This document, or call, to the world field, which is under consideration, comes to you as a suggestive recommendation from the officers of the General Conference, after they had given the question most earnest and careful study. And the officers present it to you, believing that unless they can have a clear mandate from you as leaders of the field relative to it, it will be difficult for them to know how they stand in attempting to give effectiveness to the administration. I do believe, brethren, that you ought to receive this document from our hands with the understanding that we look to you for an absolutely clear mandate. I personally look to you for it. I want to know, from a candid expression of conviction by you, brethren, whether or not we are to be an evangelical body. In other words, I want to know if our denominational objective is evangelism, or if it is not.
You will admit that I have the right to ask for such an expression from you, will you not? You will agree that if we officers are to exercise any influence of strength in leadership, we must know that our hands are joined with yours and that our hearts are together in a common purpose. I believe also that we ought to understand that we are moving toward one common objective. We want you to regard this call to evangelism as an invitation to counsel us in that which we officers regard as a matter of supreme importance to the general administration. We desire to stand heart to heart with you in your work. For only as we have such understanding in leadership through North America as a home base of the movement, and all through Europe and all through Australasia as other home bases of the movement, and throughout the other divisions of the world field, can we be confident that we are absolutely effective all around the world in supporting one another.
Since the election of officers at the General Conference, feeling the burden of my appointment, I have been driven to God with a sense of my own need such as I have never known before, and I have been waiting on God. I recognize the greatness of the problems to be solved. The terrible situation which hard times have brought to the world and the position to which our work has been brought by its own remarkable development, constitute a present urgent problem. In face of these I have felt that the administration must be so organized that its work can be carried on in absolute and complete understanding. Relationships must be so well understood, so definite, and so commonly accepted that our feet need not become entangled over any such matter as relationships.
It was for the purpose of creating such an understanding for the administration, of giving such focus and direction to its work, that I asked, while still at San Francisco, that the officers might meet here in Omaha before the Fall Council, believing that you would appreciate the study of the field problems, particularly those things that involve your expectations of help from us, and believing also that you desire the officers of the General Conference to work in relation to your problems in this way. You have the right to require us to study your problems, and be prepared, in so far as we have opportunity to study them, to bring you suggestive solutions by way of recommendation. It is right that you shall expect me, as I look into your faces, to tell you with absolutely open heart that during this administration there will never be any attempt made to form within the circle of the General Conference officers anybody of executive action that shall be found acting where committee action alone should empower the doing of this people. Never a step will be taken in that direction, and if you feel that a step is being taken in that direction, we invite your most candid counsel relative to it. We must also be understood, in suggesting progressive work, to be actuated by motives entirely free from criticism of what has already been done.
You will never hear a word of criticism from my lips concerning anything of the past. That is not my business. My business is to build on the foundation that has been laid, and God knows that my heart is thankful for the true-hearted brethren who have labored to build that foundation. The one purpose of my heart is to help my brethren to succeed in doing something for God, to work toward completion of the definite task that has been given to us. The conviction of my heart is that the Lord is coming a little way from now. I cannot believe that the Lord will be untrue to His word, and not appear. That which He has begun to do by the power of this movement He will complete. It is for us to apply our effort at its utmost strength, and thus aid in bringing the work to completion.
Now I have taken the time to say all this so that you will understand me clearly when I ask you to give the administration of the General Conference just about to start its work, a clear mandate on this question of evangelism. I believe that in this movement God has placed at our disposal sufficient facilities for carrying out what this recommendation proposes; but it will take positive, definite, constructive, patient counsel to know how to do it in the way that the recommendation intends.
I assure you, brethren, that that which we all desire to see accomplished can be done, and it can be done in shorter time when we come to the place where we let go of human methods to find the mind of God, and allow nothing to turn us away from working out what the Lord Himself has started. I believe in this call of the whole church to evangelism because of what the Lord has been teaching me by experience during the last two or three years. I believe in it because it is in line with the direct and clear counsel which has come to us from the Lord. And I want to know if my own personal belief in it is not in line with your counsel, as I start to give leadership to the work of the General Conference. I believe, too, you will recognize the reasonableness of my request for a clear mandate on these most important phases of administrative work, and that you will by plain and positive counsel seek to give that which I ask.
[Following this comprehensive statement by our president, the chairman, Elder McElhany, asked for a definite expression from the full council assembled, in response to this request for a clear mandate upon the question of evangelism. This mandate was unhesitatingly given by a solemn and unanimous rising vote.—Ed.]
