Missionary Volunteer Department

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 4, 1914

Missionary Volunteer Department

M. E. KERN - - - General Secretary C. L. BENSON - - - Assistant Secretary MATILDA ERICKSON - - - N. Am. Div. Secretary MEADE MACGUIRE - - N. Am. Div. Field Secretary

Parents' Meetings

To make our annual camp meetings in fact what they are in theory should be the aim of all who have any responsibility in connection with them. In theory they are supply stations at which we may lay in a store of provisions against the year to come. If they were literal supply stores, how carefully they would be filled with just the variety needed for the journey; not all one variety of food, but suited to each individual requirement,—milk for the weak, strong meat for those of age.

Shall we not, then, study the needs of each class, and try to deal out to them that which will make them better able to meet their perplexities? If this is done, it must be planned for. We do plan for most of the classes. The children have their carefully arranged children's tent, and the care of teachers who have given time and thought to the lessons for each day of the session. The same is true of the young people. But it seems that the parents have been neglected. Apparently it has been thought that the general exercises are sufficient to satisfy all their wants.

The parents of our church have much to meet in these days. They have a most definite part to act in the message that is to draw parents and children together before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. Many of them live in remote districts where they have not many advantages, and where they may not have heard a sermon since the previous annual gathering. They do not have much in the way of reading, perhaps, that will really help them in their practical duties; or if they have the reading, many of them find it hard to make the application to their individual cases. They long for an opportunity to ask questions about certain problems that perplex them. They want to hear a living voice enunciate the things they have pondered over,—the things that they daily meet in their homes. Here is where they need help. And while what may be given them may not be so wonderfully new, any more than what they hear from the desk in the regular meetings is strikingly new or strange, it will set their minds to working along the lines of some of the small things that make for righteousness in their families. The families of Seventh-day Adventists should be models in every way that a family and a home may be a model. Wherever a family tree is planted, there should be found by those around it no occasion for fault or criticism, except it be concerning the law of its God.

Arrangements for the Meetings

These should be arranged for early. Some one who is qualified should be appointed to take charge. He should be one who appreciates the importance of the subject, and, if possible, who has successfully trained children as a parent or teacher. Let this leader arrange topics

and assign them long before the camp meeting. He should be explicit in the assignment of these topics, and should give the person who is to speak or to write a paper a definite idea of the subject to be treated. He should not fear to ask some of our good fathers and mothers in Israel, who, by the blessing of God, have succeeded in rearing their sons and daughters in the truth. One such mother, after much persuasion, wrote out some of her experiences, and her paper was considered the most helpful of all.

There should be a regular time and place for the meetings. The best time, perhaps, is the hour in the afternoon when the children's and youth's meetings are held. There are some objections to this hour, but strong considerations in its favor.