"The Campaign lasted 12 days.
It was prepared for by intensive prayer, efficient organisation, and wide publicity.
The hoardings in London proclaimed for months beforehand that the 'Christian Commandos are coming', and the buses threaded their way through the traffic with the same announcement flashing on their sides.
The attack began on Monday, April 14th, with a mass meeting of 7000 people in the Royal Albert Hall. The Commandos (a war-time term for evangelists, which some people approved and others found offensive) numbered roughly 3000, though only a third of them were veterans of previous provincial campaigns. They included men and women, ministers and laymen, youth and age, scholars, professional men, Members of Parliament, students, and people who worked for their bread with their hands.
It was certainly evangelism as we are employing the word here, i.e., a resolute effort to reach the people outside the Churches with the offer of Christ. Even their critics admitted that the Commandos succeeded there. They penetrated almost everywhere ... and by invitation. It was part of the preparation for the Campaign to solicit invitations from employees and employers alike.
Factories, warehouses, offices, and stores; youth clubs and night clubs, the pubs, and the docks; schools, colleges, homes, and hostels; hospitals, canteens, transport centres, and sports' grounds; theatres, cinemas, boxing-rings, and dance-halls; wherever men and women congregated together, the Commandos gained an entrance and offered the people Christ. Behind all this ceaseless activity indoors, there were constant meetings in the open-air. Day and night the attack went on. Men working on night-shift met the Commandos as often as the men working on days.
Perhaps nothing terrestrial can truly stir a city of 8 million souls, but this Campaign came nigh to doing it. Hundreds of thousands of people to whom it had previously been comparatively strange heard the Christian Gospel during those 12 days. For the most part, the Christian case was put clearly, convincingly, persuasively. St. Paul's Cathedral was the scene of the final rally, but not even its vast length could accommodate (for standing room alone) the multitude who wanted to come. When the Cathedral was full, the people cascaded down the great steps outside.
Results?
Where, outside of heaven, can results of this work be tabulated? Many, many hundeds professed conversion and were shepherded into the churches. Not all of them stayed.
Of those who stayed, the majority were found to have some early religious training, and not a few could be classified as 'lapsed members'. No great access to the numerical strength of the Church was reported anywhere. The more enduring gains appeared in other ways.
It seems unquestionable that the community as a whole was impressed by the effort. For the most part, the feeling towards the Church was kind, and the attention paid to the message was close. Men learnt that there is a far better intellectual case for Christianity than many critics are aware. If the area the Commandos had invaded was not subjugated, it was, at least, 'softened up'.
But the gains appeared in the Church as well. Many a moribund ministry was revived by this effort. Ministers of religion, content for years with the dull discharge of duty, returned to their local work with new vision, new zeal, new daring, new freshness. The fruit of these revived ministries will continue to appear for a generation to come."
[ From: 'Let Me Commend' by W. E. Sangster; pp.69-71 ].
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