College Ministerial Seminars

Walla Walla's Three-Group Plan

 

Our seminar work here at Walla Walla is carried on as a combination class and project work. We have three groups, each meeting once a week, and having a class hour during the regular school session.

1. Junior Year Bible Work.—The first group is made tin of junior college and junior theological students. In the class hour each week, we discuss various angles of problems confronted in personal soul-winning work. We place chief emphasis upon Bible work, including various phases of house-to-house effort, which looks forward to interesting peo­ple in the study of the Bible and in religious questions. This year we have fourteen stu­dents working in this group, two of whom are young women.

These young people go out and attend serv­ices at various near-by churches, where they assist in the Sabbath school, young people's meeting, and sometimes in the church service. But they seldom preach or occupy the pulpit. They are sent out two and two on Sabbath afternoons in communities where the church services are held in the morning, and during the morning hours in churches where the services come in the afternoon. These young people go from house to house in the vicinity, distributing literature and talking with the people about the signs of the times and the conditions of the world, studying the Bible with those who desire Bible study.

We are endeavoring now to arrange for some members of this group to take up a spe­cial study of projects in welfare work under the guidance of the officials of the local county welfare organization. This experience will afford them many points of information as they work for people in various conditions, so­cially and economically. When this work has been faithfully carried out and adequate and acceptable reports of the work have been turned in to their instructor, they receive one scholastic hour of credit each quarter.

2. Senior Year Student-Pastors.—The second seminar group is composed of senior theological students. In this group we have eight young men working. Each one is assigned a church within driving distance of the college, over which he becomes, during the school year, a student-pastor. He works under the direction of the local church elder and officers. These young men are permitted to preach in their churches each Sabbath, ex­cepting occasionally when conference workers visit the church. In connection with their student pastoral work, they study the various problems of the local church where they are located. These problems are of a wide variety in their nature, such as church and Sabbath school attendance, spiritual condition of church members, elements of worldliness, problems of young people, and local church finances.

These topics are brought before the group for study and discussion at their weekly meet­ing each Friday. This meeting affords the instructor opportunity to give the young men assistance in understanding and dealing with local church problems wisely and justly, as well as a study of the conduct of church serv­ices and preaching work in the local church. For this work, these young men receive one scholastic hour of credit each quarter, on satisfactorily carrying out their projects.

3. Supplemental Year Evangelists.—The third group consists of theological students who, for one reason or another, have to stay over an extra year in order to finish, or who come back for an extra year in order to get additional work along certain special lines. These are students who have had the work given to both the first and second groups just described. These young men form a group by themselves, which we call Seminar III. This year we have only three young men in this group. We organize these young men into teams for an evangelistic type of preach­ing work, and send them out to various places within ready access of the college, where they hold week-end evangelistic meetings. Occa­sionally, we are able to find opportunity for them to hold week-end efforts in communities where there are no Adventists. Our oppor­tunities are limited, however, to evangelistic efforts near by in the locality. These young men also meet once a week in a morning-session class hour, and at this time we study principles and methods of evangelistic en­deavor, including evangelistic preaching, ad­vertising, equipment, and procedure.

In all three of these groups we have some very fine, wide-awake, talented young people. They enter into the practical study of the work of soul winning—personal, pastoral, and evan­gelistic—with a great deal of interest and

Homer F. Saxton [Instructor.]

Oshawa Features "Panel"

Tins year in our ministerial and Bible workers' seminar, we are promoting preach­ing, Bible studies, and discussions. We meet each Friday evening for forty-five minutes prior to the students' meeting in the chapel. The preaching service is held every second week, alternately with which we are promot­ing Bible studies. A large number are en­rolled as Bible workers. On the Bible-study evening, we sing a hymn, have prayer, and then divide into two or three groups, each group going to a classroom, and there a stu­dent gives the Bible reading. This method gives a larger number of members opportu­nity to take part, and adds interest to the seminar.