From the beginning of the Brethren movement in Germany, the church had maintained a strong commitment to evangelism during the 1700s.  However, this commitment had waned during the first half of the 1800s, possibly due to their German subculture and hesitancy to engage with the wider American culture.  The Brethren had also adopted a “passive evangelism” approach that was content to wait for people to apply to the church for membership.  The Brethren were critical of revivalistic methods adopted in the first half of the 1800s that sought to elevate the emotional atmosphere in meetings in order to elicit decisions.  The Brethren held that “counting the cost” of following Christ was a critical element of conversion, and people needed to be fully aware of the life of discipleship to Christ that awaited the new believer.

By the late 1850s and throughout the 1860s and 70s, interest in evangelism grew in the church.  A key pioneer in this renewal of an evangelistic spirit was John Kline, whom we met in an earlier post.  It is estimated that he traveled between 80,000 and 100,000 miles on horseback during his lifetime, bringing the gospel to the people of the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia and the hill country of present-day West Virginia. The photo with this post depicts John Kline on one of his evangelistic tours, found on the cover of Roger Sappington’s book, The Brethren in Virginia.  He and others drafted a plan for evangelism in 1860, though it did not gain Annual Meeting support until 1868.  Further efforts to advance the cause of evangelism during the latter 1870s eventually resulted in the establishment of a Domestic and Foreign Mission Board in 1880, though mission enthusiasts were often critical of Annual Meeting’s delays in advancing the evangelistic work of the church.

The key figure in making use of some of the new evangelistic measures was Stephen Bashor (1852-1922).  He is credited with adding over ten thousand members to the church between 1875 and 1882.  He would join the Progressive cause and become a leading evangelist in the Brethren Church as well.

Old Order Brethren opposition to the growing support for revivalistic practices was strong.  They continued what had been earlier Brethren opposition to revivalism’s use of varied new measures to excite the emotions: the singing of revival hymns; giving invitations to rise or come forward to register decisions; preoccupation with hell, calamities, and death-bed scenes; and the tendency for sinners in an emotional state to be so hurried that they failed to count the cost of their decision.  The Old Order Brethren also feared that evangelistic and missionary work would encourage support for a paid ministry.

Prior to the 1880s the Brethren had a free or unpaid ministry; ministers supported themselves through their secular professions, usually farming.  The initial call for some remuneration came as more ministers in the 1860s and 70s served as traveling evangelists for a period of time.  Both they and their families needed additional financial resources while the minister was away from his home.  The Old Order Brethren were solid in their opposition to a paid ministry; they felt that a paid minister would be more likely to preach what his congregation wanted to hear.  It should be noted that the Progressive Brethren, prior to the division, were advocating not for a salaried ministry but support to cover the essential needs of ministers’ families in their absence.  Among both the Brethren Church and the Church of the Brethren the salaried ministry gradually grew out of the paid ministry in the years following the split.  The Old German Baptist Brethren, the church formed by the Old Order Brethren in 1881, continue the practice of the free ministry today.