Here’s a letter from a lady where I’d spoken in Taft, California. I’ll not read the [whole] letter. It just says:

That’s from California.

Here’s a letter I received from a lady in Birmingham. It says,

And on and on we could go reading letters like this, impressing upon our mind… Here’s a letter from Woodstock, Virginia, right out of Washington, D. C. I was speaking there, and this man writes a long letter, but the letter is about this: “After hearing the lecture on ‘Stewardship,’” he said, “I realized this last year…” (he called it [he said it this way]) “…I cheated the Lord out of $4,000.00.” When he considered how the Lord had blessed him, what he’d made and how little he gave, he said, “I’m writing you to tell you that Monday morning, I’m going to the bank to check out $4,000.00 to make up for that I did not give this last year.”

So, I have letters from that all over the country, which indicates that we’ve done a poor, poor job in teaching members of the church of Christ to give as the Bible teaches. And if you’ve been a member of the church very long, you know, of course, our sad history. I’m ashamed of it; I’m sure you are—that there have been churches that would not permit a man to speak on this subject in the church. They were not allowed to teach it in Bible classes.

Some time ago, I was speaking up in Tennessee to a church; it had about 600 members, and they knew more than a year in advance that I was coming. And one of the preachers did an in-depth study of that congregation. He learned where every member of that large congregation worked. Worked on it a whole year. He did not know exactly what that person made, but he knew what a brick layer made; he knew what carpenters made; he knew what different people were paid for certain jobs. So, he had good idea [of] the income of this congregation. And he’d added all that up. Now, I suppose there’s no man in the brotherhood that’s known more about a particular congregation than this man knew about that congregation! He spent a year studying it—all the lives of all the members. And he came to this conclusion, that they were giving about 4% of their income to God.

And I want to tell you, if every person here this morning, if every person living in the church of Christ throughout the world, if all of us shall be as old as Methuselah, we’ll…never…evangelize the world on 4% giving. It’s an impossibility! It can’t be done. And yet, on the other hand, we have the wealth in the church of Christ to evangelize the world; we have ministers to evangelize the world; we have modern communication to evangelize the world, and we’re not doing it. And it becomes a very serious responsibility. It becomes a serious responsibility to every congregation to realize that our responsibility is to evangelize the world. It’s wonderful to have nice buildings, but we must realize that these buildings are just a means to an end to give us a better opportunity to get people to come to the “house of God,” that we may teach them the power that’s in the Gospel, and that it’s our duty to evangelize the world.

I was speaking out in Los Angeles several years ago on this subject. After I spoke, an elderly man came up to me—his hair was white as snow. He said he graduated from Abilene Christian in 19 and 28! [1928]. And he said, “Brother Black, I know that these things are true that you are teaching. But,” he said, “I’ve never preached much on this subject.” He said, “I’m an elder and a preacher, but I’ve just never taught much on it. I’ve never said much about it. But,” he said, “let me tell you why.” He said, “The first place I was located, my first job,” he said, “I knew the Bible taught on ‘giving,’ so I got up and preached on it. And in the middle of my sermon, one of the elders stood up and said, ‘Young man, you stop teaching that!’” He said, “I guess that did something to me—just through the years, I’ve never preached on this subject much.” Another elder/preacher was standing there, and he said, “Yes, I know that’s true, because I was fired for preaching on that subject when I was a young man.”

Now, those things are sad. It’s embarrassing to me. I’m ashamed to even stand before an intelligent audience and tell these things. But yet, we need to realize that we’ve got a long way to go! We need to realize it! Here’s a subject—we’ve never talked much about it in the church. And yet, our responsibility is to evangelize the world. I’m not here today to try to get your preachers a raise. I’m here today to try to get you to see the importance of evangelizing the world! And I do not know to what degree, but I’m just as convinced as in your midst I stand, that on the Day of Judgment we’re going to have to give an account for those people who lived during our lifetime who never had an opportunity to hear the Gospel. Now, to what degree, I don’t know, but I thank God [that] it’s an individual matter. God knows my heart; God knows how concerned I am about evangelizing the world; God knows how concerned you are as an individual about evangelizing the world; and God knows how concerned this church is about evangelizing the world. So, we’re here primarily to talk about evangelizing the world!