Our first "capital" campaign, 110 years ago
The Disciples of Christ and our early history in development & fund raising work
You can read here how "Men and Millions" set a pattern of sorts for the Disciples of Christ; this was our first general "capital" campaign (loosely defined), which was co-opted & ultimately subsumed into a World War I fundraising effort called the War Emergency Drive in 1918, meaning it effectively went on from a 1913 launch until it was loosely concluded in 1919. Starting with a $6 million goal, it officially concluded with over $7 million in both contribution and pledges, but I've never found any hard data on exactly how much was collected -- and since it ended up representing multiple "buckets" it's a historically impossible question to resolve. But the general approach can be discerned here, at a point when the still new "Christian Century" was more a house organ for the Disciples than an ecumenical publication for a wider audience:
from "THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY" -- April 8, 1915
https://archive.org/stream/christiancentury32unse/christiancentury32unse_djvu.txt
[Title] The Life Call
[subhead]
THE DOMINANT NOTE IN THE MEN AND MILLIONS
MOVEMENT IS THE CALL FOR THE INVESTMENT
AND CONSECRATION OF LIFE TO LEADERSHIP IN
THE KINGDOM OF GOD.
This is one of the surprises in store for those churches to which this movement is yet to come.
Most people have conceived the movement as primarily a call for money. The Millions have overshadowed the Men; the Men are regarded as a sort of after-thought, a by-product of a big campaign for the gathering of a huge sum of money.
If you have that notion it might as well be gotten rid of first as last. When the Movement reaches your town, cautious pastor, and the leaders begin to talk with you about their program, here is an excellent and much rehearsed speech we earnestly advise you not to make:
"Of course I am glad to have you distinguished brethren come to our town and our church, but really we have very little grist for your mill here. There are only three or four persons it is worth your while to see. Our local financial burdens have been so heavy that our people can hardly be expected to join in very generously in raising this six million dollars. Besides, the times are unusually tight here and some of our most able givers have been pretty hard hit."
Don't make that speech!
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In the first place, you could be arrested right there on the spot for self-evident plagiarism. These men have heard that speech in exactly those words at least once before, and they can prove that it is not original with you.
In the second place, they have a response to make that will bring confusion and embarrassment to the man that talks that way.
And in the third place, such a speech betrays the fact that you have seriously misconceived the Men and Millions Movement, and that your misconception has cut you out of making adequate enough preparations for taking advantage of the visit of these Church leaders to your town.
Get this clearly fixed in mind, that Men and Millions bestows incalculably more than it asks!
It takes away for the cause of Christ an offering of money, "but it leaves behind a rare deposit of spiritual treasure that will enrich the life of your congregation through all time.
The Men and Millions "team" comes into your town primarily to sound the life call, to urge the claim of specific Christian leadership upon young people who are at the deciding point in the matter of their life vocation.
"Men" is their essential object.
"Millions" is a by-product of their quest for "Men."
This being true, the humblest church is important enough to claim their services. In Chicago the modest mission congregations received the same attention that was bestowed upon Englewood and Jackson Boulevard and Hyde Park and Memorial.
From some of these humbler congregations it was known in advance that not a dollar could be expected. But the presidents of two colleges, three distinguished missionaries, the president of the American Missionary Society, two missionary secretaries whose names are household words in the length and breadth of the land, and all the members of the "team" spent themselves with impartial unselfishness upon mission churches as upon the more resourceful congregations.
The result of it all is that scores of young men and women are prayerfully weighing the claims of a life of unselfish Christian leadership in foreign and home mission fields as against the attractions of a business or professional career in the conventional and overcrowded fields near at hand.
* *
The urgency of the call for the investment of life in tasks of Christian leadership, as presented by the Men and Millions Movement, does not presuppose any ethical superiority of such a career as compared to the career of the conventional business or professional man.
The call does not represent a reversion to the false distinction between sacred and secular vocations.
It implies nothing invidious as to the Christian character of other callings. One is impressed with the delicacy and skill with which the members of the "team" treat this point.
It would be very easy to fall into the false assumption that missionary work is more "Christian" work than merchandizing work, or professional work or industrial work. But it seems to have become pretty well established now, theoretically, at least, that all honest work is religious, is partnership with God, and is to be undertaken in the fear and guidance of God, just as it is presumed a minister or missionary undertakes his work in the fear and guidance of God.
The life call of the Men and Millions Movement is not a call to invest one's life in Christian work but in Christian leadership.
And the motives urged are the motives of opportunity, of human need and of the strategic hour.
* *
It is clear to persons of Christian discernment that the Kingdom of God is facing in these days the most colossal opportunity since Christian history began.
Equally manifest is the fact that this opportunity has developed to the point of crisis — this is the decisive hour for vast non-Christian civilizations and for Christendom itself, the hour in which what we do or fail to do will tell on ages.
In this hour the call goes forth for Christian leaders, for teachers and preachers and physicians and agriculturalists and nurses, to invest their lives not in commerce or in the well-worked fields of the conventional professions but in the unworked and needy fields of foreign lands and city slums and undeveloped frontiers.
No church will face its spiritual task in terms that involve the investment of life and at the same time fail to invest its money. In a church whose young people renounce the attractions of business or profession and consecrate themselves to the work in the particular field to which the will of God seems to guide them there will be a surprising outpouring of gifts of money from those who cannot themselves go.
Responding to the same call that searches the hearts of young men and women who have a life to give, those of maturer years will come forward with the fruitage of the life they have already lived or are yet actively living and will consecrate this fruitage in thousands and tens of thousands of dollars to the support of Christ's work.
Thus the whole call of Men and Millions is a life call. Whether the full six million dollars will be secured or not — though there is less reason today than ever to doubt that it will be secured — it grows increasingly clear that the spiritual uplift to the churches through the call for the investment of life will abundantly justify the whole vast endeavor.
=+=+=+=
Coda from Jeff — as many clergy younger than I have not experienced this sort of capital campaign model, most would not have had the missionary appeal put before them in quite the same way . . . I have vivid memories of a post-worship talk standing before the communion table when in high school, asked to remain after worship by a visiting missionary. That would have been in 1977 or so, but evocative of this era (and the missionary speaker was in his 90s).
It probably isn’t missing many readers that our regular use of “Men” & “Brotherhood” had a certain tendency . . . but that was at the heart even of what would be considered the “progressive” branch of the Stone-Campbell Movement which would become the Disciples of Christ. Male-centered, masculine language was the norm, and still generally so into the Eighties when I entered seminary.