Is It a Compliment? by F. M. W.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Apr 6, 1916

Is It a Compliment?

By F. M. W.

ARE the changes taking place in our church life for the better? As we have improved our methods of doing business during the last few decades, have we increased in zeal, devotion, and consecration? These are questions which arise in our mind as we read the following newspaper editorial regarding a convention of Seventh-day Adventists recently held in one of our large cities:—

“A few years ago an ‘Advent’ assembly meant the clanning of long-haired, anemic individuals—the men in long coats and with long faces, the women with ultraplain gowns and unbecoming hats. The delegates would walk through town with solemn mien and with Bibles under their arms. Altogether it would be a very doleful affair, with exhortations to the sinners and long-visaged advice to the sanctified.

“Today the Adventist conference is a businesslike, dignified, and altogether model convention. The delegates look like so many merchants, doctors, or lawyers. They wear good, substantial clothing, cut to the prevailing style, minus the radicalisms and eccentricities of ‘fashion.’ The ‘ministerial voice’ is less in evidence. The delegates talk, look, and act like human beings.

“At their meetings the Adventists talk business—the dollars and cents of good management. They go at it prayerfully, and the religious atmosphere is omnipresent; but little time is wasted, and the heads of committees, divisions, and various branches of the work know their fields like a book.

“Why, the Adventists today even have a press agent,—a genuine newspaper man, who wastes no valuable time trying to get the papers to republish tracts or close their forms with prayer, but who supplies the facts so keenly sought by reporters, ‘covers’ the sessions which the newsmen are least apt to attend, and sees that the truth about Adventism is spread as widely as the ‘bunk’ has been distributed for the past few decades.”

The editor meant this for a compliment to the denomination. We trust that the denomination is worthy of it in a true sense. We believe that our methods of doing business have improved. They surely should with the years of experience through which this movement has passed. But after all, it is not improved methods alone which will carry this movement to success. We may be ahead in plans and methods; ahead of some of “the men in long coats and with long faces, and the women with ultraplain gowns and unbecoming hats,” who as pioneers in this movement formed its very backbone and strength years ago; but that, after all, is not the real, vital question. Are we quickened by the same or greater zeal? Are we bringing to the work of God today the same devotion, the same faith? Is there seen in our lives the same simplicity that characterized theirs?

Of many no doubt this could be said, but of some we fear the reverse is true. Let us welcome better methods, but let us remember that it is “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord,” that this work is to be accomplished; and that our power as Christian men and women will rest in the simplicity of our faith, and in the humble, devoted, God-fearing lives which we live. Let us adapt ourselves to the world’s changing conditions, seeking, as did the apostle Paul, to be “all things to all men,” that we may “by all means save some;” but let us be slow to get away from the simplicity and the faithful, earnest devotion which characterized the plain men and women whom God used to inaugurate this movement.

F. M. W.