A test was conducted at...
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A test was conducted at Princeton Theological Seminary. A couple of psychologists recruited 40 students from the seminary. Half of the students were asked to prepare a talk about the work that ministers do; the other half were asked to prepare a talk about the parable of the Good Samaritan. One by one, the volunteers were sent out from the meeting room where they all were, and they were given a map to show them where to go to a recording studio to tape their speech. And so every 15 minutes one of the students was sent out. But along the way to the recording studio, lying in a doorway in an alley, was a young man, coughing and groaning, who seemed to be in pain. Of the 40 seminary students involved in the experiment, only 16 of them stopped to help the man. When the psychologists studied the results, they determined that the main factor in deciding whether someone would stop and help or not was whether they were in a hurry. You see, when some of the students were sent on their way, they were told that they had a lot of time to get to the studio; but others were told that they were running late. Far more of the students who were not in a hurry stopped to help. To be fair, we would probably find the same results with any group of people. But the results force us to consider how often we rush past situations where Jesus would have us minister. -- Bowen
