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Pilgrim Holiness History – 1930-1946

“Explosive Church Growth”

Most folk today think the “Church Growth movement” started in the 1970s and fizzled twenty years later. For the Pilgrims it began in 1930. The Pilgrims had 488 churches in 1930 with about 17,000 members. Sixteen years later in 1946 they had 811 churches and more than 27,000 members—a 65% growth in the number churches and a 56% growth in membership! More impressive, this astonishing growth was not a result of mergers but of outreach. Plus, these churches-and-membership figures are even surpassed by attendance figures since Pilgrims had far more attending their churches than they had members. One example of this attendance growth during this period would be the period 1932-1938 during which Sunday school attendance grew by 38% and average attendance by 50% --all in a single four-year period!

How did 488 Pilgrim churches plant 322 new churches, add ten thousand members, and tens of thousand new attendees in just 16 years?[1] There were at least five elements in the Pilgrim Church Growth Strategy, though we probably cannot say they intentionally planned it this way as we might today using our “Strategic planning flip charts.” Mostly they just did whatever worked to bring people to Christ, and these were the best methods of the day.

1. Revival meetings

Pilgrim local churches held two revival meetings each year, engaging professional evangelists to preach powerful sermons that urged the lost to receive Christ and believers to enter the sanctified life. In meetings every night for one or two weeks the evangelists[2] preached convicting sermons calling for the lost to “come to the altar” and “pray through” then adopt a new Christian lifestyle. The unsaved actually attended these meetings, sometimes for entertainment reasons. Frequently, if the church could afford it, the professional evangelist was accompanied by a separate “song evangelist” who offered the “best show in town” including a platform full of musical instruments, duets, trombone-led rousing singing, chalk drawings and later on Scene-O-Felt presentations (complete with “black light” highlighting when the lights were turned off). Some song evangelists even “played the saw” or offered other kinds of bizarre entertainment not totally unlike some of today’s “American Idol” presentations. Warmed up by this rousing music, the audience next heard a powerful and convicting call to repentance. Evangelists were great communicators and told stories that transfixed even the small children who stayed in the service (this was before church nurseries). Revivals offered a three-part liturgy, referred to at the time as “services” (song service, preaching service and altar service). In response to extended altar calls many did repent and get saved. Drunkards were delivered, wife-beaters were converted into peaceful husbands and fathers, people were “gloriously saved” and notorious sinners were transformed into solid Christian men and women who sometimes even became preachers and church planters themselves. Small churches who couldn’t afford evangelists expected their District Superintendent to preach their revivals.[3] Part of the Pilgrim recipe to church growth was getting people saved in revival meetings.

2. Camp Meetings

The annual summer Camp Meetings were revivals-writ-large. They offered even better preaching from the best evangelists in the country, many of them full-time evangelists. And camp Meetings offered more engaging music from the very best musicians who also were full time itinerants. Pilgrims took their unsaved friends and co-workers to camp meetings where they got a cheap vacation but many fell “under conviction” and finally ”broke” and went to the altar to commit their life to Christ. The smallest churches may have had to settle for their own District Superintendent as their revival evangelist but at the annual Camp Meeting they could hear the best preachers and enjoy the finest music in the nation. “Hard cases” that had refused to submit to the Lord in local revival meetings often yielded to the powerful preaching and social atmosphere at Camp meetings. They returned home totally changed people. The Pilgrims gathered in these new souls into their local churches and made them into church members and leaders contributing to their explosive growth.

