Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions Part 8

--------------|-----------------------------------------|------------ In Population | ---- | --------------|-----------------------------------------|------------ In Christian | ---- | Const.i.tuency | | --------------|-----------------------------------------|------------

5. Concerning self-support, one table should, we think, suffice. We cannot possibly adopt any estimated necessary expenditure such as we proposed in the table for the station district because in the province that estimate would be almost impossible to make. Different missions have different ideas, and their estimates have for themselves some reality; but they have no reality for others, and a mere average of the estimates given for all the missions of the province would have still less reality. It would be an absurd guess, meaning nothing. If we want to judge progress in self-support we must have some definite key figure by which to judge it. What figure then can we use? The total cost of all the work carried on in the province is an impossible figure.[1] The mere contribution of the native Christians by itself means nothing. That is the figure generally given. The native Christian subscribed $6000 last year, $7000 this year. Here is progress. The progress is an addition of $1000. But does that tell us their progress towards self-support unless we know what self-support implies? In the year the Church ought to have increased in numbers, and the $7000 may represent exactly the same position as the $6000 represented last year. Expenses may have increased: the $7000 may be actually further removed from self-support than the $6000 last year. We must have a proportion of which we can trace the variation if we want to see progress. But is there any expense which we can use to strike the proportion? Suppose then we suggest the pay of all evangelistic and pastoral workers and provision and upkeep of churches, chapels, and preaching rooms. That would at least give us something to work by. But it might be difficult to calculate. We would propose then, as a secondary item, some easily calculable and known expense, something which every missionary accountant knows, such as the pay of all native pastors and evangelistic workers, and then compare with these the contributions of the Christians for Church and evangelistic work only, excluding all fees for education and medicine.

That would, we think, give us a standard which we could apply without having to consider complications introduced by such things as Government grants to schools or hospitals. We propose then to judge progress in self-support thus:--

--------------------------------------------------------------------- | Total Cost | Total | Total | | of all | Salaries of | Native | | Evangelistic | all Paid | Contribution, | Province.| and | Native | excluding | Remarks and | Pastoral | Evangelistic | School or | Conclusions.

| Work, Men | Workers, | Hospital | | and Material. | including | Fees or | | | Pastors. | Donations. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | ---------------------------------------------------------------------

[Footnote 1: In Dr. Eugene Stock's "History of the C.M.S.," vol. ii., p.

420, we are told that "In 1863,... 400 families raised 1371 rupees, equal then to 137. These families consisted mainly of labourers earning (say) 2s. a week; so that a corresponding sum for 400 families of English labourers earning 12s. a week would be 137 x 6 = 822, or over 2 a year from each family. A few years later, taking the whole of the C.M.S. districts in Tinnevelly and reckoning catechumens as well as baptised Christians, their contributions were such that, supposing the whole thirty millions of people in England were poor labourers earning 12s. a week, and there were no other source of wealth, their corresponding contributions should amount to 6,000,000 per annum." Yet he says on the very next page that "It was not possible for the native Church, liberal as its contributions were, to maintain its pastors and meet its other expenses (he does not say what the _other expenses_ were) entirely. The society must necessarily help for a while.... This grant, in the first instance, had to be large enough to cover much more than half the expenditure."

If this was the case in one part of a province, what would happen if we took the whole expense of all work carried on in a whole province or country and used that as a standard by which to test progress in self-support?]

Turning now from the force at work we must consider the force in training, for this is prophetic. Let us then take first a table which shows the proportion in which students are being trained for pastoral and evangelistic work, for medical mission work, and for educational mission work, in the province or country, regardless of the place at which they are being trained, whether that place is inside or outside the area under consideration. This ought to show us on what lines we may expect the work to develop in the near future.

_____________________________________________________________________ Total |For Evangel- | | | | | Students |istic Work, |Propor- |For |Propor-|For Educa-|Remarks in |including the |tion of|Medical|tion of|tional |and Training.|Pastorate. |Total. |Work. |Total. |Work. |Conclu- | | | | | |sions _________|______________|________|_______|_______|__________|________ | | | | | | _________|______________|________|_______|_______|__________|________

Then we must examine more closely, if we can;--and first of the _evangelistic_ workers. The difficulty is to cla.s.sify, because ecclesiastical nomenclature is so confused that it is almost impossible to use any terms which would be widely recognised. The best we can do is to distinguish grades of training, beginning from the top thus:--

1st grade, college or university.

