A pecuniary method of effecting friendly relations is not without its merits.  In this city of frequent removals there are many families who have lost all connection with the congregation to which they claim to belong.  An opportunity to contribute to the church of their new neighborhood might be for them a secondary means of grace.  They become as it were proselytes of the gate.  Having taken the first step, many may again enter into full communion with the church.

A Lutheran church, however, does not forget the warning of the prophet:  “They have healed the hurt of my daughter slightly.”  The evangelization of this great army of lapsed Lutherans is not to be accomplished by such a simple expedient as taking up a collection.  What most of them need is a return to the faith.  Somebody must guide them.

For this no societies or new ecclesiastical machinery will be required.  The force to do this work is already enlisted in the communicant membership of our one hundred and fifty organized congregations.  We have approximately 60,000 communicants.  These are our under-shepherds whose business it is to aid the pastor in searching for “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.”  Shall we not have a concerted effort on the part of all the churches?

We may certainly win back again into our communion many of whom the Good Shepherd was speaking when He said:  “them also I must bring and they shall hear my voice, and they shall become one flock, one shepherd.”

To accomplish such a task, however, an orderly system must be adopted.

When our Lord fed the five thousand, He first commanded them to sit down by companies.  “And they sat down in ranks, by hundreds and by fifties.”  These 400,000 souls may first of all be grouped in families.  Let us say 90,000 families.  These are scattered all over the greater city, most of them in close proximity to some one of our 150 churches.  To each church may be given an average assignment of 600 families.

The average number of communicants in each of our churches is nearly 400.  Some churches have less, others more.  To an average company of 400 communicants is committed the task of evangelizing 600 families, not aliens or strangers, but members of our own household of faith, people who in many eases will heartily welcome the invitation.  Some of these 400 potential evangelists will beg to be excused.  Let us make a selective draft of 300 to do the work.  The task required of each member of this army is to visit two families.

Whatever else may be said of such a computation it certainly does not present an insuperable task.  It can be done in one year, in one month, in one week, in one day.

Without presuming to insist upon a particular method of solving this problem, is it not incumbent upon the Lutheran churches of New York to face it with the determination to accomplish an extraordinary work if need be in an extraordinary manner?  “The kingdom of heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by force.”