Something happened Tuesday at the pastors luncheon at Victory Fellowship, something I cannot get out of my mind.

A radio personality and evangelist from Dallas who has New Orleans on her heart and who now has a radio program on local Christian station Lifesongs 89.1, is calling for a full day of prayer and fasting on behalf of the needed revival in this city. (I’ll try to find more information and post at the end of this article–or amend this part of the article.) Her group has secured the Morial Convention Center for that day and they are expecting 10,000 people to fill the arena. She told of various important leaders who will be leading in prayer throughout the day.

Now, I have not met the lady, share her burden for revival in this city, and hope the day is a great success. But when it comes to filling the huge auditorium that day, I cannot advise her on how to accomplish it, but I can sure tell her how NOT to fill it.

You don’t fill an arena that size by announcing it on the radio. You don’t fill it by promoting it with local ministers. You don’t fill it with billboards and newspaper ads. You don’t fill it by spending large amounts of money getting the word out. You don’t fill it by getting the pastors to announce the gathering to their people and printing it in their church bulletins. And, if it doesn’t sound like heresy, I’ll go so far as to say you don’t fill it by getting on your knees and praying for hours that believers from local churches will have their hearts broken for revival and pack out that place.

As important as all of these may be, that’s not how it’s done.

You can do all these things and more, then walk into the arena that day to find 200 people sitting there.

I know this from sad experience.

The way to fill a giant arena with local church members is to line up people of each congregation who will take it upon themselves to get their people there. That’s the only way.

Here’s the sad reality of the situation which an outsider might not know: the reason the convention center is frequently filled for this event or that one is that out-of-towners, convention-goers, etc., fill the hotels in the downtown area, and then walk across the street or take a short taxi ride to the event. The average citizen of the metropolitan area never drives down there, hardly knows where the convention center is, fears the crime in the area, and knows the parking is either non-existent, scarce or too expensive for his pocketbook.

It will take an act of God, so to speak, to get the locals to the convention center. Which is what Katrina was, in a manner of speaking, and which is how locals came to fill up the place in those sad hot days two years ago.

And one more thing. With all those hindrances to locals ever attending anything at the convention center, perhaps the biggest one of all is simply the reasoning that I expect many will express: “I don’t have to drive down there to pray and fast. I can do that at home.”

I’m not saying it’s right, only that that’s how the average guy will think. I’m certainly not saying he will actually fast and pray at home, only that he will reason that way.

Twenty years ago, the Carolinas were suffering under a severe drought. Calls went out from spiritual leaders for the churches to get serious about praying for rain. On several occasions, people gathered from various denominational groups imploring God to send rain. He did. Then, it got interesting.

Soon after, some of those same leaders met to consider a community thanksgiving service to show their appreciation to the Almighty for the refreshing rains. The question was how to do that in such a way that the citizenry would respond. They quickly decided to secure the old coliseum on Independence Boulevard with a capacity of 15,000 people. Then the question arose as to what they would have to do, who they would have to bring in, what personalities they would need to secure, in order to attract that many people.

Some of the more–well, what to call them here? let’s go with this–“spiritual and idealistic” among the crowd were offended that it would take a “name” to draw the crowd. After all, the whole point is to give thanks to God, isn’t it? It would appear that is enough. So, no stars would headline the program.

When they walked out of that meeting that day, they had a bizarre theme: “Is God a celebrity in Charlotte?” In promoting the prayer meeting, they plastered this question on billboards, in the media, and in church publicity. They explained that since the Lord will be at the coliseum, that should be sufficient to get thousands of His children there for a prayer meeting. On a certain level, it made sense.

Alas, it didn’t work—and for a very logical reason.

The average Joe Blow out there, no relation to yours truly, reasoned, “Yes, God is a celebrity in Charlotte, as He is everywhere else. However, I don’t have to go to the coliseum to meet with Him. He happens to be in this room. In my home, my church, the universe, wherever.” And who can argue with that?

One more example that has lodged itself in my thinking illustrates something on this subject. I’m not sure what.

Sometime in the early 1980s after the Tennessee-Tombigbee Waterway was completed by our beloved U.S.Corps of Engineers (ahem), connecting the Tennessee River with the Gulf of Mobile and theoretically opening up a vast section of the region to greater commerce, communities on the waterway were encouraged to have dedication services of a grand, celebratory nature. The chamber of commerce in our city of Columbus, Mississippi, took that ball and ran with it.

