A Crusading Ministry

We have reached the time in the history of our work when almost every church of any size is calling for the best pastor the conference can pro­vide, and many of them are disap­pointed if the demands are not fully met. I fear that to some extent, at least, we have spoiled our churches by giving them the wrong training. While the Bridegroom has tarried, we have allowed ourselves to drift into the same channel as the popular de­nominations. We are trying to build up the pastorate and hover over the churches, and the crusade of evangel­ism has waned. Surely the present trend is in the wrong direction.

It is time to review our instruction and get our bearings. This is the word: "Our ministers should now be working for the saving of the lost. . . . The heavenly messengers are waiting to co-operate with men in warning a deceived, sinful world. When the peo­ple of God engage in this work with real travail of soul, there will be mani­fest a decided change in cities and villages. This hovering about churches to keep them propped up, makes them more dependent on human effort. . . . It is time that cities and villages every­where were hearing the solemn note of warning, 'Behold, He cometh.' "­"Testimonies to Ministers," p. 231. Think of the hundreds of cities and towns and villages in our conferences where the sound of the advent message has never been heard from the lips of the preacher. Within a few years we shall meet God, and I fear that some of us will have to confess, "My vine­yard have I not kept! I have not had a broad enough vision. I have left some dark spots around here in my conference where the message has never been proclaimed." What a sol­emn responsibility rests upon the man who stands at the head of a conference in our great world organization at such an hour as this, when the gospel message is closing and the angel of mercy is about to leave the world for­ever.

God has made us the Jonahs of this hour, and has sent us to proclaim His message in the unworked Ninevehs all over the land. If we fail, eternal con­sequences are involved. The Lord will find men who will finish His work. There will be no failure there. The question is, Shall we be the men? God has given us the opportunity, but He will not allow us to play with these responsibilities. If we do not square ourselves to this task, God will bring enlargement and deliverance from some other quarter for the finishing of His work, and we shall be set aside.

I wish to read a pointed statement from the Spirit of prophecy. I was astonished when I read it for the first time, for I did not know there was such instruction as this: "The Lord has not called young men to work among the churches. They are not called to speak to an audience that does not need their immature labors. . . . Let young men of ability connect with experienced laborers in the great harvest field."—"Testimonies," Vol. VI, p. 415.

I do not think that means that a young minister should never preach a sermon in our churches, but I do think it means that our young men, coming from our colleges and entering the field of experience, are not often called of God to be pastors of city churches. It is the Lord's plan for them to go out into the highways and hedges, and proclaim the message for this hour, and gather in believers. They should be pioneers.

That is the method by which prac­tically all leaders in the cause of God today received their training, and surely we believe in that kind of training. But why is it that at the pres­ent time we are training the young men for the ministry in a different way? Why is it that we assign so many of them as pastors of churches, a work for which they have no special fitting or experience, and thereby de­prive them of the training so essential and so clearly defined?

But the question may be raised, "Would not a program which places the young ministers in the field as evan­gelists, instead of connecting them with the churches to help raise the mis­sionary goals, result in the cutting off of mission funds?" To such an inquiry I would reply that I do not believe we would lose a dollar. I am convinced that the future health of our foreign mission work depends upon raising up new constituencies to contribute fresh supplies of consecrated endeavor and means to support it. If we should double our membership, we could give ten million dollars a year to foreign missions, instead of five million. I believe that the solving of our present problem will be found along the path of endeavor to raise up new believers who will add their dollars to ours to help advance the message in heathen lands.

"Well, then, how are we to take care of the churches?" may be asked. In the old days, when we did not have so many pastors, the churches flour­ished and increased under the foster­ing care of laymen upon whom the responsibility of leadership had been laid by conference committees, and I believe there are still just as efficient laymen available for this work as at any time in the past history of this movement. I believe that God will es­pecially bless laymen of experience and maturity as they care for the churches while preachers are laboring in new territory. I also believe that in every conference we should rally these laymen to yoke up with the preachers and help in the public efforts. We would thereby be developing the laymen into preachers and evangelists, many of whom could spend two or three months in the year conducting evangelistic efforts and raising up be­lievers without salary or expense to the conference. Then of course there are the older ministers whose services can be utilized in pastoral lines.

The call of the hour is for larger vision of the need and the possibilities of evangelism in its larger aspects.

There needs to be a turning about in our present program, and a practical application of the principles of evangelism set forth in the great commis­sion given by Christ to the church. I believe that even our field leaders should plan their work so as to make it possible to take a definite part in field evangelism. Let us consider what it would mean if every conference president, in consultation with his committee, would plan to engage in a city effort during the next twelve months, allotting a period of six or eight, or possibly ten, weeks which would not seriously interfere with other confer­ence duties. If that plan were put into effect by the conference presidents in North America, the result would be sixty-four evangelistic efforts during the twelve months. If union presidents followed the same plan, an addi­tional twelve evangelistic efforts would be conducted, making a total of seventy-six. And suppose it were pos­sible to recruit a few preachers from the General Conference staff—say six or seven—for an intensive evangelistic campaign in places where the message has never been proclaimed. Altogether this would result in eighty-two evan­gelistic efforts in the brief space of one year.

Would not such a program bring joy to the hearts of our faithful evangelists, scattered so far apart in the field, and convince them that we ac­tually believe in the divine program of evangelism? It would usher in a mighty wave of courage and hope, which would cause the third angel's message to swell into a loud cry. Our people would be convinced that the preachers of the advent movement be­lieve that the end of all things is near at hand, and there would spring forth the greatest revival that could ever come to this denomination.