Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions - Roland Allen; Thomas Cochrane

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 £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.

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:—