2nd " high school.

3rd " regular Bible school.

4th " intermittent, irregular Bible instruction.

It will probably be found that the first grade is commonly prepared for, and looks forward to, the charge of a settled congregation, or of an organised church, and the lower grades do the pioneer work, and it may well suggest itself to thoughtful men whether this is rightly so.

Then, _educationalists_ in training: again we divide by grades roughly:--

1st grade, college or university.

2nd " normal school.

3rd " high school.

4th " teachers of illiterates.

The college students presumably look forward to work in the high schools, or colleges, or normal schools; the normal school pupils to work in normal schools, high schools, and large primary schools; the high school pupils to work in village schools; and the teachers of illiterates to village work, or work among the poor in the towns. Of _medicals_ the generally recognised distinctions seem to be, qualified pract.i.tioners, a.s.sistants, and nurses.

Following these lines we should obtain simple prophetic tables for each of the three branches of work.

(i) Students in Training for _Evangelistic_ Work.

---------------------------------------------------------- 1st Grade. | 2nd. | 3rd. | 4th.

College. | High School. | Regular | Intermittent.

| Bible School | Teaching | ------------------------------------------- -------------- | | | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------

(ii) For _Educational_ Work.

---------------------------------------------------------- 1st Grade. | 2nd. | 3rd. | Teachers of College. | Normal. | High School. | Illiterates.

(iii) For _Medical_ Work.

---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1st Grade. | 2nd. | 3rd.

To be Qualified Doctors. | a.s.sistants, including Dispensers, |Nurses.

| etc. | ---------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | | ----------------------------------------------------------------------

If we had those tables for _men and women_ we should see fairly plainly how the work might be expected to develop.

But here we ought to remember the difficulty which we set forth earlier in discussing the missionary influence of our various activities, medical and educational, from a Church building point of view. A great many boys are educated and trained at mission expense to be evangelists, medicals, and teachers in mission employ, who serve indeed for a period according to their contract and then disappear into Government service or private practice. It is a serious question whether missionaries can be raised up successfully in this way. "I will give you training if you will promise to serve the mission," is not a very certain way of securing ready, wholehearted, zealous service of Christ. We have found out its uncertainty in many cases at home; we have found it out in still more frequent cases in the mission field. Unless we keep a very careful record of the after-life of those whom we train, and a very honest one, we are apt to ignore the failure, a failure which we cannot properly afford, and consequently we cannot know what we are really doing by our training. We ought to know the truth in this matter, both for our encouragement and our admonition. Happily here, we think, we can find an easy and a valuable test. If we ask what proportion of those whom we train continue in their missionary work after the end of their first term of service, we shall certainly have some enlightenment; for it is true of medicals and educationalists, and of evangelists, though in a much less degree, that if any man continues in missionary work after he has fulfilled the letter of his contract, it will generally be because he has his heart in the work; for missionary work seldom, if ever, offers the emoluments of Government service, or of private practice. We ask then--

SURVEY OF WORK IN A PROVINCE

--------------------------------------------------------------------- |Evangelistic | Medical | Educational --------------------------------+-------------+---------+------------ Total Students | | | --------------------------------+-------------+---------+------------ Trained at Mission Expense, | | | Wholly or in Part. | | | --------------------------------+-------------+---------+------------ Number who Continue in | | | Mission Work after the end | | | of the Term of their Contract. | | | --------------------------------+-------------+---------+------------ Proportion of Total Students | | | who so Continue. | | | --------------------------------+-------------+---------+------------ Remarks and Conclusions. | | | --------------------------------+-------------+---------+------------

If the inst.i.tutions in which the training is actually carried on lie within the province, then we ought to have tables such as we have for the schools in the station area for these inst.i.tutions. We need no elaborate statistics in this place, because the work of these inst.i.tutions should be specially treated in departmental surveys. Here, all that we need is to relate the work of the schools or hospitals which were omitted in the station district survey, because they served a larger area than the station area, to the work done in the province or country. The educational returns from each station area must be added together and the returns of these larger inst.i.tutions added to the total educational statistics; that will give us the work done in the larger area in proportion to population.

