The Retirement Years

Experienced Workers Needed in the Home Field

Dear Brother and Sister Haskell,

... Today I had an interview with Elder Loughborough [Elder J. N. Loughborough was 69 years old when this letter was written] in regard to his going to Australia. I told him that it appeared to me that we were sending too many from the home field. I told him that the churches needed the work that he could do. I advised him to delay his journey, and work for a while in the churches, encouraging and comforting them, and setting things in order. We see the need of the help of old, experienced laborers, who have been connected with the work almost from its beginning, whose experience in it dates nearly from the passing of the time in 1844. We need the help of men who can testify as did John, “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.”—Letter 195, 1901. RY 38.2

We cannot afford to deprive our home mission of the influence of middle-aged and aged ministers to send them into distant fields, to engage in a work for which they are not qualified, and to which no amount of training will enable them to adapt themselves. The men thus sent out leave vacancies which inexperienced laborers cannot supply.—The Review and Herald, July 17, 1883. RY 39.1