Those who have listened to preaching for at least a generation are likely to observe that it is not what it was. On the basis of both anecdote and memory, it is on balance neither as interesting nor as compelling as it was within living memory. Furthermore, the results are not the same. First-time adult decisions for salvation used to be relatively common in many churches every Sunday. Now such decisions have to be programmed, usually after inducing people to make decisions in their own homes and then persuading them to come to church to go forward.