Introducing the New Commissioned Association Secretaries afresh to continue and extend its important work, the newly elected headquarters staff of the Ministerial Association, chosen at the General Conference session is as follows:
Chairman of the Advisory Council: J. L. McElhany.
Secretary of the Ministerial Association: L. E. Froom.
Associate Secretary (to foster evangelism): R. A. Anderson.
Assistant Secretary (to foster Bible work): Louise C. Kleuser.
The full personnel of the representative Advisory Council, which is named and appointed by the General Conference Committee, will appear in these columns in the next issue. In the overseas divisions, the divisional Ministerial Association secretaries are appointed by the respective division committees, while the presidents of the divisions are the chairmen ex officio, and are thus automatically members of the Advisory Council. There has been time for notification from only two divisions of the name of the secretary. The personnel of the overseas secretaries will therefore have to appear later.
We here wish to present to the worker body of the advent movement the two new members of the staff: First, Roy Allan Anderson. A successful evangelist in the Australasian Division and then in London, Elder Anderson was called to head the Bible Department of La Sierra College, Arlington, California, where he has taught for the last four years. He had just accepted a call to join the staff of the Department of Theology of Washington Missionary College when he was elected by the General Conference to his present post. His unique background will prove invaluable in his new work. Welcome to the Association, Elder Anderson !
Next, Miss Louise C. Kleuser. A successful Bible worker in Eastern conferences, Miss Kleuser has at times been secretary of the Educational, Missionary Volunteer, and Sabbath school departments of the East Pennsylvania, Southern New England, and Greater New York Conferences—but never losing her love for the Bible work and ever awaiting the hour of its revival. It was from the departmental secretaryship of the Greater New York Conference that she was called to the future work laid upon her by the authorization of the recent Conference. Welcome, likewise, to the Association, Miss Kleuser!
Both the Association and the field are fortunate in having workers with such backgrounds of service join hands with the headquarters staff in the enlarged responsibilities laid upon us by the General Conference in session. The special objectives to be fostered by these two secretaries are presented in the authorizing action of the recent General Conference, which appeared in the July Ministry, on page 7. We bespeak the prayers of the worker body in behalf of the entire Association staff that, individually and as a group, it may meet the expectation of God and His church in the responsibilities devolving upon it. In a subsequent issue, Elder McElhany, chairman of the Advisory Council of the Association, will make a fuller statement.
L. E. F.
Perils of Maturity Beset Us Today
This movement faces today the most momentous perils in its history. We have become of age as a religious body, and are established in the religious world's consciousness, though none too favorably. The object of increasing scrutiny and attack from without, we are beset with the perils of maturity from within. We have numbers, means, a full-rounded body of faith—and a growing complacency that tends to benumb our minds to subtle dangers which not only surround us, but seek to penetrate our inner lives. This complacency tends to obscure our vision, deflect our efforts, and cause us to go the way of all religious bodies before us. Were this condition to prevail, it would prove our ruin.
Static conservatism on the one hand, and attractive innovation on the other, are twin dangers that beset us. And who is to say which is the more sinister? Evangelism is threatened with a penchant to popularize our message. It is tempted—through innovations, attractions, adjuncts, and compromises—to appeal to the love of entertainment to win its converts, instead of depending upon the power of the Word to cut its way through sin and unbelief. It is tempted to soften and popularize our message and mission, in order to avoid oddity and ostracism. Unless this tendency is checked, it will lead to disaster.
Our schools, increasingly manned by men with advanced degrees from institutions of the world, have all too often unconsciously absorbed the university mold and method, and to some degree even its objectives. So serious is this subtle transformation that if it were to continue, and time were to last for another century, our whole educational system would assuredly pass through such a change as to make it scarcely recognizable.
Our literature, extending in sales and circulation, tends to run in popular lines, and away from that distinctive message-filled content of yesteryear that made this people what it is, and gave it its unique witness to the world.
Our sanitariums, prospering and expanding, tend toward hospitalization and medication, and away from those educational, reformatory health principles that characterized their earlier days and development. Personal carelessness with respect to health-reform habits is all too common.
Our church organization, highly perfected and proficient, has a decided tendency toward the mechanical, and, through standardization and complexity, tends to become our master, demanding and consuming our time and effort, to the neglect of the great spiritual and evangelistic task of the church.
A genuine spiritual revival is manifestly our greatest need, together with a true reformation of life, method, and motive. A readjustment of emphasis, and of our basis and principles of evaluation, is God's plainly indicated remedy for us.
We must strip away excrescences. We must forestall departures. We must repel defeatism. We must plan on a quick, Spirit-indited finishing of the work, largely by humble instruments. We must keep our eyes on the goal and never be swerved to other ideals or expediencies. We must not dissipate our strength on objectives that veer away from our one great mission and responsibility.
Before God, this journal dare not do other than sound a solemn warning against these perils of maturity, along with a most earnest call to our workers to advance unitedly in right lines. Let us review our present status and trends. Let us gird to finish our appointed work in God's own way and time. To this we ourselves are pledged.
L.. E. F.
