Transferring Church-Membership

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 27, 1913

Transferring Church-Membership

SOME of the migratory members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church can read with profit these words by the editor of the Christian Observer of Oct. 22, 1913:—

One of the hardest problems that pastors have to solve is to persuade all church-members who move into the bounds of their congregations to unite with the local church. The instances are few where men and women voluntarily bring their church letter with them and hunt up the pastor and ask to be received into the church. Usually they have to be sought out. They often make miserable excuses for not sending at once for their letters. “I do not know how long I shall be here.” “I do not yet know which church I shall join.” “I am looking around to see where I should like to belong.” “I dislike to take my name off the roll of the old home church.”

With some of these people years pass and they are still out of vital connection with the local church. Much of this is due to real indifference to religion and indisposition to assume responsibilities, and it is often fatal to vigorous Christian development. An old sailor once said: “I am an old sailor, and I have been up and down in the world. It is my rule, as soon as I get into port, to fasten my ship fore and aft to the wharf, although it may cost a little wharfage, rather than have my ship out in the stream, floating hither and thither with the tide.” “Professing Christians who keep their church letters in their trunks, or who wander from service to service, making of no place a sanctuary, and assuming no religious responsibilities,” says an exchange, “are in a fair way to come to grief, in social shallows or on the jagged reefs of temptation. If you do not want to drift into sin, tie up to some church.”