Ohio Camp-Meeting by R. A. Underwood

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 20, 1906

Ohio Camp-Meeting

By R. A. Underwood

It was my privilege to attend the last week of the Ohio camp-meeting held at Troy. About six hundred of our own people were in attendance. The meeting was too far from town for the people to walk, and the street-car service did not furnish them with the accommodations needed, therefore the outside attendance was small.

The business of the conference is to be attended to at a later meeting in the winter, hence the meetings were not crowded with business matters.

The program of the meeting had been

arranged for each day some time in advance, and was largely carried out as planned, giving one full day to school work, one day to the medical work, etc. Many excellent papers and addresses were either read or delivered directly bearing upon the topic considered.

While this plan of conducting a camp-meeting has some advantages in giving all branches of the work specific attention during an entire day, there is danger of allowing such a program to crowd out more or less two important features that should be made most prominent in every camp-meeting; namely, the spiritual revival work for those in the camp, and the presentation of the special features of our faith that distinguish us from other denominations. I believe that these features should be made most prominent in all our camp-meetings, and that every camp-meeting should be so planned that some part of every day's program should be devoted to these special features of the meeting. In locating our camp-meetings, easy access to the town or city should outweigh the convenience of buildings or the shade trees to be found on a fair-ground.

There was good work done for the young people and children by those in charge. Twenty-five persons were baptized the last Sabbath of the meeting. Brethren C. A. Pedicord, W. E. Bidwell, C. Redfield, and James Shultz were ordained to the gospel ministry. The Ohio Conference has two thousand Sabbath-keepers, and a large number of laborers. She has nineteen ordained ministers (one or two of these are aged), seventeen licensed ministers and Bible workers, one college, ten church-schools with twenty-three teachers, seventeen sanitariums and treatment rooms with thirty-three doctors and nurses. This makes a large corps of laborers in these various branches of the work. Elders I. H. Evans and Geo. F. Enoch made strong appeals in behalf of the distant needy fields. Some of these laborers will respond to this call. About two thousand dollars was given in cash and pledges for the work at home and abroad. Ohio has already many laborers in distant lands, and others will go soon.

I was glad to meet some of the old pioneers of the cause in the State, and to see many who were but children years ago when I labored in the conference, grown to be laborers and burden-bearers in the cause to-day. The conference committee and the laborers are loyal to the cause of the third angel's message, and have committed themselves to the finishing of the work.

R. A. UNDERWOOD.