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Tent Masters

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Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 6, 1878

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 4, No. 22.

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Tent Masters.

By John Norton Loughborough

A GOOD tent master is an important addition to a tent company, but on the other hand a poor tent master is a dead weight to the work.
A tent master desirous of magnifying his office, will be active at all times, realizing that it is his special duty to see, before every meeting, that all is in order, and that everything about the tent is kept neat and orderly all the time, then, as visitors come into the tent, a good impression is made upon their minds, and they go away saying, “well that is a nice place any way, I believe I will go and hear what they have to say.”
Unless a tent master is careful to get ample exercise each day, his life of inactivity will result in stupidity and neglect of his real duties because of a feeling of sluggishness that will come over him. This he must guard against by proper habits of living and exercise. Again, if the tent master is a single man, and sometimes when he is not, he will find a disposition on the part of the young ladies to gossip with him; not only thus causing him, many times, to neglect other duties, but leaving the impression on those that come in that the tent is a place for match-making, instead of being dedicated to the advancement of the solemn truths of God for these times. Many a young man who might have done much good in acting discretely in connection with the tent, watching his opportunity to converse with those interested in the truth, has instead, opened the way for others to be light and frivolous in the tent by being lead into such conversation with them himself.
To tent masters might be well applied the exhortation of Paul, “Young men likewise exhort to be sober-minded. In all things showing thyself a pattern of good works; in doctrine showing uncorruptness, gravity, sincerity, sound speech, that cannot be condemned; that he that is of the contrary part may be ashamed, having no evil thing to say of you.” Titus 2:6–8.
J. N. LOUGHBOROUGH.