The year which has elapsed since our last Missionary Volunteer day has surely brought us a much clearer and broader view of the purpose for which our organization exists. This new vision has increased our responsibilities, and it has also enlarged our possibilities. What we need to-day is greater unity and enthusiasm in our organized work and greater emphasis upon the supreme motive—soul-winning.
Missionary Volunteer Officers
Above all else we must keep before our own minds and the minds of our members that this must be an intensely spiritual department. Our great aim must be deeper spirituality. The most technically perfect organization, the best conducted meetings, the most carefully planned missionary campaigns, and astonishingly large reports will avail little without the quiet, mysterious, omnipotent working of the Holy Spirit, constraining and leading in it all.
“And if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains. . . . And if I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profiteth me nothing.”
We especially as leaders must maintain a keen realization of the true ideal of success in this work. Our inexperience has sometimes caused us to feel elated over our success when we had large reports to send in of literature circulated, money raised, and visits made. Or we have felt that we were enjoying great prosperity when we had excellent programs, and all the young people attended and manifested an interest in the society.
While all these things are good and encouraging, they are by no means conclusive evidence that our society is meeting the mind of God. Let us ever remember that the supreme test of success is soul-winning. Ten souls won to Christ or saved from discouragement during this year may mean more in eternity than ten million dollars raised or ten million pages of tracts distributed.
However, this ideal must not lead us to do haphazard work. Everything should be conducted in the most orderly, systematic manner, with conscientious, painstaking care. So far as consistent, every line of work proposed and every method and plan devised should be carried forward perseveringly and enthusiastically. Every young person in your society should receive your thoughtful and prayerful consideration, and you are to study and plan, patiently and untiringly, to enlist every individual in active service for Christ.
What a solemn thought that, young and inexperienced as you may be, God has given you the privilege of helping to train and prepare those still younger or less experienced for his work.
The Young People
This story is told of Sir William Napier: As he was sitting in his tent near the scene of battle studying the plan of attack, a young officer hastened up to the door of the tent with a regimental flag, and cried, “Sir, I have taken one of the enemy’s standards!” Sir William appeared not to hear till the young man repeated still louder, “Sir, I have taken one of the enemy’s standards!” The old general turned to him with flashing eyes, and thundered, “Sir, go and take another!”
During the past year we have made some progress, victories have been gained, and a measure of success has attended our work, but these should only spur us on to more earnest effort. Must we not confess that in view of our present meager achievements and our solemn responsibilities we are still half-hearted and lukewarm?
John Wesley said, “Give me a hundred preachers who fear nothing but sin and desire nothing but God, and I care not a straw whether they be clergymen or laymen, they alone will shake the gates of hell and set up the kingdom of heaven upon the earth.” If this is true, where among our fifteen thousand Missionary Volunteers is Wesley’s hundred or Gideon’s three hundred to lead in this victorious work? Souls are to be won, and a power the world has seldom witnessed is soon to be imparted to those who refuse to become careless or discouraged.
“Why did Christ in his parable of the fig-tree, and later in his more severe miracle of the fig-tree, condemn religious barrenness so unsparingly?—Because if a man is a Christian he must of necessity bring forth much fruit. A Christian that is not making other Christians is as much a contradiction in term as a fire that is not warming or a flame that is not lighting. There is no more deadly peril for a Christian than being content with merely not doing wrong.”
We as leaders in this work pledge ourselves to do our best by God’s grace to make this preeminently a spiritual movement, and we appeal to you, the great army of young people of this denomination, to consecrate your lives to the great purpose of making this the most spiritual movement in the world. Deeper spirituality and more earnest personal consecration for the salvation of definite individuals is what we need and must have. Has God given you the joy of winning a mighty victory, of saving a precious soul? Then do not stop with this victory, “Go and win another.”
The Parents
As we take a retrospective view of this young people’s movement, no phase of its prosperity encourages us more378than the present attitude of many parents. In the early stages of the development of each department of our work, mistakes were made, which we could see clearly later on. The Missionary Volunteer Department is no exception; and as we think of the unfortunate experiences in certain places, the spirit sometimes manifested, and mistaken notions sometimes expressed, we do not blame some of our older brethren and sisters for fearing that this movement might result in estranging old and young, and in the end work an injury to the cause.
But we are glad that those days of uncertainty and apprehension are passing, and that with more experience and a much clearer conception of God’s purpose in the organization of the young people has come a better understanding between parents and children than ever before.
To-day you who are parents realize more clearly that God’s promise of Elijah to “turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers” means that you are to take the initiative in this movement for the salvation and training of the children. It means that God designs to awaken in your hearts such a great love and burden for all our youth that you will enter into a new covenant with him; that you will by earnest prayer and tears and intercession plead with God for them; that you will give thought and prayer and encouragement and support to the organization urged by the spirit of prophecy for the purpose of enlisting and training the youth in practical missionary work.
And we as young people and children realize to-day that this is not a movement in which we may separate ourselves from you and work independently. We do not want such a movement. We know it is God’s purpose that we should profit by your experience and your loving counsel and encouragement. We want you to take new courage to-day and press on in this work, while we endeavor to lift the heavier burdens and be as helpful to you as we can. At the same time, we know that God has appointed us to do a special work that no one else can do—a work for other young people, which calls into action all our talent and ability to pray and plan and execute wisely for their salvation. This we are sure you will gladly encourage us in doing. And when we have unitedly cooperated with the Lord in fulfilling his word concerning this movement, we shall realize his promise, “Then will the Lord be jealous for his land, and pity his people.”
