The Story of Lutheran Missions

by Elsie Singmaster

|A Missionary Institute Discussed.| At the first meeting in 1820 of the General Synod, to which belonged the Synods of Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina, the Joint Synod of Ohio, and the Synods of Maryland and Virginia, the founding of a missionary institute like those of the Fatherland was suggested and discussed. Before this time congregations had contributed individually to the work of foreign missions through the American Board, an inter-denominational society.

|The First Missionary Society.| At the meeting of the West Pennsylvania Synod in Mechanicsburg in 1836 there was formed at the recommendation of the General Synod a Central Missionary Society whose object was “to send the Gospel of the Son of God to the destitute portions of the Lutheran Church in the United States of America by means of missions; to assist for a season such congregations as are not able to support the Gospel; and, ultimately to co-operate in sending it to the heathen world.” Later the name of the society was changed to “The Foreign Missionary Society of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in the United States of America.”

A MALAGASY WITCH DOCTOR.

NATIVE LUTHERAN MINISTERS IN MADAGASCAR.

|Two Appeals.| There had come meanwhile to the Lutheran Church in America two appeals from the foreign field, one from Missionary Rhenius in India whose career we have described in Chapter II, the other from Gützlaff in China, whom we shall study in Chapter V. It was decided in answer to the appeal of Rhenius that John Christian Frederick Heyer should go to India as the first missionary of the General Synod. When it appeared probable that difficulties would arise on account of the connection with the inter-denominational American Board under whose direction Heyer was to go, he resigned, and in 1841 was sent by the Pennsylvania Synod which had withdrawn from the General Synod after the first meeting. The death of Rhenius and the return of his followers to the English mission made it possible for the Americans to select a wholly new field.

|The First American Lutheran Missionary.| In April, 1842, a hundred years after the arrival of Muhlenberg in America, Mr. Heyer became the first fruit of his missionary hopes. Heyer was of German birth and had come to America when he was fourteen years old. From 1817 till 1841 he had been a home missionary, laboring in difficult and widely divided fields in Pennsylvania and Maryland, Indiana and Kentucky, Illinois and Missouri. Travelling from settlement to settlement often amid the greatest hardships, he had established churches and Sunday schools.

|No Longer a Young Man.| When he accepted the call to India, he was almost fifty years old. A younger man might well have hesitated to meet the dangers of the sea, the menace of a foreign climate, the loneliness of exile. But Heyer knew neither fear nor hesitation. That he realized that dangers existed is shown by his own words: “I feel calm and cheerful, having taken this step after serious and prayerful consideration, and the approbation of the churches has encouraged me thus far. But I am aware that ere long, amidst a tribe of men whose language will be strange to me, I shall behold those smiles only in remembrance, and hear the voice of encouragement only in dying whispers across the ocean, and then nothing but the grace of God, nothing but a thorough conviction of being in the path of duty, nothing but the approving smile of Heaven can keep me from despondency.”

|Eager to Begin.| It was thought best that Mr. Heyer should begin his work in the Telugu country north of Madras. It was the beginning of the hot season when he arrived and he was advised to remain in Madras and commence the study of the language. But his impatient spirit would not let him rest. In spite of the intense heat, he travelled to Nellore and thence to Guntur, where, invited and welcomed by a godly Englishman, Henry Stokes, who was collector of the district and who had earnestly wished for a missionary, he made an end of his long journey. On the first Sunday of August 1842, he held a service with the aid of an interpreter. |Reinforce-ments.| At once, according to the sound method of the Lutheran missionary, he set about the establishing of schools. He began a school for beggars and another for a scarcely less despised class--Hindu girls. This was the first Hindu girls’ school. Within the first year he was able to report three adult baptisms. In two years two missionaries came to his aid, a German, the Rev. L. P. Valett who came to start a mission of the North German Society at Rajahmundry and the Rev. Walter Gunn, who was sent out by the General Synod.