Pastoral Visiting by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 11, 1863

Pastoral Visiting.

By Editor

THE following extract from the address of Bishop Ames, to the Missouri Conference, is worthy of serious consideration. We commend it to all our ministers:

"Some men are public benefactors; their faces are so full of sunshine, of genuine kindness, though you should meet them on a cloudy day or in the midst of a rain-storm, they will make you feel better. This is an excellent habit of looking and speaking cheerfully.

There can be very much done by the fireside. You labor in communities which are very much excited and divided, and in which there is strong prejudice against the ministry, against the Master, and against Christianity. And how this prejudice vanishes where the minister kindly speaks to the people where he enters the family, steps into the circle of the home, makes himself pleasant to the children, and exhibits his sympathy for them and desire to do them good. "Why," they begin to say, "let us go and hear that man preach. I like him. He seems to be a good man." Brethren you do not know how such work swells your congregations. And this fireside conversation and prayer! These people who are thus attended to, are much more likely, when they come into the church to stay there than are others. They have a love for the church and a regard for the ministry. There is a sort of sociality, the power of which we do not sufficiently understand and appreciate. Remember, brethren, you do not meet the requisitions of the communities to which you go, unless you visit from house to house. And do not confine your attention to the families of our own members. Visit wherever you have the opportunity. Try to do all the people good; and if you fail you will be a better man yourself. If you see a poor fellow in the water struggling for life, and you try to save him, you will be better for trying to do it. So in this work you will be better men, and will feel better for having tried to succeed.

A friend of mine who is a presiding elder, told me that one of his preachers, when he went on to his circuit, at the meeting of the board of stewards, said to them, "Do not ask any brother to contribute to my support unless I visit him or his family." It was a circuit which had been quite slack in its financial movements; but the preacher went round visiting the people, and when quarterly meeting came they paid all the claims, and had eighteen or twenty dollars surplus; and the stewards were astonished at the results themselves. So much for the effect of going to the houses of the people, upon the support of the minister. You get your support, brethren, from those with whom you are best acquainted. Enlarge the basis of your support by increased attention to the duty. Now, as pastors, let me ask you a question. Physicians get paid at least a dollar per visit from their patients. Would you not visit a few more than you do if you were to get a dollar a visit from the people? and would you do more for a dollar than you will for the sake of Christ and the salvation of souls? Make it a matter of conscience to visit as many families as if you get a dollar a visit from them for so doing; and for that matter, very often the dollar will come, though we do not ask for it.

I have a good old friend whose field of labor embraced a Quaker population. One day he passed the house of an old-friend Quaker. The spirit moved Joseph (for that was the preacher's name) to go in, sit down, and talk with the Quaker. He went in, sat down, talked to the family, introduced the subject of religion, and at last said, "Friend, may I pray with thee?" "Yea," said the Quaker, and he knelt down and made an earnest prayer for the blessing of God upon the family; the friends sitting quietly and listening attentively to the prayer. He then rose, bid them farewell, and went his way. Shortly after Joseph saw a man driving up to his door with a wagon and horses, and stepping before the door. He thought it looked like the friend he had visited, and when he went out he found him standing by the wagon. Said the Quaker, "Joseph, I have brought thee a barrel of flour and a half a dozen hams of bacon, and I want thee to use them." Joseph thanked him for the present and took them into the house; and as the old Quaker drove away, he said, "Now, friend Joseph, thee call and see me whenever thee can."

Our main dependency, I am satisfied, must be found in our pastoral labor—in our visiting from house to house.