How To Treat Visitors

"A man that hath friends must show himself friendly." Proverbs 18:24

One of the greatest factors in Christian work is the God-given power to make a favorable impression. If we would hold the people we labor with, and induce the strangers who visit us occasionally to return, and keep them coming our way, two factors are indispensable, namely, the "glad hand" and "the sunny smile;" always remembering that the Christian worker is inviting people to a marriage feast and not to a funeral.

I asked a very dear friend of mine recently, who is a successful salesman, how he had achieved such marked success. He said, "I am always on the job, glad to see my customers, give them my best effort, not satisfied with selling them today, but deliver them such a line of goods that I put them in the class known in the business world as the 'come backs.'" This is successful salesmanship.

So if we as Christian workers would be successful in inducing those who have but little interest in divine things, we must be attentive and courteous, and trust the Spirit of the Lord to bless this means of impressing people that we really love them and sincerely welcome them to our respective places of worship.

For more than thirty years this method has been successfully employed at the Pacific Garden Mission and it is safe to say that Mrs. Clarke has extended the "glad hand," and with her own sweet smile (which seems to reflect the light of heaven) she has bidden thousands to take new hope and the constant return of strangers is attributable to this sweet ministry of love. It pays. It gets results.

Begin today the new ministry of the "glad hand" and "sunny smile."

Harry Monroe, Supt.
Pacific Garden Mission, Chicago.