WE'RE BUILDING TWO A DAY
In the 1880s the Methodist Church was privileged to have a leader named C. C. McCabe. He was a church extension pioneer and strategist, and a great achiever he was.
One day he was on a train, riding out to the Pacific Northwest to help develop and launch a strategy for planting hundreds of new congregations in that region.
On that train he picked up a newspaper and read an account of a speech given the day before by Robert Ingersoll, the most noted agnostic/infidel of his time.
It was addressed to the national meeting of Atheists and Agnostics (something like that). In his speech Robert Ingersoll proclaimed that the churches of America were in the process of dying and in another generation there wouldn't be any of them left.
That incensed C. C. McCabe. He got off the train at the next town, went into the Western Union office and dictated a telegram to Robert Ingersoll. The message arrived at the convention while it was still meeting. The telegram read, "Dear Bob, in the Methodist church we're building a new church a day and we proposed to make it two." Signed: C. C. McCabe.
Somehow the word about that telegram got out and a folk song evolved in the Pacific Northwest. It was sung at revival meetings, brush arbors, etc. It went like this:
The infidels, a motley band,
In council met and said,
"The churches are dying throughout the land
And soon they'll all be dead."
When suddenly a telegram came
And caught them with dismay,
Reading, "All hail the power of Jesus' name,
We're building two a day.
Then the refrain went:
We're building two a day, dear Bob;
We're building two a day!
All hail the power of Jesus' name,
We're building two a day!