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
In few parts of the world is a mission station really an isolated unit.
In most of the countries to which we go there are many stations of many
different missions, all aiming more or less definitely at the
establishment of a native Church, whatever their conception of the
Church may be. In the vast majority of cases these stations have some
relationship to one another. The definition of districts for the mission
stations is commonly recognised, and in planning new work directors of
missions frequently allow themselves to be influenced, in some way and
in some degree, by the position of existing mission stations. There are
also in some parts of the world bodies composed of leading members of
many of the missions that work in the country, who meet to consider the
progress of the Christian faith in the province or the country as a
whole, and deliberately plan their work with some consideration of the
position and character of the work done by the others. Now in all this
there is a manifest approach to the idea that mission work in the
country or province is a common work, and that the various missions
engaged in it are not antagonists, but allies. It is certainly true that
we are far from having reached the stage of a common direction and a
real unification of work Rivalry and antagonism are still rampant, but
the recognition of the fact that we must consider the position and
character of other missions in directing our own is a most important
advance; and it implies that we ought, in some measure at least, to be
able to express the work of any mission station in relation to all the
mission work done in the province or country, and to understand, at any
rate in some degree, what place it takes in the mission work in the
province viewed as a whole. It is true that a great many missionaries
would refuse to admit that the recognition of other stations in the
planting of our own is an acknowledgment of the unity of our work; but
whether they acknowledge it, or whether they do not, it is so, and we
for our part recognise it with thankfulness and look forward to a day
when missions will not only recognise others by avoiding them, but by
planning missions deliberately to assist each other. For that seems to
us the necessary conclusion. The moment we recognise a station as a
Christian mission station which we must not disturb, we have gone a long
way towards recognising it as a mission station which our own must not
only not disturb, but must complement; and when we know that one mission
must complement another we are really not far removed from establishing
our missions with common consultation each to supply what is lacking to
the other.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account