HOW TO HELP OUR OLD CHURCHES by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 14, 1882

HOW TO HELP OUR OLD CHURCHES.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

It is coming to be a question of much importance, How can we best help our old churches? In the past, our chief efforts have been to raise up new churches, as we had no old churches to require attention, or at least so few as to demand but little. But every year the scale is turning. We are now coming to have many churches of fifteen or twenty years' standing. Some of these are quite large, numbering from forty to seventy actual members, with a whole generation of young people or relatives who believe the truth, but are unconverted. In many cases, there are scores of persons around these churches who really believe we have the truth, but they have not a disposition to obey it. Often these churches are more or less in trial or backslidden. Now, what is the wisest thing to do in such a case? Having labored with several such churches during the past year, I will give my impressions of the matter. They may not be correct, but it is the way things appear to me.

For instance : Here is a church twenty years old. About fifty embraced the Sabbath at first. Since that time they have had a regular course of lectures four or five times, and from twenty to fifty more have embraced the truth. Some have apostatized, many have died, and others have moved away. From thirty to sixty children have grown up, a few of whom are in the church; but the most of them have married and given up the truth. Trials have come up from time to time, and have wounded this one, soured that one, and destroyed confidence in the other one. Each has settled down to his own business, with little care or thought about other people. There is very little social intercourse among the different families. All efforts at missionary labors among their neighbors have ceased. They say, and with much truth too, that they have given out reading matter till no one cares to look at it any more. Their meetings are so poorly attended and so uniformly uninteresting that the young people do not care to go. And if an outsider happens to drop in, he seldom cares to come again.

When a minister visits such a church, he will meet discouragements on every hand. He is expected to preach on tithing, T. and M. work, temperance, and if on Sunday outsiders are in, he must give a lecture on the prophecies or the Sabbath. Now I am profoundly convinced that this is an unwise course to follow. All have heard on these things till they are a positive bore to them. All, both old and young, Sabbath-keepers and outsiders, are longing to hear something else, something that they have not heard before for the twentieth time. This is the universal feeling, as all must know. These things are all good, and should not be omitted on proper occasions. But this is not all there is of the Bible and of the gospel. If we confine our churches to these few subjects, they will just as surely suffer loss as the nominal churches have done by leaving out these important subjects, and dwelling only upon what they call gospel themes. If they have gone to one extreme, we should not be so foolish as to go to the other. We need all the truths of the Bible duly mixed together. In dwelling wholly upon doctrine and argument, we are in danger of becoming cold, exclusive, and unsocial. Such a feeling is spiritual death to any one.

Hence on visiting a church in this condition I have found the best success by beginning with something tender, sympathetic, and winning. For this purpose, nothing is better than the old, old story of Jesus and his love. Strive to revive hope, faith, and love in the hearts of the brethren. Then send them out. Hold prayer and social meetings from house to house. This brings them to each other's houses. Get up a load of brethren and sisters, and visit those who are on the back-ground. Send them out to invite in their neighbors. Labor especially to get the young, the backslidden, and the unconverted to come to Christ. By this time most of the little trials will have disappeared, and also many of the larger ones. When hearts are warm and tender, it does not take much to bring them together. At least, this has been my experience. The idea that we must have an investigation, and a church trial over every petty difficulty is a great mistake. It trains people to watch, criticise, and to judge their brethren, rather than to love and help them.

After a few weeks of practical, gospel preaching, all, church and outsiders, will be hungry to hear on our doctrines, and then it will do them good.

D. M. CANRIGHT.