Camp-Meetings by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 16, 1871

Camp-Meetings.

By James White

We designed to prepare a little work on the subject of camp-meetings; but this, with many other things that should be done, we shall have to leave undone for want of time and strength. We will, however, make a few suggestions through the REVIEW:—

1. God has greatly blessed this means of grace, so much so that there remains not a single doubt as to the utility of holding camp-meetings.

2. In order that camp-meetings held by Seventh-day Adventists be a success, there must be a sacrifice of time and means, a spirit of labor with both ministers and people, promptness, and a love for order.

3. The grounds should be located in reference to their being accessible to our people, and also the crowd, pleasant location, shade, ample room, and good water.

4. Everything about the grounds should be neat and orderly. Teams should not be allowed to stand near the ground, and the deportment of men, women, and children, in the family tents and on the ground, should be unexceptionable. It should be the duty of the camp-meeting committee to see that all these matters are right, so that the unbelieving will be led to admire our orderly and Christian deportment.

5. No controversy whatever should be allowed on our camp-grounds. The common lawless habit of collecting in little knots about the ground to listen to unsanctified and unlearned controversy from novices and soft heads should be promptly broken up. Such conduct lowers the dignity of the occasion.

6. There should be a complete provision stand on all our camp-grounds at which everything should be sold that the camp-meeting committee should approbate an outsider to sell. What they would forbid others to sell on the ground, they should not sell themselves; and what they would allow another to sell, they should themselves sell. Let the brethren take this matter into their own hands, provide for the crowd, and furnish at such prices as will go far in meeting expenses for the accommodation of the crowd. This is simply justice in the case. We call in question very much the custom of liberally providing for the crowd at camp-meeting, practiced at one or two-days’ meeting in Missouri. But of this the brethren in the different States must be allowed to judge.

7. Each camp-meeting should have a full assortment of our publications. The Association will furnish them, delivered at the depot in Battle Creek, at one-third discount from published prices. The managers of camp-meetings can sell and give away as in their judgment is best. Here is a laborious part of the work that we leave others to do. If the camp-meetings do the work of properly supplying the people with our publications, the camp-meetings should have the profits. Each camp-meeting should meet the expenses of books and tracts given at such meetings, by donations, or otherwise.

8. Each Conference should take measures for the wider circulation of our periodicals, and see that the proper persons, and no others, receive them, and should become responsible for the payment of those periodicals circulated in the several State Conferences. JAMES WHITE.