The Ohio Conference by G. A. Irwin

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Feb 25, 1909

The Ohio Conference

By G. A. Irwin

The forty-seventh annual session of the Ohio Conference was held in the Seventh-day Adventist church in the city of Columbus, Ohio, January 25-29. Not

all the eighty churches in the conference were represented by delegates, but there was a representation numbering one hundred fifty.

The conference was opened on the evening of the twenty-fifth by a sermon by Elder R. G. Patterson. The days were entirely devoted to the hearing of reports and the transaction of the necessary business of the conference, and the evenings were occupied in preaching services, in which the progress of the work and its needs throughout the world were set before the delegates.

The tithe for the past year was $27,184.62, or about two thousand dollars less than for the previous year. The conference officers accounted for this by the stringency of money matters during the latter part of the year. The other funds of the conference seem to have held their own with the previous years, and $7,923.65 was given for foreign missions. The conference during the year supported seven laborers outside of their own field.

The financial report showed that five cents a member had been paid upon the ten-cent-a-week plan. Four new churches — Jefferson, Delta, Ravenna, and a German church in Cleveland — were admitted to the conference.

The needs of the Mount Vernon College were given some consideration, and a resolution was unanimously passed authorizing the board of trustees to transfer the property to the Columbia Union Conference when a corporation is organized to receive it. The medical missionary and sanitarium work also received their due share of consideration.

Elder H. H. Burkholder was unanimously re-elected conference president. Owing to the illness of Brother C. V. Hamer, and his inability to attend to the duties of the office of treasurer, Brother O. D. Stephens was elected secretary and treasurer. The executive committee remains the same as heretofore, with the exception of the addition of the name of Elder C. F. Redfield, who was elected in place of Elder W. E. Bidwell.

The conference delegates voted unanimously to let the General Conference have, free of rent, their large pavilion and dwelling tents for its use during the coming meeting. It was also decided to allow the time of the various workers of the conference who wished to attend the General Conference.

Elder G. B. Thompson, the president of the union conference, and the writer were present from the beginning of the meeting, and rendered what help they could on committees and in the discussion of the various questions that came before the session.

The meeting closed on Thursday night, the twenty-eighth, and the delegates went home full of courage and with a determination to inspire the members of their individual churches with the spirit of the meeting, and thus inaugurate an aggressive missionary movement throughout the entire conference.

G. A. Irwin.