Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign MissionsAllen, Roland
Religion
Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions
Allen, Roland
Missions
We think the Christian Church is misled when it allows the
medical need of a country to be presented as a distinct need which it is
the duty of missionaries to meet, and when it allows the ignorance of a
country to be presented as a distinct need which it is the duty of
missionaries to meet. From such a presentation educational missions
become detached, medical missions become detached, each designed to meet
a distinct and separate need of the people.
[Footnote 1: If any reader experiences a revulsion at this expression,
he will know at once what we mean when we say that a distinction has
been drawn between evangelistic, medical, and educational missions as
though they were three co-equal and separate things. They are not
co-equal and they ought not to be separate. Education does not
necessarily reveal Christ, medical science does not necessarily reveal
Christ, only as education and medicine assist the revelation of Christ
are they proper subjects for Christian missionary enterprise, that is,
only when they are clearly and unmistakably subordinate to an
evangelistic purpose. Of course we do not undervalue medical and
educational efficiency: efficiency should increase evangelistic power.]
One result of the sharp distinction which is drawn between medical and
educational and evangelistic work is that in some countries there are
distinct medical and educational associations which collect information
about the state of medical and educational missions in the country,
dealing with these missionary activities most prominently, if not
wholly, from the point of view of medical and educational efficiency.
These associations issue _questionnaires_ and publish reports often more
full, detailed, and carefully compiled than any evangelistic reports.
Consequently it is peculiarly dangerous for a layman unacquainted with
the working of these associations to trespass upon their preserves.
These departmental surveys should be treated separately by experts.
Nevertheless, since we are dealing with the work of the station in its
area, and this work includes often medical and educational work, we
cannot pass over it with no more than the general treatment which we
have hitherto given. We need to know what is the medical and what the
educational work carried on at the station, when these are viewed, as
they are viewed, separately, as distinct expressions of missionary zeal.
Dealing first with medical missions we suppose that the question might
be put in this form, What are the medical missionary resources available
in the district in relation to the need which it is proposed to meet?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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