p. 108 | MINISTERS' REPORTS by James White

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 26, 1878

MINISTERS' REPORTS.

By James White

For the past five years we have seen evils growing out of our ministers' reports of labor which appear in the REVIEW and SIGNS. It is true that the Progress Department, containing these reports, and showing the progress of the cause, contains a very great amount that is of real interest, and is read first by most of the patrons of our papers; yet we have urged—

1. That these reports should be as brief as possible, and yet contain all the facts of importance and real interest connected with their labors.

2. That the reports should be first written with the foregoing objects in view, then copied in a plain hand, and carefully guarded against superfluous words. A wordy style, throwing ideas and facts at a great distance, and thus filling valuable space in the columns of our papers with a sort of “wishy-washy” matter, greatly detracts from the proper dignity and importance of our work, and from the usefulness of our papers.

3. Reports should be a straight-forward account of the work of God among the people and among our churches, given for the glory of God, to exalt his truth, his power, his love, his mercy, to the honor and glory of his holy name.

4. The writer should carefully avoid giving a hundred and one particulars about himself of no particular interest to the general reader, such as when he left home, the state of the roads, when he reached the place of meetings, how he found the condition of things, what he said and did, what a victory he gained in discussion, leaving the Lord almost entirely out of the battle and his report. We read the Progress Department of our papers first and with extreme interest, but never without feelings of regret and sorrow to see valuable space occupied with words, phrases, sentences, and even paragraphs, that mean nothing only the exaltation of the writers.

It may be truly said that the editors should trim these reports; but the place to commence the necessary reform is with the writers. Who has not been disgusted, more or less, with certain reports from some of our young men a few weeks after they first took papers in their hands from our Conferences giving them license to improve their gifts? In these objectionable reports, phrases and expressions have appeared which would much better become a presiding elder, or a president of a Conference whose head had grown white with labor and care in the cause of God. St. Paul, in the accounts of his perilous travels and labors by sea and by land, is put in the shade by the reports of these novices in the gospel of Christ. J. W.