MINISTERS’ REPORTS by James White

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 20, 1876

FromThe Review and Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 48, No. 4.

MINISTERS’ REPORTS.

By James White

No part of the REVIEW AND HERALD is read with more lively interest than the “Progress Department.” Indeed the majority of our patrons read those columns first, and prize them most. Therefore, all concerned, both editors and writers, should do all in their power to make this precious portion of our good paper, what it should be.

The “Progress Department” is one of religious news. And when viewed in this light the importance of fresh matter will be understood. All reporters of progress should write frequently, and make their reports brief. Items of interest are wanted from each laborer weekly, or, at most, once in two weeks, instead of that spun-out, formal column containing the history of a minister’s life for the past three months. We can hardly conceive of anything more absurd than these reports covering from one to six months. This kind sounds to us nearly all alike, as if run in the same mold. We have not been able to read one in ten of them, from beginning to end, during the last four years.

There should be at least twenty-five brief, pithy, cheering reports in our good paper each week. The secular journalist calls for fresh news. He selects fresh news. And should some one send him a thin sketch of common incidents, covering several weeks, he would consign it to the moles and the bats. It is very seldom we see items of news in a weekly secular paper more than a few days old.

The object of the “Progress Department” is to give fresh news in the most readable form, and not that the minister may make a consecutive display of his circuitous routes, and the many towns in which he has preached the gospel, and so impress the reader with the great amount he is doing for the Lord by exhibiting on a large scale once a quarter.

We see no reasons why every live minister should not report as often as once in two weeks. A few lines, from two to ten or more, every week would be better. And we make the unqualified request that each tent be reported weekly. We do this in behalf of the many thousands that read our paper, and especially of those who cheerfully give of their means to support tent labor. And we here recommend, as a preventative of these old stale reports, that nothing be put into the “Progress Department” that is more than two weeks old, excepting when grown old, on its passage from Europe, or from distant parts of the Western Continent. We plead that the sheep and lambs have fresh feed. . . . J. W.