Untitled article by C. L. B.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jan 29, 1914

Secretaryship as a Life Work — No. 2

By C. L. B.

THE special service of bringing fifty or sixty thousand young people of this denomination to Christ and enlisting their energies in his cause demands picked men and women. It calls for the best in heart and brain our denomination affords. It does not ask for a multitude, but it does ask for the best.

The secretary multiplies himself a hundredfold, and substitutes for one personal worker many hundred. However eager he may be to work personally, shall one with the gifts of leadership leave hundreds helpless and ineffective because he wishes to gratify himself? The purpose of our organization is to multiply effective personal work. Take, for example, the secretary of our board of foreign missions, Elder W. A. Spicer. He spent some years in India, and would enjoy spending his life and energy in service for the Master there. But this same zeal, wedded to administrative capacity, enables him to recruit a whole army of missionaries. If this is not Christian activity, what is it? Instead of being at the front bearing the heat and burdens of the day, he is exchanging the burdens of a single life for the burdens of hundreds of lives. The secretary elongates himself to the foreign field hundreds of times.

Then we turn next to the growth and characteristics of the secretarial office. The secretaryship is still a new calling, and is subject to rapid development. Its motto is, "Grow or go." The essential elements of growth are all here. The secretary must study if he proposes to meet his problems. His mind is kept alert as he comes in daily contact with the keenest minds among the young people. His sympathies are drawn upon by the experiences he is called upon to share,—the struggles, the successes, and the failures that he witnesses all about him.

One prime requisite demanded of the secretary is that he be a religious leader. He exhibits this quality chiefly as an administrator and executive, but it is for the primary purpose of extending Christ's kingdom among the young people. The chief function of the minister is preaching, the chief work of the teacher is that of instruction, the chief purpose of the Missionary Volunteer secretary is administration. His aim is to organize young people for work, also to bring to bear upon them those influences and forces which will help them spiritually, mentally, and physically. He is to do this both personally and through an organization.

The secretary is to enlist the young people of his conference in self-improvement, in religious meetings, in Bible study, in personal work,—not only for the children of Seventh-day Adventist parents, but for those not of our faith,—and in missionary effort at home and abroad. To do this successfully it is imperative that he understand the religious life and characteristics of young people.

The way a young person spends his leisure time usually determines his character and usefulness in life. The greater part of Seventh-day Adventist young people do not attend our denominational schools. Many of these, and also of the class who do, leave school by the time they are fourteen years of age, and need opportunity for further study. The secretary should know the laws of the mind, and should understand the mental life of young people. Through interesting them in our schools, in the Reading Courses, and in the Standard of Attainment, he has a great opportunity to make better and more successful church workers of the young people.

He should be able to meet young people and the public generally in a tactful and cordial way. Effectiveness as a public speaker is also desirable in the leadership of meetings, in presenting new lines of work to the church or to the young people's society, and in public addresses at conventions, and on other public occasions. The secretary who has the faculty of a promoter will find opportunity for every ability. No man has ever been able to say that he has outgrown this work.

Considering the field of this office, can we not say that it has grown to be one of the most important functions of the church, and that the church will never give up the idea of specialized, thoroughly trained officers, who devote their entire time to enlisting and setting to work young people?

The next division which we are called upon to discuss is the kind of men needed to fill the office of the secretaryship—their qualifications and characteristics. In the secretaryship there is room for a career of unsurpassed usefulness. The best young people the denomination can produce are demanded. This work offers opportunities for the religious zeal of the minister, the enterprise of the business man, and the quality of versatility necessary in administrative work of the college president. No man has yet engaged in this work who was too good or too great for his calling. Here the Christian young man has opportunity for the exercise of all his best qualities. The secretaryship does not call for a large number of men, but it is exceedingly difficult to find the right kind.

Type of Men Needed in This Calling

That the secretary must possess genuine Christian character cannot be emphasized too much. The Saviour must be real to him; and the Master's goal, of living for the one purpose of blessing others, must be revealed in unselfish and loving service. Executive ability—the power to bring things to pass—is essential. In this calling, opportunities hedge one in. He has a new work, an untried field, tremendous forces to harness and to direct in channels of activity while beset with tremendous odds. He should possess leadership and skill in handling young people. He should also be a man of vision—a seer. To these essentials let him add all the graces of body, mind, and spirit that natural endowment or attainment may bestow upon him. No man has yet brought to the secretaryship qualifications so high or so varied that he has not had ample opportunity to use them all.

The young person who wishes to enter this office ought in some way to show adaptation for it. He should have developed some leadership in Christian work among his associates in the young people's society, in the Sabbath school, in college, or in the church. He ought to have enough business experience to show that he has aptitude for business affairs. He must be a man of sterling worth and earnest Christian experience, an alert, up-to-date, twentieth century young man, with enough of vision to see in this new field an opportunity for great usefulness. He may come from the city, the country, the college, the store, the business office, the factory, or from other professions, but he must have the qualities which bring things to pass, the Christian life and the force of character to make him effective in leadership. The secretaryship invites to a strenuous life for the Saviour the best young people that our church can produce.

A young person who is to enter this work ought to have a real love for it, to feel that it is his opportunity; and if God opens the way, he ought to enter it with courage and a deep joy.

If we are to enter the open doors of opportunity into the religious life of young people, some things are necessary from a psychological standpoint. The secretary's life is a strenuous one, and in order to stand the pressure, a sound body is necessary. Alertness is a necessity. If one is to deal with young people in their spiritual natures, he must be alert. If he is to conduct religious meetings, devise plans, and start campaigns with bright, earnest young people, he must be in physical tone.

Another requisite for the secretary's improvement of the movement's opportunity in the religious life of young people is optimism and courage. The witty Frenchman said that the fate of nations was often determined by the digestion or indigestion of a prime minister. We might say the fate of religious meetings, of missionary campaigns, and of young people's conventions is often determined by the condition of the secretary's stomach. Of what avail are the open doors into the religious life of young people if there is no buoyancy or sanguineness on the part of the young people's secretary about entering them? Unless there is the spirit which says, "Be of good cheer," and, "Let us go up at once, and possess it; for we are well able to overcome it," of what use will be these magnificent openings that God has put before us? C. L. B.