For my entire fifty years of membership in numerous Christian Science branch churches, I had avoided serving on lecture committees. Other assignments, such as Sunday School, always appealed to me more. But last year my church asked me to be the chairperson of the lecture committee. I told our clerk that I had never even been a member of that committee; however, if our board really wanted me to chair it, I would. Well, it was an adventure!
In preparing, I read the Manual of The Mother Church by Mary Baker Eddy, particularly the By-Law “Duty of Lecturers,” which reads: “It is the duty of the Board of Lectureship to include in each lecture a true and just reply to public topics condemning Christian Science, and to bear testimony to the facts pertaining to the life of the Pastor Emeritus” (p. 93).
The word public stood out to me in a slightly different context. And I realized that if we wanted to end up with the public at our lecture, it would be good to begin with the public in planning it.