3. Sunday Schools

By the 1940’s Sunday schools were exploding too, supported by a nation-wide Sunday school movement. Seeing the outreach potential of the Sunday school, the Pilgrims established a new denominational office and appointed P. F. Elliot Jr., the best promoter in the denomination head of this work. Elliot was the son of a well-known evangelist and was a John Maxwell-like leader whose untiring energy for promotion, publication and programming brought both Sunday schools and youth work into the forefront for the Pilgrims. Sunday school curriculum was published, youth society resources were pumped out, and the Pilgrims even launched a comprehensive catechism which had been written by Rev. and Mrs. Mel Rothwell. Sunday school contests were held twice a year and “rally days” were promoted as outreach events. In one year (1943) five hundred Pilgrim churches held a rally day and reported an increase of 10,000 attendees that day compared to the previous rally day! Some of these rally day visitors started attending regularly, eventually stayed for the morning service and got saved. For the Pilgrims, Sunday school became a low-risk entry point for the unsaved, offering entertaining peppy Sunday school songs in the opening and closing exercises with a lay-led class sandwiched between. Sunday school’s great secret for outreach was how it organized the laity for outreach. Teachers called absent students each week or sent them post cards. If a student was absent two weeks the teacher visited them. After three weeks the name often went to the “Sunday school superintendent” who added his own contact and further absences even got the preacher involved. In the Sunday school the unsaved could become “members” even before they became Christians, the proto-“community membership” of the day. Sunday school became the first step toward closer association with the church. When “members” of the Sunday school eventually stayed for the “after service” they often got saved and became full members of the church and the Pilgrims got a host of new members and leaders.

4. Bible Schools

The Pilgrim’s wanted to plant new churches so they saw “raising up workers” as a primary work of the district and denomination. Thus Bible schools were a key element to the Pilgrim church growth strategy. During the depression years Bible colleges faced serious fiscal challenges but Pilgrims kept many afloat and these sent a steady stream of students out for planting and pastoring new churches. It was a sort of supply-side approach: produce more pastors than you have openings for, and the rest can plant new churches. The Pilgrims had four denominationally sponsored Bible Schools but there were also four district-sponsored school too, making a total of eight Bible schools serving a denomination of barely 500 churches in 1930.[4] Certainly eight Bible colleges were more then the denomination could support, but many survived through the depression (though several closed for a few years during the worst years of the depression). By 1933 only four schools had survived, (Frankfort eventually reopened). Denominational leaders knew they had too many schools to support, yet they were so keen on frontier church planting that, in 1937, the Home Missionary department opened yet another Bible school for church planters in the Idaho-Washington district which became Spokane Pilgrim Bible School.[5] The Pilgrim Bible schools pumped hundreds of new preachers into the Pilgrim church providing a steady stream of fresh pastors and church planters which became a key element of the expansion of church planting of the era.

5. Church Planting

For a denomination of fewer then 500 churches in 1930 to get a net increase of 322 churches by 1946 meant the leaders had to plant a lot of churches. During this time some churches left the denomination (including those in Colorado connected with the Finch dissention). Other new church plants fizzled after a few years and some established churches closed too. Yet in these 16 years, the denomination saw a net gain of 322 churches, something few denominations can achieve without numerous mergers and acquisitions. It is an amazing story. Some of the secret was the entrepreneurial spirit that still was strong among Pilgrims. DSs in “home missionary districts” recruited young Bible school graduates to move into their area, get jobs to pay their own way so they could plant churches in their spare time. When these churches grew the young pastors quit their jobs and became full time pastor of their own newly planted churches. Established districts recruited fresh Bible school graduates to move to a town were there were eight people interested in starting a Pilgrim church and the DS would simply show up and organize the group of ten into a new congregation. Some of these congregations fizzled but many grew to become successful churches. Rather than “doing it right” with bucketsful of money, districts offered only cupfuls of financial support with barrels of encouragement and prayer to these young entrepreneurs willing to start something new. New churches started in tents and storefronts, in abandoned Methodist buildings, and even in people’s living rooms. Sowing seeds broadly, the Pilgrims didn’t worry that some never took root or fizzled later. They figured some would take root and become full-fledged churches growing to eventually be among the denominations largest churches. In just sixteen years the Pilgrims’ net gain of 65% in the number of churches is to this day a record hard to beat.[6]

Today it is astonishing for us to read the record of Pilgrim church growth from 1930-1946 yet it is a true story. While the world had plunged into a depression and a world war, Pilgrims marched forward to win thousands of new converts and plant hundreds of new churches. Their strategy might not work well today, but it worked quite well in the 1930’s and 40’s.

