Manual for Canvassers

Canvassing a Preparation for the Ministry

There are more difficulties in this work than in some other branches of business; but the lessons learned, the tact and discipline acquired, will fit you for other fields of usefulness, where you can minister to souls. Those who poorly learn their lesson, and are careless and abrupt in approaching persons, would show the same want of tact and skill in dealing with minds, should they enter the ministry. MC 41.3

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Some men whom God was calling to the work of the ministry have entered the field as canvassers. I have been instructed that this is an excellent preparation, if their object is to disseminate light, to bring the truth revealed in God's word directly to the home circle. In conversation the way will frequently be opened to speak of the religion of the Bible. If the work is taken hold of as it should be, families will be visited, the workers will manifest Christian tenderness and love for souls, and great good will be the result. This would be an excellent experience for those who have the ministry in view. MC 42.1

Missionary work—introducing our publications into families, conversing and praying with and for them—is a work that will educate men and women to do pastoral labor. MC 42.2

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In evangelistic canvassing, young men may become better prepared for ministerial labor than by spending many years in school. Those who are fitting for the ministry can engage in no other occupation that will give them so large an experience as will the canvassing work. But many are attracted into the canvassing work to sell books and pictures that do not express our faith, and do not give light to the purchaser. They are induced to do this because the financial prospects are more flattering than those that can be offered them as licentiates. These persons are obtaining no special fitness for the gospel ministry. They are not gaining that experience which would fit them for the work. They are not learning to bear the burden of souls and daily obtaining a knowledge of the most successful way of winning people to the truth. They are losing time and opportunities. MC 42.3

These men are frequently turned aside from the convictions of the Spirit of God, and receive a worldly stamp of character, forgetting how much they owe to the Lord, who gave His life for them. They use their powers for their own selfish interests, and refuse to labor in the vineyard of the Lord. MC 43.1