Youth Department of Missionary Volunteers

The former Youth Department of the Seventh-day Adventist Church (including the National Service Organization). The General Conference Youth Department had its office in the General Conference North Building in Washington, D.C., until it became a part of the Church Ministries Department in 1985. Early History. Systematic organizing of the young people of the Seventh-day Adventist Church came in response to appeals from Ellen White, written from Australia in late 1892. (These appeals were presented at the 1893 General Conference session.) The church in Adelaide, Australia, was the first to respond with the organization of a young people’s society under the leadership of A. G. Daniells. Soon young people’s societies sprang up in North America and elsewhere overseas. However, even earlier there had been at least two local societies formed, but these had not led to concerted action. The first was a society consisting of a small group of boys (and later girls also) organized in 1879 by Luther Warren and Harry Fenner in Hazelton Township, Michigan; the second was a society organized 12 years later by Meade MacGuire at Antigo, Wisconsin. In 1893 the Young People’s Society of Christian Service was organized at College View, Nebraska (at Union College) “to secure the increased spirituality of the young people, their enlistment in all missionary activity through existing channels of work, and their elevation to a higher plane of living and thinking” (Matilda Erickson [Andross], Missionary Volunteers and Their Work, p. 13). In 1894 the first Sunshine Band was organized, under the leadership of Luther Warren, in South Dakota, and in 1896 members of several bands in the state held a convention. Several groups of young people had been organized by the Battle Creek church at various times, and in the early 1890s there was a young women’s Dorcas Society that met in the home of Uriah Smith. The Ohio Conference led the others in giving formal recognition to the young people’s groups. At the camp meeting held in the summer of 1899, a resolution was passed forming an organization of “Christian Volunteers” who signed this pledge of service: “Recognizing the preciousness of God’s gift to me, I volunteer for service for Him anywhere in the wide world that His Spirit may lead, and in any form of service that He may direct.” In 1900 the young people of Germany formed a youth organization within the church. The General Conference Committee, recognizing the need for coordinated leadership, asked the Sabbath School Department of the General Conference in 1901 to take charge of the young people’s work. This arrangement continued until 1907, when the rapidly expanding youth activities led a General Conference council, meeting in Gland, Switzerland, in May 1907 to vote that “a special department, with the necessary officers, be created, the same to be known as the Young People’s Department of the General Conference” ( General Conference Bulletin [1909], p. 327). M. E. Kern, who had been active in youth leadership in the Middle West, was appointed “chairman” of the new department, and Matilda Erickson (Andross) its secretary. A seven-member advisory committee was also appointed. At a Sabbath school and young people’s convention held at Mount Vernon, Ohio, July 10–20, 1907, a distinctive name, Young People’s Society of Missionary Volunteers, was chosen for the youth organization. At the General Conference session of 1909 a resolution was passed that mapped plans for separate Junior MV Societies in the churches, and for the training of leaders. This was the beginning of a specialized work for youth who are in the formative years of 10 to 16. The first 10 years of the department’s history were a period of rapid advance. Already in 1907 there was a Young People’s Day in the church calendar; the Standard of Attainment course for senior youth and the senior reading course were begun, and reports on the progress of the youth work in Africa and British Guiana were being sent in. The next year, 1908, the Morning Watch calendar was inaugurated and the junior reading course was selected. In 1909, at the time of the General Conference session, the department was formally recognized as part of the General Conference organization, as prescribed by the General Conference Constitution. The Morning Watch idea caught the imagination of the MV s overseas; the young people of Japan and Germany had calendars in their own language for the first time in 1909. Two years later, in 1911, a reading course in German was being offered to the young people of Germany, and, on the opposite side of the globe, Young People’s Societies were being organized in Korea. By 1912 the department’s work had grown to the extent that it required the services of a field secretary, and Meade MacGuire was asked to assume the responsibility. In 1913 Spanish-speaking young people received a Morning Watch and a reading course in their language. In the same year a Young People’s Society was formed in the country of Hungary, in the heart of Europe. In 1914 the newly founded Church Officer’s Gazette began to carry programs for the senior and junior youth meetings, Morning Watch calendars were printed for the first time in China, and Swedish and Danish-Norwegian reading courses were begun. The first overseas convention of young people’s workers met in Shanghai, China, in that same year. In 1915 the Senior Bible Year reading plan was initiated, and an important council dealing with the developing work of the young people’s department convened in St. Helena, California. In 1916 the first census of the youth in the SDA Church was taken; and the union MV departments were given administrative responsibilities in the young people’s work hitherto carried by the General Conference Missionary Volunteer Department itself. In the tenth year of the department’s existence (1917), the Junior Bible Year reading plan was begun. In April of that year a special issue of the Youth’s Instructor commemorated the tenth anniversary of the organization of the department on the General Conference level. Shortly after this the department developed additional reading plans for the youth of the church, and in the twenties laid special emphasis on the work for the junior-age groups. In 1926 the first JMV (junior MV ) camp was conducted at Town Line Lake in Michigan. In 1928 the Vocational Honors (now AY Honors) came into existence. Also in 1928 the first youth congress was held. It met in Chemnitz, in the eastern part of Germany, for the young people of Europe. Some 3,000 delegates and visitors came together from all parts of the continent, except Russia, to share their experiences and to learn how to be better Missionary Volunteers. By 1930 the Master Comrade class (later known as the Master Guide class) had come into existence, and 53 Master Comrades were invested with their pins in 1931 ( see Adventist Youth Classes ). To aid in the developing camp program the Camp Leader’s Handbook was published in 1932; and an Advanced Study and Service League was inaugurated in 1939. The league embraced four lines of study to prepare MV s to conduct cottage meetings, to engage in general missionary work of the church, and ultimately to hold public meetings. In 1946 the department introduced the Character Classics reading plan. In 1971 the name was changed to Encounter. In 1947, 12,000 eager young people gathered in the Civic Auditorium at San Francisco for the first North American youth congress. At that time the “Share Your Faith” slogan and program were introduced. A year later two congresses were held in Europe, one in Prague, Czechoslovakia, the city of John Huss, and the other at Watford, in England. In 1950 the General Conference officially endorsed the Pathfinder Clubs, which had been conducted under various names throughout the country since the early 1920s, and which from 1944 to 1950 had been developed by the Pacific Union Conference. Another European congress, attended by delegates from North America as well, was held in Paris in 1951. Six thousand young people gathered there. In that same year the Youth Department inaugurated the MV Program Kit, a quarterly magazine that presented program and leadership guidance for the Young People’s Societies. In 1975 the magazine became a free journal printed by the department and distributed to division and union youth leaders for their fields. In 1952 the MV Legion of Honor was introduced. This program has since been discontinued. The youth of the Americas gathered for the Pan-American youth congress in 1953 in San Francisco. Its theme was “Christ Above All”; its emphasis, outpost evangelism. In 1960 the Festival of the Holy Scriptures was the name of the third North American youth congress, held at Atlantic City, New Jersey. A world youth congress was conducted in Zurich in the summer of 1969 with 10,000 youth present. Many overseas division congresses have also been conducted. In 1985 the Youth Department became part of the Church Ministries Department of the General Conference. Secretaries: M. E. Kern, 1907–1930; H. T. Elliott, 1931–1933; Alfred W. Peterson, 1934–1946; E. W. Dunbar, 1946–1954; Theodore Lucas, 1955–1970; J. H. Hancock, 1970–1974. Directors: J. H. Hancock, 1974–1980; Leo Ranzolin, 1980–1985.