Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions by Roland Allen

always be a percentage of loss; in many cases that percentage would be very high, and we doubt whether many schools have any record at all. Under these circumstances to put into an inquiry such as that which we propose a question concerning the after-life of scholars or patients seems almost impossible. Yet we cannot be content. There are mission schools which go on year after year educating boys for a business career, and generation after generation of boys pass through the school, large sums of mission money are expended on them, and the results _from a missionary point of view_ are shrouded in Cimmerian gloom; or the general darkness is relieved by one or two exceptional pupils who, because they do very well, appear to justify the existence of the institution in which they were educated, though they would probably have been as valuable Christians if they had been educated in any other school. In this way a very low average is often concealed. If a school is judged by a few exceptionally good scholars, it should also be judged by a few exceptionally bad ones. It is indeed of serious importance that the missionary value of some of our medical and educational, especially the educational, institutions should be carefully examined and tested by an appeal to indisputable facts. It is generally supposed that education in mission schools must necessarily produce a strong, enlightened, and zealous Christian community. That it produces a large number of Christians intellectually enlightened is certain: that they are zealous evangelists is not as certain. We want a statistical table to reveal the missionary value, not the commercial value, of the education given. But what table can we draw? The preceding table which sets forth inquirers and communicants is clearly insufficient though it is better than nothing. Until every school keeps a careful record of the after-history of at least a large number of its pupils it seems impossible to get any clear light on the question.

4. With regard to the extent to which different races and classes are reached by the missions, we may safely assume that the Christian missions ought to extend their benefits to all classes and races in the area, and that there ought to be some proportion between the efforts made in each case. If, and when, the responsible leaders of the missions decided that the time had come to concentrate on one particular kind of work for one particular class, we may be perfectly certain that they would have no difficulty in justifying their action. But in any case action should not be taken without consideration of proportions, and, therefore, it is important that the proportions should be known.

But in dealing with work in the province or small country we cannot simply repeat the table prepared for the mission district. In the province or country there are often missionaries at work who give themselves up wholly to one class. It is difficult, if not impossible, to distinguish every possible form of work; but seeing that very considerable work is done amongst students, we have thought it well to add one column in which the proportion of the children of different classes who are attending Christian schools or living in Christian hostels is set forth:–

_____________________________________________________________________ | | Agri- | | | |Remarks Percentage Stud-|Offi- |cultural|Traders.|Labourers.| Crafts-|and of: ents.|cials.|Small- | | | men. |Conclu- | |Holders.| | | |sions. ________________|______|________|________|__________|________|_______ In
Population — | — | — | — | — | — | ________________|______|________|________|___________________________ In Christian — | — | — | — | — | — | Constituency | | | | | | ________________|______|________|________|__________|________|_______ In Christian | | | | | | schools and | | | | | | hostels, — | — | — | — | — | — | percentage | | | | | |
of children | | | | | | of | | | | | |
________________|______|________|________|__________|________|_______

With respect to work among different races, castes, etc., no addition to the table prepared for the district seems necessary, and we therefore repeat it:–

————–|—————————————–|———— | Races, Religious Castes, etc., whatever| Remarks | they may be. | And | |Conclusions. ————–|—————————————–|———— In Population | —- |
————–|—————————————–|———— In Christian | —- |
Constituency | | ————–|—————————————–|————

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:–

[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 L137. 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 L137 x 6 = L822, or over L2 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 L6,000,000 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.

Then we must examine more closely, if we can;–and first of the _evangelistic_ workers. The difficulty is to classify, 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 practitioners, assistants, 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.

(ii) For _Educational_ Work.

(iii) For _Medical_ Work.

———————————————————————- 1st Grade. | 2nd. | 3rd. To be Qualified Doctors. | Assistants, 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

If the institutions 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 institutions. We need no elaborate statistics in this place, because the work of these institutions 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 institutions 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:–

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.

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. —————————————+—————————– |
—————————————+—————————–

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)

(b)

(c)

In some missions the proportion of missionaries and native workers so employed would be very small; in others they would be very considerable. There is now a tendency to hand over some of the industrial work as it develops along commercial lines to Boards of Christian men who are interested in the social and spiritual aspect of the work.

In the province we must also consider union work, work done in common by two or more societies,[1] sometimes evangelistic, sometimes medical or educational training, sometimes the establishment, or enlargement of an educational or medical institution; or sometimes, as in Kwangtung in South China, several societies unite in a “Board of Co-operation”. This union of societies for the better and more efficient performance of their work is a most important development of the last few years: important both to the workers on the field and to us at home. We ought, therefore, to have a short table to show what is being done.

[Footnote 1: The larger and more important movements towards corporate union, such as those now taking place in S. India, China, and E. Africa, lie outside the scope of this survey until their completion affects their statistical returns. Then the importance of them will speedily appear.]

CHAPTER XI.

THE RELATION OF THE STATION TO THE WORLD.

