What do we need in America? More Government? More freedom? What will stop our decline? Do we need a strong leader. I answer no to all this questions. The following is taken from a book called “Ordinary People, Extraordinary things” by Dr. Bruce Ballast. The following happend in 1857 in a country about to torn apart with civil war.
It began in New York City. That fact alone made this revival different. As mentioned in the last chapter, urbanization had become a phenomenon that was largely negative in its effects. Huge areas of New York City that once had been homes were now devoted to businesses and crowded tenements full of immigrants, and that was especially true anywhere near the waterfront. When their members moved outward from the city center, most of the churches did too. Many congregations that had become famous in the Second Great Awakening, such as the Broadway Tabernacle where Charles Finney pastored, and the Brick Presbyterian Church, left the city environs to move where their people were. Doesn’t that sound familiar? As I write these words the denomination of which I am a member is studying how we can effectively reach the city. We were first an agriculturally based church of immigrants; then we moved to the cities, and gradually we became a suburban church. Now we want to get back into the cities, but don’t know how to do ministry there anymore. That is the case for many churches that fled to the suburbs during rapid urbanization.
However, in New York there was one church that decided to try to learn how to minister in the city setting. The North Dutch Church, at the corner of Fulton and William streets, was facing the same pressure as others in the area. As the neighborhoods changed, the number of people in worship declined, and it began to look as if a move to the growing area around the city would become necessary to ensure survival of the congregation, because that’s where the former members now lived. As sometimes happens in churches, though, the decision to move was put off until it was no longer financially feasible. Most members had joined other congregations. Therefore, the leadership decided to put energy and prayer into reaching the area around the church. This was, in some senses, a last-ditch effort at survival, but this church should go down in history as willing to change in order to minister to its community.
To accomplish this outreach, the remaining congregation decided to hire a lay missionary who would have the task of reaching out to the masses of people that lived in the various tenements and family-owned businesses in the area. Mr. Jeremiah Lanphier was hired.
Jeremiah Lanphier was born in Coxsackie, New York, in 1809. We know little about his life until 1842, when he attended the Broadway Tabernacle, the large church built for the ministry of Charles Finney. There he was converted in 1842. He was described by a journalist at the time as “tall, with a pleasant face, an affectionate manner, and indomitable energy and perseverance; a good singer, gifted in prayer and exhortation, a welcome guest to any house, shrewd and endowed with much tact and common sense.”
We also know that he was a businessman, having worked for many years in the mercantile business of New York. It was probably thought that since he was himself a businessman, he would be able to relate to the business people around the church.
This quiet man began his work with zeal on July 1, 1857. With the mind of a businessman, he began by getting organized. The area around the church was divided into districts, and methodically Lanphier began to call on every family within each district. He brought with him a folder explaining the history of the church and the various programs that would be of help to the people. Tracts were left with families and Bibles given to the homes that had none. In addition, boarding houses and hotels were visited, and the proprietors were informed that visitors from these places would be welcome at worship services. He convinced managers of hotels to have the chambermaids distribute a small card telling the times of the services when they made their rounds on Sunday mornings. Down at the church, pews were set aside in anticipation of visitors who would come as a result of these efforts. But hardly anyone came. Several months went by as Lanphier exhausted his ideas about outreach with little fruit to show. As fall approached, with a growing sense of discouragement, Lanphier decided, with no ideas left, to commit to praying about the spiritual condition of the area. He also decided to invite others to pray with him. A handbill was printed and distributed that invited businessmen to join him for prayer. This is what it said:
How Often Shall I Pray?
As often as the language of prayer is in my heart; as often as I see my need of help; as often as I feel the power of temptation; as often as I am made sensible to any spiritual declension or feel the aggression of a worldly spirit. In prayer we leave the business of time for that of eternity, and intercourse with men for intercourse with God.
This bill he placed in places that he hoped would attract attention, primarily in office buildings and warehouses and other prominent places of work. He invited businessmen, merchants, clerks, mechanics, and anyone else to come on Wednesday, September 23, at noon to the consistory room in the rear of the North Dutch Church, and those invited were informed that the meeting was planned for an hour, but if it was necessary to leave after as little as five or ten minutes, you were free to go. September 23 came. Imagine the apprehension and anticipation that Jeremiah Lanphier must have felt as he prepared the room. He had no idea how many people would show up, or if anyone would come. If you’ve ever been in a similar position, you probably can picture him getting to the consistory room early, sitting down and praying for people to come. A little before noon he probably went and opened the door, glancing out to see if anyone was waiting to come in. No one was early, waiting to get in. At 12:00 he most likely sat down and began to pray, but probably with an ear cocked toward the door, listening for those who would join him. He heard nothing. He was the only one there at 12:00. Ten minutes went by, and he was still the only one there. I suspect that he got up at about that point to see if the door had stuck, or if someone was outside not knowing where to go or with a fear of being the only one coming in. But no one was there. By 12:20 he probably gave up on anyone coming and began to spend his own time in prayer. At 12:30 he finally heard the sound of someone on the stairs, and he welcomed his first partner in prayer. In a few minutes, another joined them. Then another drifted in, and another, a total of six people gathered in prayer for each other and for their community.