To think about….

1. Are “revival meetings” still a viable way to reach the lost? If not, what are the new ways to get the unsaved genuinely converted?
2. In most districts today the Camp Meeting has morphed from being a tool for evangelism to become a gathering for mostly Christians. If Camp Meetings have lost their evangelistic edge what are the new big-meeting ways of accomplishing evangelism beyond the local church?
3. For most churches the Sunday school is no longer a mighty movement of laity organized for outreach. In many churches it can barely keep afloat as a baby-sitting service for the children of adults who attend worship then go home after one hour. What are the current ways of mobilizing the laity for outreach in the church?
4. In more recent years Wesleyans have largely abandoned the Bible school approach (except for one school in Canada, Bethany Bible College, which still provides a huge number of workers). Wesleyans have generally adopted the Nazarene approach of supporting Liberal Arts colleges which prepare students for all kinds of careers, not just church ministries. All of the Pilgrim Bible colleges eventually closed or transformed themselves into liberal arts colleges. Wesleyans also now provide semi-Bible college training through the FLAME courses for older students and second-career ministers. What do you think have Wesleyans lost in the move to liberal arts colleges? Gained?
5. Wesleyans periodically launch new efforts and strategies for church growth and church planting but we have never seen the success rate of the Pilgrims during the 1930’s and 40’s. What steps would we have to take today to get this kind of growth in membership, attendance and new church plants?

So what do you think?

During the first few weeks, click here to comment or read comments

Keith Drury   October 27, 2009

www.TuesdayColumn.com

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[1] I have focused here on the growth in North America here but there were also constant gains in foreign missionary work. The Thomas & Thomas official history focuses extensively on the foreign missionary history. For that exciting story see The Days of our Pilgrimage.

[2] Some of the better known “evangelists” of the time included P. F. Elliot Sr., J. H. Philpot, David Wilson, A.S. Joppie, E. E. Ledingham, P.O. Carpenter, G. A. Castevens, and R. G. Flexon. (Most Pilgrim leaders and virtually all evangelists seldom used their first names and were known by their initials.)

[3] District Superintendents were expected to “preach revivals” as one of their primary activities since reaching the lost was the primary duty of the church. Few District Superintendents saw their work as “administrative” but believed preaching was their work. Most DSs had no “offices” and worked out of a “study,” usually a spare bedroom in their home. The DS work at the time was more akin to that of a circuit riding preacher than a central administrator and they believed “my work is spiritual—first, last and always.”

[4] The four denominational schools were at Greensboro, NC, (eventually leading to today’s John Wesley College); one at both Colorado Springs and Pasadena, California, (eventually leading to today’s Oklahoma Wesleyan University); and Kingswood Kentucky. The four district-sponsored schools were located at Shacklefords, Virginia, Owosso, Michigan, Allentown, Pennsylvania, and in Frankfort, Indiana.

[5] The Spkane Pilgrim Bible School later moved to Clarkston Washington before folding due to lack of finances in the depression years. It offered both high school and Bible school courses, like many of the other Bible schools. The property of the schools was held by separate corporations, not by the denomination, but they were to stand by “the teaching of the Pilgrim Church” and they did report to the General Board.

[6] Here we have focused on Pilgrim church growth from 1930 to 1946 but actually the entire story of the Pilgrims from 1930 to 1966 was one of continued church growth and expansion at this same rate. The graph of church membership is basically a straight line up steadily from 1930 to 1966. So what is described here was not actually an era of church growth that lasted only 16 years, but one that continued for 36 years straight up. When Pilgrims are remembered today they are often dismissed as “those strict ingrown legalists.” Yet the record shows that the Pilgrims from 1930 to 1966 were constantly reaching out, getting people saved, and planting new churches.