Pretty soon, leaders had assembled a large number of community-minded residents from every walk of life to plan a great celebration which lasting two full days and to be held right on the shores of the Tombigbee River. The media gave it good coverage, and as the plans developed–becoming more grandiose every time a committee convened–the community was inundated with details and promises.

At first, the president of the USA was coming. That would have been Ronald Reagan. All the three former presidents would also be coming. That would be Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Next, predictions of crowds possibly up to 400,000 people started filling the air. Never mind that if you brought in every living soul within a hundred miles, you might have had half that number.

But what about the fact that one two-lane road connected Columbus with the park on the river where this shindig was to be held? How would you move such crowds in and out with a minimum of trouble? The committees came up with the answer: people will park on the shoulders of the interstate-like highway leading into the city and buses will transport them to the park.

I was serving on one of the lesser committees (thankful ever since that I had not been in on the group planning this large-scale fiasco) and saw all this upclose and personal, as they say. I recall thinking, “This is such a hassle, no one is going to want to come.”

Next, the word got out that the president was not coming. Nor any of the former presidents. Never mind, we were told. The event itself is of such magnitude, people will still flock to be a part of this historic occasion.

Vendors came from hundreds of miles and set up, intending to sell their pastries and doodads to the massive crowds.

By actual count, the attendance the first day of this grand event–not counting the volunteers–was something like 238 people.

After nearly a half-century in the ministry, as one might expect, I have a number of memories of grand schemes to get the crowds in but without a solid, practical plan for face-to-face contact with the citizenry to get their participation. But I’ll spare you any more.

Sometime in the future, someone who reads this will be put in a situation where the dreamers among you will accuse you of lack of faith for not airily buying into their vision to spend gobs of money for some great event which they don’t have a clue how to pull off. They will tell you that “if God is in it, it cannot help but succeed.” They will quote Ethel Waters who said of the young Billy Graham when he brought his crusade to New York City, “God don’t sponsor no flops.” But do not weaken.

Hold your ground and insist that you’re not against the event; you just want a plan for personal contact with people, one to one to one, to get them there. Otherwise, you’ll be busy that day and have other things you have to do.

One more caution about that last point. If they truly do not know what they are doing and if they really do have their heads in the clouds without a plan, once you make your objection, they will turn to you and say, “Good point, Bob. You do that. You’re in charge of that.” Don’t let them do that to you. What they are doing is setting you up for the blame when it doesn’t come off.

You’re not looking for a power position for yourself. What you are insisting on is that the entire leadership group focus the main thrust of their efforts on practical, down-to-earth plans to meet face-to-face with leaders in the churches who will take it upon themselves to get commitments to attend.

As the new pastor of a church many years ago, I found that a small group of our men were meeting one Sunday a month for breakfast and prayer. Their leader came to see me, asking for help in getting more participation. I said, “What are you doing now to get our men there?” His answer stunned me then and still shocks me two decades later: “We send postcards every month to every man in the church.” I said, “How many postcards would that be?” He answered, “Seven hundred.”

I said, “And how many men normally come to your breakfast?” He answered, “About twenty.”

I’m not sure how much he liked what I did. I said, “It’s not working, is it? There must be a better way to get them here.”

I suggested he get on the phone and call a dozen men he knew and invite them to the meeting. I suggested he should ask the men who regularly attend the breakfast to call ten each. With 30 minutes of work, they could double their attendance. But we canceled the monthly mailing of 700 postcards.

Ask any political operative. In addition to the grand outlays of cash for media coverage, they go for endorsements from all kinds of leaders, and use every tool available. But the heart of their work, perhaps the most effective part of their plan is the way they organize the community into precincts. Precinct captains line up block captains. Block captains set up coffees and teas to meet the candidate, knock on doors with literature and signs and talk to their neighbors. It’s a lot of work, but that’s how it’s done.

“Andrew first found his brother Simon and said to him, ‘We have found the Christ.'” (John 1:41)

A long time before politicians were knocking on doors and meeting voters face to face, this is how the Kingdom of God was spreading. One to one to one. That’s the original plan and it’s never been improved on.