Of all the ideas to increase church attendance, here is a
Serve free alcohol promptly after the service.
It’s like the adult version of all that pizza they offer in youth group trying to entice participation.
Don’t get all mad now. This is old Ben Franklin’s idea. Not mine.
It’s a quote for goodness sake.
I am not actually advocating anything. I just thought it was a funny story. A very Presbyterian idea, if you will.
Now they are never gonna let me be a deacon in a Baptist church…
We had for our chaplain a zealous Presbyterian minister, Mr. Beatty, who complained to me that the men did not generally attend his prayers and exhortations. When they enlisted, they were promised, besides pay and provisions, a gill of rum a day, which was punctually
out to them, half in the morning, and the other half in the evening; and I observed they were as punctual in attending to receive it; upon which I said to Mr. Beatty, “It is, perhaps, below the dignity of your profession to act as steward of the rum, but if you were to deal it out and only just after prayers, you would have them all about you.” He liked the tho’t, undertook the office, and, with the help of a few hands to measure out the liquor, executed it to satisfaction, and never were prayers more generally and more punctually attended; so that I thought this method preferable to the punishment inflicted by some military laws for non-attendance on divine service. serv’d
-Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
