on God

There is nothing that will teach someone his dependence on God more quickly and more thor­oughly than holding open-air meetings. You never know what is going to happen. You cannot lay plans that you can always follow in an open-air meeting. You never know what moment someone will come along and ask some troublesome question. You do not know what unforeseen event is going to occur. All you can do is depend on God—but that is perfectly suf­ficient.

 

Loyalty to the Word of God

It is the man who is abso­lutely loyal to God’s Word, and who is familiar with it and con­stantly uses it, who succeeds in the open air. God often takes a text that is quoted and uses it for the salvation of some hearer. Arguments and illustrations are forgotten, but the text sticks and converts.

 

Frequently filling anew with the Holy Spirit

If any man needs to take advantage of the privilege of fresh infillings of the Holy Spirit, it is the open-air worker. Spiritual power is the great secret of success in this, as in all other Christian work.

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