Recruiting and Training Volunteers
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Ministers as Trainers
You help members most, not by sermonizing, but by planning
work for them—The best help that ministers can give the members
of our churches is not sermonizing, but planning work for them. Give
each one something to do for others. Help all to see that as receivers
of the grace of Christ they are under obligation to work for Him. And
let all be taught how to work. Especially should those who are newly
come to the faith be educated to become laborers together with God.
If set to work, the despondent will soon forget their despondency;
the weak will become strong, the ignorant intelligent, and all will
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be prepared to present the truth as it is in Jesus. They will find an
unfailing helper in Him who has promised to save all that come unto
Him.—
Testimonies for the Church 6:49
.
Spend less time in preaching and more time in studying how
to teach others to work—Our ministers must become educators as
well as preachers. They should teach the people not to depend upon
them, but upon Christ. The minister who preaches two hours when
he should not exceed one, would far better serve the cause of God by
devoting that extra hour to earnest, careful thought in studying how to
direct others, how to teach them to work.—
The Signs of the Times,
May 17, 1883
.
Ministers should teach members how to work—When Jesus
ascended to heaven, He committed His work on earth to those who had
received the light of the gospel. They were to carry the work forward
to completion. He has provided no other agency for the promulgation
of His truth. “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to
every creature.” “And, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world.” This solemn commission reaches us in this age. God
leaves with His church the responsibility of receiving or rejecting it.
Many seem to rest perfectly easy, as if heavenly messengers were to
come to this earth, to proclaim with an audible voice the message of
warning; but while angels have their work to do, we are to do ours in
opening the Bible truth to those who are in darkness. Is your interest
selfishly shut up in your own family, to your church? God pity your
narrowness! You should have that undying zeal, that far-reaching love,
which encircles the world. Those who are not called to go to foreign
countries have a work to do in their own borders, to keep up the interest