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Missionary Volunteer Department

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Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 17, 1913

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 90, No. 29.

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Missionary Volunteer Department

By A. G. Daniells

M. E. KERN - General Secretary MATILDA ERICKSON - N. Am. Div. Secretary

The Place of the Missionary Volunteer Movement in Our Denominational Work

THE Missionary Volunteer Department has a place in this denomination, a rightful and legitimate place. It is demanded. It is not here by any artificial arrangement. It is not here hindering other important phases of the work because of not being natural and required; it is here and is doing great good directly and a great deal of good indirectly. You cannot limit nor circumscribe the influence and the service, which it is rendering.
Like other branches of our work, it overlaps everywhere. Our educational work reaches out and lays hold of men and women, old and young, in the denomination and out of the denomination. To know what our Educational Department is doing, you must study the finished product all the time. You must go to the editorial rooms, where the men who have attended our schools are editing our papers. You must go to the mission fields, where men who have had their training in our schools are laboring. You never can fully understand the influence of the educational work until you get to the very throne of God. There perhaps you will find the limit and the sum of it all.
So it is with the Young People's Department. It is more than an organic affair with a secretary and assistant secretary; with an office, a desk, a Morning Watch Calendar, a list of books prepared for the young people to read, and the office correspondence. It is more than that. It is all those; but they are agencies for a great result—overcoming great things, accomplishing great things.
The Young People's Department affects the fathers and mothers in the cause of God. It gives them true views of child life and the service of the life of young men and young women. It leads them to give their children proper advantages and training and influence.
Then it lays hold of the children, and molds their thoughts, their ambitions, and their ideals in life, and leads them to determine the course of life they will choose and the service they will render. And then it lifts the denomination, because a denomination is judged as much by the young men and the young women and the children in it, as by the old men and the old women; in fact more, for the actions of the young are weighed more, as a rule. They are noticed more than the actions of the older people.
You go into a home, and the actions of the children at the table, in the home, and at the fireside are noticed more by you than the actions of the father and the mother. Somehow the children are brought into the limelight. So it is in the denomination. Let it have a body of converted youth. Let all the young
men and women be converted, consecrated, and giving their service to God, and that denomination will be noticed, and its influence will be felt, and it will become mighty for good in the world. We hardly realize how much influence Christian youth exert in the world.
Once there was a gentleman taking treatment at one of our sanitariums. One morning I stopped and had a little chat with him, and he said to me, "Elder, I have obtained a new view of humanity since coming to the sanitarium. I have all my official life been on the bench, and I have seen the seamy side of humanity, the bad side. Only felons and criminals, as a rule, are brought before me, and I have the rotten part of humanity detailed before me all the time. I am looking at them. I am hearing of their awful deeds, and I had come to think that that is about all there is in humanity—nothing but a mass of rottenness. But here I have seen a new world, a new piece of humanity. I have seen young men and young women here who are honest, who are clean and pure. They are conscientious, and kind, and obliging, and painstaking, and it is a new world to me. Where did you get that kind of young people for this institution? Where did you find them? I never saw any such before. They never come into the courts. They have never come under my observation."
I replied, "We went to God, to the Lord Jesus Christ, to his church, that is where we got them. These young people naturally are like all other young people in the world. But the gospel of Jesus Christ has been working on their hearts. It has been creating them anew; they are Christians."
He continued, "When I first came here, I heard singing in the gymnasium. I stopped at the window, and listened. Then I heard them pray, then I saw them get up and speak and tell of their Christian experience. I wanted to go inside and look at them, and I did. I have been attending their meetings right along, and this is the most wonderful manifestation I have ever seen."
Now the judge did not notice me, the doctors, and the teachers,—it was our young people. I want to say to you, dear friends, it is true that the young people of a denomination are, so to speak, in the limelight of the world, and everybody measures the denomination by their character.
Our Missionary Volunteer Department has to do directly with the young people. If I were to say in just a few words what the place of the department is, I should say its place is to lay hold on every child and youth in the denomination, and mold them for Christ.
Every family that has a boy has an object for which this department exists. Every girl, old or young, in every family of Seventh-day Adventists is an object at which this department aims, and which this department desires and designs to take hold of. That is the scope of it. And we must never rest satisfied until the influence of this department is being brought to bear upon every child in the denomination. It does not matter how much the Sabbath-school is doing to get them to study the Sabbath-school lesson; it does not matter how much the schools may do to draw them into those institutions when they are the right age; and it does not matter what these otherdepartments do. Here is a work by itself to be done by this department. It is the work of laying hold of these children while they are small, and keeping a grip upon them until they are landed in the work of God somewhere in the world. That is what we must do. And our educational work, and our evangelical work, and our canvassing work, and all branches, will reap the results of the service rendered these children.
Lay hold of these children to bring them to Christ. That is the first thing. That is more important than giving them any intellectual acquirement; more important than training them in the greatest accomplishments—music, art, and all the rest. Bring them to the Saviour. Help them to know there is a God, and that they must give their hearts to him.
The next thing is to exert a constant influence to prepare the young people for the service of Jesus. It is not enough that they recognize him as their Redeemer and surrender their lives to him; they must surrender their lives to join him in the work, and then you must exert that influence until they find a place in the work, just as has been done for the young men you hear giving reports from foreign fields. Somebody spoke to their hearts. Somebody gave them true ideals of life as they grew up. Somebody held on to them until they were placed over there in foreign fields, and today they are noble types of humanity.
Every year I can see wonderful progress being made. The Lord is blessing this department. I feel grateful for the deep interest manifested in it. I feel thankful for the way the parents and ministers feel toward this department, and I am so glad to see the helping hand the greater part of our denomination is giving the youth through this department. May God greatly bless you all, and give you a clearer vision of what is to be done, and greater power to do it. The work is being done, and I believe that we are nearing the point when all our young people will be reached by the love of Christ, and will be a converted body throughout our ranks. That is the aim. It is possible, and we must never stop until this is realized.
A. G. DANIELLS.