The Training of Workers

In every large city there should be corps of organized, well-disciplined workers; not merely one or two, but scores should be set to work. But the perplexing question is yet unsolved, how they will be sustained.MM 300.5

I have been shown that in our labor for the enlightenment of the people in the large cities the work has not been as well organized or the methods of labor as efficient as in other churches that have not the great light we regard as so essential. Why is this? Because so many of our laborers have been those who love to preach (and many who were not thoroughly qualified to preach were set at work), and a large share of the labor has been put forth in preaching.MM 301.1

More attention should be given to training and educating missionaries with a special reference to work in the cities. Each company of workers should be under the direction of a competent leader, and it should ever be kept before them that they are to be missionaries in the highest sense of the term. Such systematic labor, wisely conducted, would produce blessed results.MM 301.2

Something has been done in this line, but too frequently the work has dwindled down, and nothing permanent has been accomplished. There is need now of earnest labor. The young men who go forth in the employ of the General Conference are to understand that they are not merely to preach, but to minister, to act like men who are weighted with solemn responsibility to seek and to save that which is lost.MM 301.3

It should not be the object of the laborer to present a large list of sermons he has preached, but what has he done in the work of saving souls, of training workers? This requires earnest labor in personal effort. It requires that the workers shall be often with God in earnest prayer, and that they seek wisdom through diligent searching of the Scriptures.—Letter 34, 1892.MM 301.4