The educational screen (c1922-c1956])

360 The Educational Screen Pictures and the Church Conducted by Chester C. Marshall, D. D. Motion Pictures to Get Audiences* IF the sole use of the motion picture for the church is just to get an audience, I doubt if it is worth our consideration. But to get people to come in order that one may give them a religious message is very much worth while, and anything which enables the preacher to do this is worthy of his most careful consideration. What preacher but would feel he was engaged in bigger business preaching to one thousand people than to one hundred? And what layman but would support his church and pastor more loyally if his pastor was preaching to ten times as many people as he is preaching to? It would surely be a bigger and better investment. It is true that any consecrated preacher would rather preach the gospel to a congregation of one hundred than to afiford entertainment for one thousand people — wholesome as that entertainment might be. But the fallacy of much thinking to the effect that having a crowd alw^ays presupposes less care in the preparation of the sermon ought to be exploded once and for all. Ordinarily there is no virtue in preaching to empty pews. Nobody has yet shown us how to evangelize wooden benches. If benches could be evangelized and made into saints there would be a good many churches over the land filled with "gospel soaked" pews. It is a trite observation that pews are only to hold the peoble which are to be brought into the church and then christianized or trained in Christ-like living. I have asked what layman would not be happier to support a church that ministers to large numbers than to the church of the empty pews. To answer my own question, I believe there are some who would rather support a ministry to the handful rather than a ministry to the multitudes— at least if the preacher has to resort to any modern methods to prevail upon the multitudes to come in. We are mortally afraid of innovations. Our fathers were equally fearful and suspicious of innovations. They resisted the organ, and as for the violin, was it not the "Devil's" own instrument? Our fathers look with equal suspicion on the Sunday school as an innovation — the very same school we now regard as the heart of the church of today and the hope of the church of tomorrow. But there is no more occasion for fear in regard to the motion picture than there was in regard to the organ or the Sunday school. Jesus taught and preached with word pictures continuously. It is worth while to remember that the word pictures were the only kind of pictures available in his day. Art was early seized upon by the church and has been one of its greatest assets even to the present day. The motion picture is merely an evolution of the pictorial art and its possibilities are almost infinite. Motion pictures, when properly chosen and projected, are a "crowd getter." Of course, it goes without saying, the people who know the best and most artistic pictures and the wellnigh perfect projection of the theater, will not go to church more than once to see wretched, antiquated films projected in an amateurish way by a toy machine. But give people worth-while pictures of a character such as they do not see every time they go to a theater and they soon learn to expect something worth while and interesting and they will come again. Folk want something interesting. While interest is not to be the "god" of the church, we need not expect crowds to come to church unless there is plenty of interest to draw and hold them. The motion picture can be made a powerful ally in creating interest. The speaker had as a special attraction one Sunday night a few years ago, one of the most prominent public men in America. The weather was beautiful and the church was comfortably filled. The following Sunday night the speaker preached on Joan of Arc and used three reels of the film "Joan the Woman" to illustrate his WoHd^'^a'Atrantifcrtrltn^^ Departmental of the Annual Convention of the Advertising Clubs of the\