Pastor Has Pretty Girls for Ushers: Attendance, Giving Up

1897

Girls Fill The Church

Pretty Ushers Prove a Paying Move at Trenton, N.J.

Rev. Maurice Penfield Fikes, of the First Baptist church, Trenton, N. J., has astonished religious circles by introducing in his church a novel feature in the form of girl ushers, whose business it is to take up the collections as well as to show church attendants to seats.

Mr. Fikes advertised the fact that there would be girl ushers in the church, and it was incidentally announced that in selecting care would be taken to pick out half a dozen, of the prettiest maidens in the congregation. The announcement was sufficient to draw to the church recently such an attendance of young men as was never there before.

Every seat in the church was filled long before services were begun, and it was necessary to set chairs in the aisles to accommodate the crowd. As ushers the girls were a grand success, but their best service was given when the time came to take up the collection. Pastor Fikes, prior to the time for starting the girls out with the contribution boxes, announced that the Lord loves a cheerful giver and said that he who gave to a church invested his money in an institution that was better than a savings bank. "Give freely and cheerfully," said he, "and the Lord, as well as these good girls, will appreciate it." The contribution was the largest ever taken in the church.

—Dubuque Daily Herald, Dubuque, IA, Dec. 4, 1897, p. 7.