Further Suggestions Regarding the Fourth-Sabbath Home Missionary Service
(To be held Oct. 22, 1910)
To the Elder or Missionary Leader
(Not to be read publicly)
How to Organize a Small Church Tract Society
Membership.—As indicated in last week's REVIEW, the membership of the church missionary society includes all church-members; and if there is in the church a Missionary Volunteer society, each member is also a member of the church missionary society, as are also all church-school children.
Church Missionary Committee.—In a small church having no Missionary Volunteer society and no church-school, this committee will be made up as follows:—
Elder or leader.
Missionary secretary, formerly known as the librarian.
Sabbath-school superintendent.
Officers.—In such a small church the officers of the missionary society would consist of only the following:—
The elder or leader.
The missionary secretary (librarian).
It is, of course, advisable that the church elder should be the leader of the church missionary society. In some cases, however, it may be advantageous for the church to elect a missionary leader to act in conjunction with the elder and the church missionary secretary. But whichever plan is followed, it is absolutely essential that there be a missionary leader in each church and company of believers. In this connection it will be well to heed the advice given by Bishop Hall, who, upon being asked what would revive a dead church, replied, “Give it a missionary leader.”
Select a Good Missionary Secretary.—The success or failure of all home missionary enterprises in our churches and organized companies is largely dependent upon the character and ability of the missionary secretary. Great care should be exercised by the church in the selection of this officer. Women as well as men have proved to be efficient workers in this capacity.
Agent for the Church
The missionary secretary acts as agent for the church in all home tract and missionary transactions. He should be a veritable “bureau of information,” to which each member may apply for needed instruction regarding all of the twenty-six kinds of missionary work indicated in the individual missionary report blank, a portion of which, at least, each member is asked to fill out every week.
Training an Assistant
The church that is blessed with a wide-awake, efficient missionary secretary will do well to hesitate long before electing an untried member to this office. The keeping of the financial records of the church missionary society and the many other details connected with the office, demand that whoever succeeds a reliable officer of this kind shall have had a sufficient course of training to enable him to make a success of the work. Hence the advisability of appointing an assistant missionary secretary in each church.
Duties of the Missionary Secretary
Among the more important duties of the church missionary secretary are the following:—20
1. To take an active supervision of the church tract and missionary work, securing co-operative effort by adults, Missionary Volunteers, and the children.
2. To study carefully the character and talents of each member, with the view of enlisting him as an active working factor in distributing our publications and doing other kinds of home missionary work.
3. To pass on to the members the latest information regarding new publications, methods of work, etc., received from the conference tract society office and other sources.
4. To order all tracts, papers, and books for the members.
5. To secure renewals of periodical subscriptions from members, and forward the same to the conference tract society.
6. To report promptly to the conference tract society secretary interesting missionary items, conversions through the efforts of members, special campaigns, etc.
7. To be an actual leader, teaching the members by example as well as precept, how to do home missionary work. This does not mean that his personal efforts will always be crowned with success; in fact, his very failures will prove an encouragement to those thinking themselves unable to do anything.
8. To place our church paper, the REVIEW, in every family.
9. To secure subscriptions for individual clubs of five or more copies of our missionary periodicals, the Signs of the Times weekly and the Gospel Sentinel.
10. To keep the church list of missionary names and addresses, and supervise the mailing of missionary periodicals at the weekly missionary meeting.
11. To instruct the members in the science and practise of writing missionary letters to accompany the tracts and periodicals mailed.
12. To secure, from the conference tract society office or from other sources, lists of purchasers of our literature, legislators, attorneys, clergymen, school-teachers, etc., to be used in mailing missionary periodicals and in missionary correspondence.
13. To act as treasurer of the fourth-Sabbath offerings and of all other literature or church missionary society funds.
14. To sell literature to members on a cash basis.
15. To settle monthly all church literature bills due the conference tract society.
16. To keep accurately all literature accounts with members and with the conference tract society office.
17. To keep a permanent record of all church missionary work.
18. To assign territory to members for the distribution or sale of literature.
19. To systematize and organize the distribution of tracts by the envelope, or package, system.
20. To promote the distribution of tracts and missionary periodicals by the means of reading-racks.
21. To search out suitable candidates for the sale of the ten-cent magazines and our subscription books.
22. To supervise the sale of our forty-per-cent, or “home workers,” books.
23. To promote medical missionary and Christian Help work.
24. To urge the supplying of public libraries and other similar institutions with copies of our standard books, periodicals, and magazines.
25. To submit to the church missionary committee definite plans for the weekly missionary meeting, the fourth-Sabbath home missionary service, special missionary campaigns, etc. 26. To send a full monthly report to the conference tract society secretary.
The performance of these and other duties certainly requires that the church shall select as its missionary secretary one of its most consecrated, energetic, and able members. It should be remembered, too, that our conference tract society must look to churches favored with such missionary secretaries for the material out of which conference and union conference missionary secretaries are made.
This array of the duties of the church missionary secretary should not discourage the candidates for this important office. Great and difficult tasks are always accomplished one at a time, or item by item. Approached in this way, the mountains of difficulty are easily overcome, and strength is developed for surmounting even greater difficulties. Not all lines of missionary work can be carried on at once. Let the missionary secretary assign to the various members work according to their various talents, and let him lead out vigorously in some line with which he is most familiar. Thus, step by step, the working capacity of the church will be increased.