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The Camp-Meetings

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Apr 8, 1875

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 45, No. 15.

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The Camp-Meetings.

By James White

BE in season. We have no idea of coming up to these important gatherings without well-defined plans of operation. These meetings cost our people time and money, and those who labor in the work much wearing toil. Our camp-meetings must be made interesting and very profitable occasions. Our ministers and our people should be greatly benefited by them, and strong efforts should be put forth to make them occasions of the conversion of sinners, reclaiming backsliders, and building up the church.
Our camp-meetings have taken too much the form of a great machine, to be turned by a few experienced hands, while the majority look on. Our younger men must be pushed out to improve their gifts on such occasions. They must come to the camp-meetings with the spirit of labor for the good of the meetings and the salvation of souls. Our camp-meetings sometimes sink in interest near their close in consequence of the extreme weariness of the few who have done most all the labor. A decided change must take place on these points.
There are no good reasons why our younger ministers should leave their fields of labor, perhaps pull down one or two tents where they are giving courses of lectures in different places in the Conference, sometimes to the great detriment of the cause in those localities, to attend our camp-meetings, unless they come to them to labor in the family tents, in the social meetings, and to speak from the stand more or less. Men who have sufficient ability, and who have the confidence of our people to be intrusted with tent labor, should not leave their fields of labor to attend the camp-meetings only on the ground that they come to work anywhere and everywhere that work is to be done.
We hope to be able to attend all the camp-meetings the coming season with Mrs. W. We shall come to our brethren, not to do the work, but to help them do it in the name and strength of the Lord. We have neither strength nor disposition to labor as we have done. It is important to be in season. We have many suggestions to make, and we think it important at this early date to call the attention of the preachers of the several Conferences to the fact that if duty calls them from important labor to the camp-meeting, it calls them to labor at these meetings and not depend on those from abroad to do all the work.
J. W.