The Young People's Work a Strength to the Church and the Conference
By Meade MacGuire
From the beginning of our history as a denomination, every great advance move has been in obedience to instructions received from God through the spirit of prophecy. When in earlier years our people began to sense the magnitude of the work before them, they recognized the absolute necessity of having institutions of learning where young men and women might be fitted intellectually, without danger to their spiritual welfare, for positions of responsibility in connection with this message. The early history of every branch of our work is a record of almost incredible self-sacrifice, fortitude, courage, perseverance, and above all, faith. From the instruction given us it is quite evident that one of the essentials in the carrying out of the divine mission to which our children are called, is their organization and active service in various lines of personal effort. Thus the channel of communication with heaven is kept open, and an experience is gained that fits them for the reception of the Holy Spirit. This is the chief purpose of the young people's movement. To draw the youth into the living current from heaven, awaken in their hearts a passion for souls, and arouse them to a sense of the exalted privileges of an intensely active Christian life, develops workers whom God can use to advance this cause. Every young man or woman who has been truly converted, and has experienced a spiritual awakening, has felt an earnest longing to impart to others the joy of salvation. To those thus awakened who are properly taught, the call of God is a reality. The tender, passionate, unfathomable love of God and of his Son, Jesus Christ, the infinite value of a human soul, and the appalling condition of earth's millions hastening on to eternal doom, rise up before them as a vision from heaven. Such young men and women will be a help to any church or conference, and, thank God, we have hundreds of them. What we need is to see by faith the possibilities and certainties before our youth when organized and properly trained and directed. The young people of a conference take up the study of our foreign missions, and soon after many of their number go to foreign fields as missionaries, and those at home are supporting others, while scores of the most earnest, consecrated ones are studying, praying, and working, with the thought of God's call to a foreign field uppermost in their minds. Not a Menace to the Church
Many have felt that in some way the organizing of our young people would be detrimental to the church. They urge that it will be separating the young from the old for training and for service. The principle of this separation is similar to that involved in school work. In the schools of our country, in which the parents have little or no part directly, millions of children and youth are receiving the education and training which will fit them as they grow up to take their places in the world. The school system is a source of strength to the nation. So in our own school system, the children are separated from their parents much of the time, and are under the care of teachers, who do their best to fit them, intellectually and spiritually, for work in this message. The young people's society takes them a step farther. We have reached a time in the history of the world unlike any preceding time. We ought to realize that more must be done now than has ever been done in the past. We are appalled as we look back a few years and see the thousands of children who have grown up and left our ranks. We wish they were again with us, and we desire to save those we now have. What shall we do? Shall we turn back and try again a plan that utterly failed in holding our youth, or shall we now take the instruction sent us as God's plan to remedy this evil and save our youth? A Means of Spiritual Growth
The young people's work properly organized and conducted is a means of spiritual growth and advancement to the youth. It gives them new and higher ideals, ambitions, and purposes, also a training that will make them efficient officers in the church and conference as they grow older, by sharing the labor and responsibility at present. It encourages and develops the backward and inexperienced, furnishes many helpful lessons in discipline and self-government, arouses an interest in, and study of, the great foreign mission fields, inspiring, finally, many devoted young people to give their lives to that work.17It gives a new zeal and interest in the study of the basic truths of the third angel's message, and emphasizes the solemn responsibility resting upon every Seventh-day Adventist youth in connection with the giving of the everlasting gospel to the world in this generation. In doing all this, it can not fail to help in the most practical and efficient manner both the churches and the conferences where the importance of this movement is recognized and its work encouraged. MEADE MACGUIRE.