We have now dealt with the survey of the station and of the province or small country, but the final end of missionary work is the attainment of a world-wide purpose. The Gospel is for the whole world, not for a fragment of it, however big. Missionary work cannot properly be carried on in any place except by means and methods designed with a view to the whole, and missions can never be properly presented to us at home so long as we are taught to fix our eyes on small areas; because the great characteristic of missions is their vastness. This is what is so uplifting and ennobling in the work. Every little piece of mission work ought to be directed on principles capable of bearing the weight of the whole. We ought to be able to say, “The whole world can be converted by these means and on these principles which we are here employing in this little village”. If the methods and the principles are so narrow that we can build no great world-wide structure on them, we can take little more interest in them than we do in the petty politics of some little parish at home.

We have then yet to demand that we shall be able to put every little station into its proper place in this larger whole, and to see how its principles and methods are illumined by the vision of the whole, being established with the design of accomplishing the whole task. We turn then now to this larger view of mission work. The tables which we have drawn for a province or small country would enable us to compare the work in each area with another such area in the larger whole, and to judge whether we were unduly neglecting any; where the Church was strongest and where it was least established; where it was more capable and where it was less capable of taking over that work which rightly belongs to it, of extending its own boundaries, and of maintaining its own life. We should not send hasty missions here or there because some interesting political event attracts the eyes of men to this or that particular country, but on definite missionary principles, acting on a clear and reasonable understanding of the missionary situation in the world.

The commission of Christ is world-wide, the claim of Christ is world-wide, the work of Christ, the Spirit of Christ are all-embracing; and the work which missionaries do in His name should be all-embracing to. We should conduct all our work, and plan all our work, at home and abroad, with our eyes fixed on the final goal, which is for us, so long as we are on this earth, coterminous only with the limits of the habitable globe. We cannot be content to approach even the largest areas as though our action was limited by them. All our policy in every part should be part of a policy designed for the whole. If it is not designed to accomplish the whole it is not adequate for any part.

How then could we gain a vision of the whole, a whole composed of such vast and diverse parts? Obviously we must have for every country in which any missionary work is carried on some common returns, either those which we venture to suggest or others which some abler minds might suggest; but that they must be common to all, and fundamental in character, is obvious; and they must be reduced to proportions on a common basis, or comparison and combination will be impossible; and they must be as few as possible in order to avoid confusion.

We suggest, then, that if we had the four tables which follow we should possess a reasonable basis, sufficient for our present needs, especially since we suppose they would be supported by the tables for the different provinces, countries, and stations which we have already suggested, and they ought to be supplemented by surveys made by each society of its own work and by departmental surveys of medical, educational, industrial, and literary work made for the special direction of each of these branches. But for a first general view of the whole we propose:–

(1) A table showing the force at work in the area in relation to the population:–

——————————————————————— Proportion to Population. ——————————————————————– Province| Popula-| Total | Chris- | Com- | | or | tion. | Foreign | tian | municants | Paid | Unpaid Country| | Mission-| Constitu-| or Full |Workers.| Workers. Area. | | aries. | ents. | Members | | ——–|——–|———|———-|———–|——–|——— | | | | | |
________|________|_________|__________|___________|________|_________ ———————————————————————

That would give us a general view of the force at work in relation to the work to be done and of the proportions between its constituent parts. Then (2):–

——————————————————————— | Proportion of Paid | Proportion of | Workers | Unpaid Workers ——————-|————————|———————— Propor- | |
Christian tion |———–|————|————-|———- Constitu- of | | To | |To ency. Liter- | To | Christian | To |Christian ates. | Com- | Constitu- | Com- |Constitu- | municants.| ency |municants. |ency. ——————-|———–|————|————-|———- | | | |
——————-+———–+————+————-+———-

That would give us an idea of the character and power of the force. (3)

——————————————————————— | | | Percentage | Percentage | | Paid | of Total | of Total | Missionaries.| Native | Foreign Funds| Native | | Workers.| Employed in. | Contributions | | | | Employed in. ————-+————–+———+————–+————— Evangelistic | — | — | — | — —————————-+———+————–+————— Medical | — | — | — | — —————————-+———+————–+————— Educational | — | — | — | — —————————-+———+————–+————— Other forms | — | — | — | — of work | — | — | — | — ————-+————–+———+————–+—————

That would give us relative emphasis on different forms of work.

(4)

That would give us some idea of the extent to which the native Christians support the existing work.

Now if we could form some idea of the force at work in relation to the country in which it is working; and some idea of the character of the force; and some idea of the relative emphasis laid on different forms of work, and some idea of the extent to which the native Christians support the work, we should, we hope, be able to form a reasonable estimate of the extent and progress of our efforts in the world. The whole number of forms would not be very large, for there would only be about 150 areas from which such forms would be required, and these could be combined so as to give us a view of the situation in the world such as the mind could grasp.

This is, we admit, rather a hasty and tentative expression of the way in which we might satisfy the present need; but it seems to us that the time is ripe for the consideration of this great subject, and we can think of no better plan than to propose tables, and then to leave others to criticise and amend them, or to suggest better ones, or better methods of attaining an object which few would deny to be desirable.

With proper tables, these or others, we should then be able to trace the meaning and results of each station which we founded and to put it into its place in a reasoned scheme of things, and that is the crying need.

Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions by Roland Allen (page 3)