It was our belief that the church was so hopelessly out of touch that getting rid of prayer and evangelism would make Christians look hip and "with it." So people stopped praying, and they went to counselors, spilled their sorrow and came away still in need of something spiritual. But they didn't pray.

Instead of praying, they talked to their relatives and friends, work mates and casual acquaintances about all their disappointments. Before you knew what was happening, the entire society acted as if it needed a strong laxative.

That was what happened to Melvin, an elderly neighbor who lived next door to me many years ago. Melvin was entirely alone, a forgotten man who raised a family, nursed a sickly wife until she died and worked at his daily job until management told him he had to retire. We didn't see much of Melvin. He had a dachshund puppy, Freckles, who was lazy and spoiled. The puppy was his daily challenge.

Melvin would come into the back yard with the dog in his arms. Bending very carefully, Melvin would deposit the mutt by the dogwood bush at the end of his property. Then in the winter, Melvin would return to the house and wait for action. Before long, Freckles would be running around the back yard at top speed with Melvin in pursuit. Finally the two would run out of energy and they would return inside. That happened many times a day.

In the spring, I asked Melvin if he would like to come to church with me. He rejected that offer, and for a couple of weeks Melvin was very grumpy. I offered many rides to church that summer, and each one was turned down. Then one day, I asked Melvin what he would do with a sticky drawer on a desk. And he said, "One of these days, I'll take a look at it."

A couple of Sundays later, we drove to church together, and Melvin carried a little tool kit: screwdrivers, a small hammer, a stick of lubricant and a couple of wrenches. The drawer was fixed in minutes. Then Melvin sat in my office, 20 feet from the sanctuary, for the rest of the morning while I preached and led worship. The next Sunday, he fixed some bookshelves in the library and then sat in a corner reading religious magazines. That's the way the summer went.

But by October, Melvin walked down to the door of the sanctuary and peeked in. By November, he was sitting in the back pew just three feet from the door. Each Sunday, that's where he stayed until the day he died.

What was even more impressive was the change in Melvin's personal carriage and disposition. The man walked straighter. He started looking at people and smiling. He bent down to speak to children. Once in a while, he had a conversation with an adult. And almost always, he was willing to fix stuff at the church.

I never found out why Melvin was so shy of the church. It didn't matter. Way back in his life, there was a hurt that wouldn't heal.

But for most people, if we want something badly enough, we'll find a way to move around the hurt and discover something good. Inviting people just gives people a reason to search for a path around the hurt.

So what part did prayer have to do with Melvin's transformation? You can imagine there were people in the church mentioning Melvin in prayer. There was a group of women who made quilts who prayed for Melvin every week. But there is no way to prove scientifically that prayer helped Melvin. That's a matter of faith, not science.

But invitation and prayer seem to go hand in hand. If you have one operating in your life, at some point you will decide to use the other. If you're praying for someone, sooner or later you ought to be inviting them to your religious worship.

If there is one characteristic every faithful church person should have, it's persistence. You can't invite a person just once; it's got to be a persistent thing. And if you pray for someone one day, the next day it seems right to do it again.

But so many of our good church people, feeling awkward about inviting and praying, decided long ago that those two old tools ought to be stored in a deep, dark closet. Now the time has come when we must dig them out and begin to use them again. If we don't, the entire religious enterprise will fall into pieces.

Clark D. Morphew