But in the province it is important to consider the relation in which the different grade schools stand to one another; because if the aim of the missionary educational system is the education of the Christian community, and the higher schools are designed primarily for Christian pupils from the lower schools, this relation is of importance. It is possible to build an organisation too narrow at the base and too heavy at the top, and then to fill the higher schools with non-Christian pupils without any definite understanding of the way in which that practice is to serve the main purpose of the mission. Then these schools stand on a distinct and separate basis from the rest of the mission activities, and the work of Christian missions in the country is split, part aiming directly at the establishment of a native Christian Church, and part "aiming at the general improvement of morals, and social, religious, and political enlightenment. Thus we arrive at that chaotic state in which the mission as a whole is not subordinate to any dominant idea of the purpose for which it exists, which alone can unify the work of all its members. But if the colleges and schools are designed for mutual support, and if the higher have any relation to the lower grades, then there must be some proportion between the base and the superstructure, and that proportion must be known and expressed in any survey worthy of the name. We include, therefore, the following table:--

--------------------------------------------------------------------- | Mission | Proportion | Proportion | Remarks | Schools, | to | to | and | Number | Population. | High | Conclusions.

| of. | | Schools. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Primary | | | | Schools | | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- High | | | | Schools | | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Normal | | | | Schools | | | | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Colleges| | | | --------+-----------+--------------+-------------+-------------------

In the province also we must know the educational facilities afforded by non-missionary agencies, if we are to have any true conception of the work of the educational missions. We must therefore add a table for these schools.

------------------------------------------------------------ | Non- | Proportion | Remarks. | | Missionary | to | | | Schools, | Population. | | | Number of. | | | ------------------------------------------------------------- Primary Schools | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------- High Schools. | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------- Normal School | | | | ------------------------------------------------------------- Colleges. | | | | -------------------------------------------------------------

Here it is not necessary for us to find the proportion between the higher and lower grade schools, because we are not surveying the non-missionary educational work, and their scheme of proportions is not our business.

A comparatively slight addition to the tables for medical work in the various station districts will suffice to give an adequate impression of the medical work done in the whole area. We need not go into details, for the medical work should be, and generally is, reviewed by Medical Boards in their reports. For us now, all that is needed is the addition of tables, similar to those which we used for hospitals in the station area, for hospitals excluded from any station survey.

Two other subjects ought to be included in this provincial survey, namely, literature and industrial work. First, we must try to find a table which will express the work done by those important missionaries who are engaged in providing Christian literature, both for the Christian community and the heathen outside. Here we find once more the difficulty that, whilst a few missionaries are wholly engaged in this form of missionary work, much is produced by missionaries who have already been included in the tables as either evangelistic or educational or medical missionaries, and we also touch bookselling and other kindred commercial questions. With the commercial aspect of this work we cannot deal. The following tables will throw light on the extent to which Christian literature is being produced and read:--

(i)

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Number of Missionaries wholly Engaged | Proportion of Total in Literary Work. | Missionaries.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Number of Vernacular | Number of | Proportion of Sales Christian Books Produced | Christian Books | to Population.

in the Year. | Sold in the Year.| --------------------------------------------------------------------- | Bibles or | | Bibles or | | Scripture | Other | Scripture | Other | Portions. | Books.| Portions. | Books.

If the business side of literary work is difficult, the whole position of industrial missions is still more difficult. In some countries industrial missions seem to be trading ventures with a Christian intention, in others industrial missions are really almost entirely educational establishments. The best tables which we have ever seen dealing with this subject were those drawn by Mr. Sidney Clark in one of his papers, "From a Layman to a Layman".[1] All that we can do is to suggest that industrial missions which are in the main clearly and unmistakably educational should be included in the educational work, and that the missions with large commercial interests, even if they are doing a valuable educational work for the community, should be treated separately, thus:--

[Footnote 1: Printed for private distribution by Mr. S.J.W. Clark, 3 Tudor Street, Blackfriars, London, E.C. 4.]

_Industrial Missions_,

(a)

--------------------------------------------------------------------- Province. | Number of | Amount of Mission | Proportion of | Industrial | Funds Allotted to | Total Mission | Missions. | such Work. | Funds.

--------------------------------------------------------------------- | | | __________|______________|_____________________|_____________________

(b)