A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 30, 1879

A MOVE IN THE RIGHT DIRECTION.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

At the late Conference in Battle Creek, a resolution was adopted recommending that ministers be assigned their fields of labor at the commencement of the Conference year, and that they continue to labor in that section of the Conference at least one year. I see that other Conferences have since recommended the same thing. The importance of this move can readily be seen. As it has been in the past, in many cases the traveling expenses of the ministers have been about as much as their weekly wages. This should not be so. Sometimes our most efficient ministers have been called hither and thither to different parts of the field, and they have had to travel hundreds of miles to reach their appointments. In the case of the president of a Conference or some such person, this cannot be avoided; but there is no reason why all the ministers in a Conference should thus run about.

1. It involves an immense expense. 2. It involves a great loss of time. 3. It takes the minister away from the very place where he ought to labor. 4. It takes the responsibility off from the minister, so far as any interest which he may have raised up is concerned. If the church does not prosper, or if the interest goes down, he says he is not to blame, as he was not left there to complete the work. 5. In a large number of cases, young companies of Sabbath-keepers are thus left to settle down half-converted. They become discouraged, and finally give up the truth almost entirely. We see this everywhere we go, and it is becoming a crying evil among our people.

If our churches are to prosper, there must be a change in regard to this matter. It is recommended , therefore, when a minister has been assigned to a certain field, or when he has selected one for himself, that he continue to labor there or in that vicinity, so as to hold every inch of ground he may gain. If a man embraces the truth, he should be looked after, visited, and instructed until he becomes thoroughly settled in all the principles of the faith. If eight, or ten or more receive the truth, they need constant watching and care for the first six months at least.

All over the country we find little companies that have been brought into the truth by a tent effort or a month's course of lectures, and then the minister has left them. No one has visited them again for six months, and sometimes not for a whole year. The result is always the same. They are only partially in the truth, and they make no progress. Tobacco-users do not give up that habit, nothing is done in the tract work, little or no S. B. is paid, and only a small part take the papers. Their meetings are uninteresting, some of them give up the truth, the cause suffers reproach in that neighborhood, and the brethren become discouraged. But if these little beginnings had been carefully followed up, if that company had been visited once a month for the first year, they would have become a strong, healthy church. Nearly all who started would have been saved to the cause, and other good members would have been added. Instead of a small, weak, discouraged, half-converted company, there would have been a vigorous, working church.

It is a sin against God, and the souls that you bring into the truth, to leave them in this destitute condition. Hence we say that when a minister has selected his field of labor, or the providence of God has opened the way for him to labor in a certain section, we believe that he ought to remain in that vicinity, so as to develop his work in a workmanlike manner.

If at the end of the year he cannot show any organized church or churches; if he cannot show healthy believers soundly in the faith in all its parts, and taking stock in the various enterprises of the third angel's message; if he cannot raise up believers who have enough of the spirit of sacrifice to support the man who has brought them into the truth, then we think it is very doubtful whether he has been called of God to the work. At least two or three years' labor in this direction ought to settle the question.

There is no sense or justice in the idea that a minister can run from field to field, from one part of the State to another, and simply persuade men to keep the Sabbath, and then call on the Conference for pay, when the men he has brought into the truth will not pay a dollar toward his support. A change in this respect will produce a more healthy state of affairs in our churches. D. M. CANRIGHT.