A brief survey of the Gospels reveals that Christ’s main method of ministry was personal labor. Consider the beautiful stories we have of Jesus ministering to Nicodemus, the woman of Samaria, Nathanael, Thomas, Paul, Peter, and so many more. Ellen White affirms that Jesus especially relied upon personal ministry to touch people’s hearts.

Because Jesus valued personal ministry as the most effective method of reaching hearts, so do we. The Seventh-day Adventist Church has a long history of church member involvement in personal ministries to fulfill the mission of making disciples.

The history of personal ministries in the Seventh-day Adventist Church traces its beginning to a women’s group that met in the home of Mary and Stephen Haskell in the late 1860s. With a concern for their children, non-Adventist neighbors, and those in whom the Advent hope had dimmed, the group wrote letters, made spiritual visits, and shared tracts and books. On June 8, 1869, Stephen Haskell helped the growing group to establish a formal organization, the Vigilant Missionary Society. Upon being elected president of the New England Conference in 1870, Elder Haskell organized the New England Tract and Missionary Society to establish groups like the Vigilant Missionary Society in every church to enlist lay members for personal missionary activities. In 1874 the General Conference established the General Tract and Missionary Society, later renamed the International Tract and Missionary Society, with James White as president. In 1876 Elder Haskell succeeded Elder White as president.

Tract and Missionary Societies were quite active in the late 1800s In 1884 they reported making more than 83,000 missionary visits, writing more than 35,000 missionary letters, and obtaining more than 19,000 subscriptions to the Review, Signs of the Times, Good Health, or one of the foreign-language periodicals. The total of Adventist literature given away was nearly 1,750,000 individual periodicals and tracts.

In 1897 the International Tract Society purchased a stereotype machine that could be used to prepare plates for Braille duplication. Although the society did produce a few tracts, it was not until Austin Wilson, a 27-year-old blind student at Battle Creek College, began a campaign among church leaders, that the General Conference committee decided to start a 10-page monthly journal for the blind. Wilson and his wife published the first issue of Christian Record in January 1900.

The General Conference Publishing Department, established around 1901, absorbed the International Tract and Missionary Society. In 1913 leadership assigned the fostering of lay evangelism to a separate subdivision called the “Home Missionary Branch of the Publishing Department” with Edith M. Graham as secretary. After functioning for five years, the Home Missionary Branch became a separate department in 1918.

In 1915 the General Conference recommended the appointment of home missionary secretaries in both the General Conference and the North American Division to promote church missionary work. Unions and local conferences also assigned Home Missionary Department leaders, then called “Secretaries.” Activities developed under the Home Missionary Department included Bible correspondence course enrollments, community service programs, ingathering, lay Bible evangelism, and literature distribution.

At the 1966 General Conference Session the General Conference Home Missionary Department became the Lay Activities Department, which was to continue fostering the involvement of laity in local missionary service. During the time of the Lay Activities Department, the Dorcas Society was renamed Adventist Community Services (ACS) in 1972 and the Adventist Men’s Organization formed from the “Good Samaritans” in1982.Corresponding departments emerged in divisions, unions, and conferences, some preferring and using the term “personal ministries” over “lay activities.”

At the1985 General Conference Session the Lay Activities Department became part of the newly formed Church Ministries Department. Church Ministries was a merger of several former departments of the General Conference: Lay Activities, Sabbath School, Stewardship and Development, Youth, and Home and Family Service. Consolidating into one department applied only to the General Conference and its divisions.

In 1995, the Church Ministries Department was dissolved. It was at this time that Sabbath School and Personal Ministries were combined into one department, an organizational pattern that now functions at most conference/mission, union, division, and General Conference levels. At the local church level Sabbath School and personal ministries continue as two separate departments. Personal Ministries offers strategies, resources, and training to involve every member in the mission of making disciples.