Our First Self-supporting Workers

Many are the ways in which men and women are drawn into the work of proclaiming the gospel message. The printed page is acknowledged to be one of the most effective evangelizing agencies. In our early experience our literature was circulated very largely by our ministers in their pastoral and evangelical work. They were well supplied with books and tracts which could be sold and given away. But here was the channel for reaching the people in which many not trained for the ministry might engage. Wrote the messenger of the Lord in 1879, as found in Testimonies for the Church 4:389, and onward:SPCSSW 4.2

“Living preachers are few. There is only one where there should be a hundred.... Hundreds of men should be engaged in carrying the light all through our cities, villages, and towns.... In all parts of the field canvassers should be selected.... from among those who have good address, tact, keen foresight, and ability.... If there is one work more important than another, it is that of getting our publications before the public, thus leading them to search the Scriptures. Missionary work—introducing our publications into families, conversing, and praying with and for them—is a good work and one which will educate men and women to do pastoral labor.”

Thus was called into being a very closely related line of denominational endeavor, the participants of which were not on regular salary—our first self-supporting workers. What a blessing our colporteur evangelists are as they have taken the message from land to land and country to country—many times to places where the living preacher could never go.SPCSSW 4.3