Many years have passed, but the memories remain vivid. The visiting evangelist would end his sermon, I knew, as soon as he offered the “invitation.” The invitation was to come forward to the front of the church and be “saved.”
In the early 1980s when I was serving the Unitarian Universalist Church in Rockland, Maine I would have occasion to go over to Augusta, the state capital, from time to time. This is about a 40 mile trip inland from coastal Rockland, and on one of those journeys I stopped by the Augusta UU Church to visit with a friend and colleague who was the minister there at the time.