After a meaningful time of prayer, the six decided to make personal invitations to friends and fellow workers to join them. The next Wednesday, September 30, there were twenty gathered for prayer. By October 7 the number gathering to pray had grown to forty. Sometime during that meeting in the first week of October, the decision was made to hold meetings more frequently. A suggestion was made to meet daily for prayer; it was agreed upon. They didn’t know it, but a revival had begun. In the subsequent weeks the attendance gradually increased with men from all classes and professions attending the noon prayer meetings, so that by January of 1858 the church was using three large lecture halls, with a meeting going on in each simultaneously.
The format was simple: a hymn or two would be sung, and attenders would pray or be led in prayer. People were encouraged to come and go at their convenience, and there were some draymen who took that literally. There are reports of some who drove up to the curb, tied their horses, and entered one of the rooms for the singing of a hymn, and then came back out, untied their teams, and were on their way.
At first only men attended this meeting. Gradually, however, women became included as well, and the revival spread even more quickly.
As other churches heard about what was happening at the Dutch Reformed Church, they also began to have noon-time prayer meetings. To make a long story short, by March of 1858 there were over ten thousand people gathering for prayer each day in New York. Twenty different prayer meetings were going on, with churches overflowing with the prayers. Police and fire departments had services in their buildings. Rooms were made available in stores for clerks to go and pray at noon when they couldn’t attend one of the meetings.
As the number of meetings expanded, they also gained variety. Different times of the day and night were offered. Sometimes the preaching of well-known ministers like Henry Ward Beecher was featured.
The result of all this prayer activity in New York was two-fold: religion became the major topic of the day; and even though the prayer meetings were not at first designed to be evangelistic, the addition of “Religious Inquiry Meetings” with their instruction and call to repentance began to bear conversion fruit. In the two years that this revival spread across the country, it is estimated that over two million people were added to the churches.
One of the fascinating aspects of this revival was the fact that it received extensive coverage by the newspapers. Already in January of 1858, reports of the daily prayer meetings appeared in daily editions of the news. In February, updates on the revival appeared daily. This account appeared in one editorial in The Daily Tribune:
We understand that arrangements are being made for the establishment of one or two additional meetings in the upper portion of the city; soon the striking of the five bells at 12 o’clock will generally be known as the signal for the “Hour of Prayer.”
Other cities began to hear about what was happening in New York and reported the noon prayer meeting phenomenon. There are reports in a newspaper from Washington that “religious interest has been growing in the midst of the rowdyism everywhere so long prevalent…religious revivals were never more numerous or effective.”
In Manhattan, the count of 6,110 people attending noon prayer meetings was made by reporters going from place to place in horse cabs and roughly counting people before moving on.
It was not long before the news of what was happening in New York sparked interest in having something similar in other cities. Philadelphia, Albany, Boston, Cincinnati and Chicago soon had “daily union prayer meetings,” as they came to be known, and the revival spirit spread. The revival in Philadelphia began in earnest through the suggestion of a young member of the Young Men’s Christian Association in that city. He attended some of the early meetings at the North Dutch Reformed Church in New York, and upon returning home suggested to his fellow YMCA members that they begin the same kind of meeting in Philadelphia. On November 23, 1857, the first meeting was held. The response was discouraging: over the first few months no more than thirty-six people showed up. By February, it was decided that attendance might improve if a more centrally located room was found, and so the anteroom of Jayne’s Hall was rented. Slowly the attendance increased until it was necessary to move out of the anteroom into the main hall. Attendance then soared until the entire hall was filled with people, an estimated three thousand, for the time of prayer. Other places were rented, preaching services begun, and approximately 10,000 people were converted and added to the church rolls during 1858.
In Boston the prayer meetings were begun in the historic Old South Church. However, the crowd for the first meeting was too large for the building, so additional places were rented and the people divided among them.
Two thousand people gathered in The Metropolitan Theatre in Chicago, forming the largest prayer meeting in “the Windy City.” Other churches also held noon-time prayer meetings in this city.
The Spirit seemed to spread from place to place until the entire country was pervaded by a sense of holiness and righteousness. In one of the meetings in Boston, led by an aging Charles Finney, a man got up to give testimony. He said, “I am from Omaha, in Nebraska. On my journey East I have found a continuous prayer meeting all the way. We call it two thousand miles from Omaha to Boston; and here was a prayer meeting about two thousand miles in extent.”
So as you can what America needs now is prayer..will you join me and others?
