Our Training-Schools Great Missionary Centers by L. A. Hoopes

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Mar 7, 1907

Our Training-Schools Great Missionary Centers

By L. A. Hoopes

OUR training-schools are established as great centers of missionary impulses. There would be no good reason for their existence should the missionary idea be dropped out. Unconverted persons may be connected with these schools for a time, and afterward be converted and become mighty factors in the Lord’s work. These schools are not established for self-servers, for the shiftless, the careless, and the indolent, who care not to uplift their fellow men. These schools must ever have the preponderance of influence on the side of missionary effort.

The missionary idea that obtained at the College View convention is what must be in every training-school. In the missionary training-school the student may gain a precious missionary experience. He may have the consciousness while at school that he is gaining a real soul-winning experience, just such as is needed in every mission field. He may labor for unconverted students or others outside of the school.

Every principle and every phase of missionary effort is to be considered in our training-schools. Revivals, special prayer, visiting the sick, the distribution of literature, all form the very foundation of our schools; for what is the training of the intellect or the hand if this training is not to be used in the salvation of mankind?

Missionary work must be done wherever there are men and women who need to know of the saving grace of Christ. With this in view, every means of grace needs to be studied. So every phase of gospel work is considered in our training-schools. These the missionary should study before leaving for the heathen land; for there he will have many important questions to decide, and will have no one to counsel with concerning them. Sabbath-school work, organization of companies and the appointment of leaders,

and many other questions he must be familiar with. The school is supposed to give instruction on all these points.

The training-school is an integral factor of every mission field in this wide world. In many features of the work the pupil may be engaged in the field of his choice even while he is pursuing his literary studies. The mission fields look to the schools for trained laborers, and in a certain sense the missions furnish a large share of the instruction by way of furnishing data which are essential for the missionary to know before embarking for his field of labor. It is the studied aim of the management of all these schools to bring in all the information possible concerning missions.

Every department of the cause, whether in one country or another, is in need of trained laborers; and it is to the training-schools that every institution and organization of our cause is looking for laborers.

God has need of every entrusted talent. There is a place for every one to fill. He says to each one, Go and improve the gift. Truly, “of all the institutions in our world, the school is the most important.”—“Special Testimony on Education,” page 187. L. A. HOOPES.

Cooranbong, Australia.