Ministry: Its beginnings

There are those who say that after serving 21 years as General Conference president, A. G. Daniells needed to be replaced. It is also said that finessing his replacement required the creation of something graceful but not necessarily needful for him to do. Whatever the actual motivations in May 1922, Daniells, one of the great leaders of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, was asked to spearhead a new initiative that was known as the Ministerial Commission, the forerunner of our present Ministerial Association.

Two years later during a ministerial institute held in Nashville, Tennessee, a need was expressed to refine and enrich the subject matter presented at such convocations and to prepare more focused reading material for Seventh-day Adventist ministers. To accomplish this, L. E. Froom, then editor of Watchman, was called to assist Daniells.

The newly formed Ministerial Commission began to produce various leaflets and papers for the ministers of the church. This led quite naturally to the idea of a single journal, which would be distributed to the ministers on a monthly basis, giving them a regular resource for the enhancement of their work. Largely because of financial constraints, it was not without difficulty that this idea was approved by church leadership. But a new magazine was nevertheless launched 70 years ago this month. It was known then as The Ministry, and Leroy Edwin Froom was its first editor.

Froom's opening words in that first issue were, "With deep satisfaction we greet the workers of the advent movement, the world around, through the medium of The Ministry.. ." Under the title, "Our Apology and Our Authorization," Froom explained with admirable honesty that the "apology" was necessary "because of the intrusion of the newcomer into the voluminous list of journals already in the field. There are secular magazines of every description, and ... religious papers that range between good, bad, and indifferent. Apart from this... we have our excellent denominational journals already established and designed for the general information and instruction of our whole body of believers." If such things were true in 1928, how much truer they are today. How then was The Ministry justified? And how may Ministry's existence be vindicated today?

Froom went on, "But never until now, in the 83 years of this movement, have we had a designated medium of communication just between our world group of gospel workers, a vehicle wherein counsel could be given by strong, experienced leaders, where our special problems could be discussed with frankness and profit... and where methods of labor could be talked over apart from the full observation of our church membership. The need was patent. Clearly the hour had struck for this forward stride, for each passing year adds to the complexity of our world task." In the stream of this kind of visionary thinking, Ministry was born and continues to have its legitimate role.

Around the turn of the century, when such thinking was not particularly fashionable, some progressive thinkers within the Adventist Church began to say such things as "our ministers should seek to come near to the ministers of other denominations."¹

This kind of consciousness slowly began to take root. Consistent with it, in 1973 a survey of 217 articles published in Ministry revealed that 136 of them could be said to relate to issues that would inform all Christian clergy, regardless of denominational affiliation.

Thus during the significant editorial leadership of Robert Spangler, a new inspiration was born at Ministry: Why not confine articles of a more parochial nature to six issues of Ministry each year and send the other six to clergy of other denominations? The program was given the acronym: PREACH Project Reaching Every Active Clergy Home. In 1975 a two-year pilot circulation was inaugurated. Ministry was mailed to 25,000 clergy within a variety of Christian denominations. The response to this experiment was so overwhelmingly favorable that in 1981 it was voted to continue the program indefinitely. Today approximately 75,000 clergy from all over the globe receive Ministry.

Although the magazine has adjusted through the years, its fundamental mission has remained constant. In that first 1928 issue the "Authorization for The Ministry" is articulated by quoting the action of church leadership "that it [The Ministry] include in its scope the problems and needs of... ministers in their various capacities as evangelists, pastors, missionaries, executives, Bible teachers, chaplains, etc.... [That it] be truly the evangelical workers' own periodical with constructive articles, devotional and message studies and outlines by our world leaders, valuable historic and prophetic quotations, editorials, etc., thus dealing with specific problems and responsibilities of the evangelical workers."

Although these purposes have been expanded and adjusted through the years, they wholeheartedly remain the heartbeat of the Ministry of our time and in this issue particularly, we celebrate the leading of God throughout the history of this publication.