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Crisis In the Ministry
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May 23  Crisis In The Ministry

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The Lord has ordered that those who preach the gospel should get their living from it. 1Cor. 9:14, TEV.

Ministers may deal with heavenly things but even they need earthly food. And food costs money.

How to pay the ministers in the budding denomination reached a crisis point during the mid-1850s. A case in point is young John Nevins Andrews, a man who later served the church as its leading scholar, its first official foreign missionary, and as General Conference president. But in the mid-1850s exhaustion and deprivation had forced him into retiring from the ministry while only in his mid-20s. The fall of 1856 found him becoming a clerk in his uncle's store in Waukon, Iowa.

Waukon, in fact, was rapidly becoming a colony of apathetic Sabbatarian Adventists. Another leading minister who fled to Waukon in 1856 was John N. Loughborough, who had become, as he put it, "somewhat discouraged as to finances."

The Whites temprarily averted a crisis in the Adventist ministry by making a danger-filled midwinter journey to Waukon to wake up the sleeping Sabbatarian community and to reclaim the dropout ministers. Both Andrews and loughborough saw the hand of God in the visit and rededicated their lives to preaching.

But that did not change financial realities. for example, for his first three months' labor after leaving Waukon, Loughborough received room and board, a buffalo skin coat worth about $10, and $10 in cash. The problem was far from solved. At least Mrs. Loughborough must have reached that conclusion.
"I am tired," James White penned, "of seeing statements of want among our preachers and appeals for funds in the Review. I am tired of writing them. Those general appeals to everybody, and nobody in particular, do not amount to much besides filling up the paper, and paining the reader. These things hurt the Review and are a blot on the cause."

Christian workers may not live by bread alone, but they still need bread. At least their wives or husbands and children do. Paul is clear that "those who preach the gospel should get their living from it."

But from where?

The obvious answer is from each of us.

As we provide funds for their support we enter into the blessing of their ministry.

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When the word of God is set aside, its power to restrain the evil passions of the natural heart is rejected. Men sow to the flesh, and of the flesh they reap corruption(COL 41).
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