The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1909-06-16
opo cHURcH ADVERTISING.
New York Press.)

Probably the biggest thing in the way
of church advertising may be seen at
night at the Brooklyn end of the
Brooklyn bridge. In letters Of fire,
some four feet high, along the ridge
pole of a church a few blocks from the
waters edge, the words Brooklyn
Tabernacle" blaze forth out of the fog
OF darkness that is otherwise illumi-
mated by secular electric signs adver-
Using coTsets, patent medicines and va
rious things. The "T'' in Tabernacle
is made of a big blood-red cross of
electric lights. Hardly a person who
crosses the bridge but notices and
comments upon the sign. That, of
course, is the purpose of all advertls-
ing.
In Manhattan the first electrical sign
to be placed on a church probably was
that upon the Judson Memorial, on the
south side of Washington square. Ever
since it was built-now close TO twenty
years agO-a flaming cross of electric
lights has blazed from its tower. In
later years other churches have been
more progressive in the Wy of ddver-
Using their locations by illuminated
signs. The Church of the Strangers, in
West Fifty seventh street, has had one
for years. Some Of the others, like the
Union church, in West Forty-eighth
street. near Broadway, have installed
signs recently that are quite as brilliant
and commanding in their appeal to the
passer-by as any that call from above
the store fronts along the 'Kreat White
Way"
Billboard advertising has not yet been
tried to any extent in New York as
means of attracting congregations to
churches though it is not unusual in
Cleveland, Chicago and other cities to
the westward IT gives the staid BOs-
tOnian Of New Yorker somewhat Of a
shock to see a three-sheet poster Of a
church side by side with the Haunting
gayly colored Autographs Of some
vaudeville show in which are illustrated
pictorially as we'll as in words things
which typify Enthusiastically "the world,
the flesh and the devil" But perhOps
I the very juxtapOsitiOn of tine heavenly
guide posts and those that point t. the
pit is considered advantageous &c the
churches.
It is in Cleveland, too. that the
churches advertise on the front pages
of some of the daily newspapers, not
/ only by the regular Saturday morning
announcements of services the follow
/ ing day, but by means of 'one-minute
| sermons" These sermons" are not
over 300 words long; and some OF them
are very strong and to the point. II
takes longer to prepare one OF these
! sermons than it does TO produce those
ten times as long. This method of
church advertising was first tried. it is
said, in Cincinnati.
In the musical service New York has
not made such radical departures as
some of the other cities, but there are
/ half a dozen churches in New York
that have tTumpets, kettledrWns, viO-
/ Inns and guitars in their musical equip
ment.
The telephone is another thing that
is beginning to be used in getting peo-
pie to church This was first tried i'm
/ Brooklyn. and is employed by several
churches there. A committee Is ap-
pointed, each member Of which is hound
to call up, say, ten people at least every
Sunday morning and invite the- to
come to his church. The average result
is said to be six worshipDers out OF
every ten calls.