The following extract comes from Thomas Cochrane’s, Home Mission-work; Or, Twenty-five Years in a Mission Field (1873; pp. 51-52). Chalmers earlier advocated these exact same tactics years before. In my parish mission efforts, I’m already seeing the profound wisdom and insight of this policy. If they don’t yet come to church, then (assuming they let you in the door) bring church to them!
“In all Territorial districts there will be found many not only living in entire neglect of the sanctuary, but many of that number who will scarcely be persuaded by prayer and pains to avail themselves of the privilege To meet such cases, the devoted missionary will often be found to try and bridge over the difficulty by taking the church to them; sometimes, perhaps, even taking possession of the home of the neglectful, and making a church in their house. The effect of such little gatherings is often very blessed indeed. By these meetings there is not only opened a way for bringing the Gospel to the very homesteads of the careless and prayerless, but it is also, under GOD, a very fruitful source of augmenting the central gatherings.
“One of the most useful members of the Mission relates, as his own experience, how by this agency especially he was won to the public ordinances of the church. He was ill to gain over. Many months of prayerful effort were spent, but “by keeping at it,” with God’s blessing on the means, he was at last enlisted in the good cause ; and how useful he has been since in gaining others, the future only can reveal. How devoted he has been cannot be told.
“The services at these fireside gatherings should not, as a general rule, be lengthened above an hour, for many reasons. Mothers cannot conveniently give longer time from household duties. Short telling addresses at such meetings will ordinarily be most useful and acceptable. The grand object being to deal chiefly and closely with those who have not been accustomed to much serious thinking about religious subjects, anything fitted to weary and repel should be carefully avoided. How all-important to leave a good impression, and, by this short pithy service, to beget a thirst for the more extended, if not more formal, services of the house of God! It would not be an easy thing to say how many members of the church first found their footing towards the sanctuary through the influence of these district meetings. They will not only prove useful-almost essential-in the forming of a Territorial congregation, but will be of immense benefit after it has been formed, both as a means of dealing with the neglectful members of the congregation, and of reaching those beyond the pale of the church.”
“I am quite aware that the situation of some of the largest of our city churches in those central districts from which the better class of the population is rapidly receding towards the suburbs, and leaving their neighbourhoods to be occupied chiefly either by enormous warehouses, or by crowded masses of the very poorest people, renders it exceedingly difficult to use them in strict accordance with the territorial principle. I have a strong opinion that such districts will never be made what they ought to be in reference to church attendance and religion till this difficulty is boldly faced and completely overcome, and till the districts are worked and superintended as regular parishes, with their own ministers and kirk-sessions, responsible to the Church at large, and particularly to the presbytery of their bounds, for their faithful management. In some instances, however, transitional expedients might for a time be resorted to with advantage. A church confessedly too large for one parish of manageable extent might, for example, be used as the church not only of the district specially designated as its proper parish, but also of several other districts annexed to it for the nonce. Each of these should have its own minister from the first, and eventually would have its own church; but till things were made ripe for this latter consummation, the ministers of all the districts would work together from a common centre and have different services in the same church. Possibly in this way, by combined endeavours of a systematic kind, and by a variety of agencies and services, good might be done for all the districts in question, which could not be done for any one of them apart by itself. Nevertheless the expedient at best is of doubtful issue, and should only be tried in extreme cases ; and the thorough-going remedy of separate churches and of independent territorial work, wherever practicable, is to be preferred.”
West Port Experiment 
