While all the services connected with the Lord's house and worship should be characterized by reverence, special solemnity should invest the sacred services of baptism, the communion, and marriages and funerals.
"Every ordinance of the church should be so conducted as to be uplifting in its influence. Nothing is to be made common or cheap, or placed on a level with common things."—"Testimonies," Vol. VI, p. 97.
In mission fields there are usually many visitors at a baptismal service, and sad to say the attitude is often anything but quiet and worshipful. Under such conditions the one conducting this service would always do well, after a short, pointed sermon on the significance and solemnity of baptism, and immediately before administering the sacred rite, kindly and earnestly to ask all present to maintain a respectful and quiet attitude during the service. It is not an occasion for whispering, visiting, or laughing, but rather one of the most solemn and sacred services that can be administered in the church of Christ. Often a kindly suggestion from the minister will forestall unseemly confusion.
The minister himself should be careful to conduct the service in a way to call forth reverence even from unbelievers and scoffers who may be present. Often unbelievers have received at a baptismal service their first favorable impression of us as a people, and of the work and message of the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Too much attention cannot be given by our ministers to the proper conduct of the baptismal service.
In some places in tropical countries, it has become customary, because of the intense heat, for the minister to baptize while wearing a helmet or some sort of head covering. To avoid this in the West Indies, the baptismal service is usually held very early in the morning, before the sun is too hot. This avoids the necessity of a head covering for the minister, and all the men present can stand reverently during the service with bared heads. The minister should have a special suit (with a coat) for the service. For the one administering baptism to enter the water and to baptize without a coat detracts greatly from the dignity of the occasion. Never should the service be conducted in a manner that puts it on the plane of the common or ordinary affairs of life.
All that has been said regarding the solemnity of the baptismal service applies with equal force to the communion service, or Lord's supper. As far as my observation extends, this service is conducted in all our churches in a quiet and reverential manner, so that visitors and worshipers alike are impressed with the sacred significance of the occasion, and what it means in representing the great sacrifice of Calvary.
Both the marriage and the funeral service should be likewise conducted as becoming those professing godliness. Neither of these services should be so long as to become wearisome. Brief and appropriate remarks are much better than a long-drawn-out sermon. In the past, advantage has sometimes been taken of a funeral to preach a sermon on some doctrinal subject. This is always to be avoided. Well-chosen remarks and an appropriate Scripture reading are always more becoming and at the same time more impressive than a long sermon, however good and appropriate such may be at other times. We should endeavor always to be as "wise as serpents," and at the same time as "harmless as doves."
If the minister himself will always remember that each of these services is a sacred and solemn occassion, and an opportunity for winning men and women for the kingdom of God, and will conduct the service in a way to attract men to the Lord Jesus, and not repel them, fruitage will be borne to the glory of our Lord.
Havana, Cuba.
