Atlanta Daily World

SPASMODIC RALLIES VS. SYSTEMATIC GIVING

If the church is to progress financially, it must be placed on a sound basis of systematic giving, is the conclusion we have reached after giving this question much thought and consideration. The financial side of our church life measures favorably with that of our other Sunday obligations. Well managed homes are run on a systematic basis, or budget plan. Stated amounts are set aside for rents, notes, insurance, light, gas; groceries, car-fare and other necessities. The church is also a necessity. Have you left the church out of your budget plan?

We must include the church in our systematic basis of doing successful things, and arrange it so that every member—young and old—can fit into the scheme of things. We have too long depended on rallies, house parties, fish fries, watermelon feasts and begging cards to pay our honest and religiously contracted obligations.

We should no longer attempt to fool ourselves and our creditors by this slip-shod method of financing our churches; for sooner or later we are "going on the rocks" if we continue this slip-shod financing method. This declaration is aimed at no particular denomination, sex or creed. This unfinancial flea of deception seems to be biting all alike, and at the same time. We are not trying to discourage rallies as such, for they have served well, and still serve a place in our financial system, but they should not dominate.

Rallies and their like are to the church what excursions are to the railroad. No railway system in the country could survive long on the money obtained from the excursionist. The huge steel rails which now belt the globe would soon be "rusted out." The daily passenger and the constant user of the freight and other facilities, keep the iron horse in trim, which belches up and down the country with a master mind in the cab. Excursions are run in many instances to induce the man or woman to ride who would ride in no other way, nor at any other time. People ride excursions just to be riding; most of them have nowhere to go and nothing to do after they arrive, but they ride just the same. Some would go on an excursion to the lower regions if it were possible to run one to these fiery climes.

After this excursion-rider has returned from a jaunt of not more than a hundred miles, he never gets through telling of the "wonderful trip." He has seen more and has more to tell in a ride of a few hours than Mat Henson, colored explorer, and the only man alive who has placed his feet down at the north pole. His excursion trip is a never-ending story. It's useless to try to persuade him to accompany you even to the Mammoth Cave, if you anticipate riding first class; for he utterly refuses other modes of transportation, although better transportation conditions are offered.

So it is with the church. The "rally hound" will give $1.50 in a rally the first of the year, and hades and high waters cannot persuade him to give another cent to the church, notwithstanding the urgent need of finance to meet certain pressing obligations. When he is approached for money to support his church he wants to know what did you do with "the dollar and four-bits I gave in the rally?" Because of this attitude, the pastor must keep on "rallying and rallying" all the time to get some kind of support, and then he is criticised. "Every time I go to that church they have on a rally; I don't see what they do with so much money?" is what some one says who hasn't given the first dime.

There is nothing miraculous about the "fo-bits" you give every now and then, Christ made wine from water at the wedding feast, when there was a shortage of the fluid, but He does not intend to come into our congregations and turn our long prayers and short-metered songs into money to help finance His church. That's our job and He is expecting us to make good job of it.

Suppose we begin to wean ourselves from the rally plan of supporting God's church. It does not represent God in any sense of the word. The outcome of a rally is uncertain: rallies fail. But God is true; His works are certain: He never faileth. We have drifted away from God's plan and are now on a "dead end" road that leadeth nowhere. Stop riding these "rally excursions" as a means of financing God's church, and get on the regular train, and ride daily. For there is something in store for the systematic giver, while there nothing promised the "occasional rider." But if most of our congregations are "Rally-Conscious," a will give of our means in no other way, then rally me must. But to educate the people to give systematically in support of the church would ward off many foreclosures because of rally failures.