THE “CONGREGATIONAL WAY” IN MISSION WORK.
REV. WM. C. POND, SAN FRANCISCO.
There are two methods of dealing with converts from heathenism, whether in our own land or that from which they come. One is that which treats them as children to be provided for and controlled; the other is that which welcomes them at once as co-workers—as brethren, having only one Master, and that our Master, even Christ. According to the one, the missionary lays the plans, and the converts work by it, if at all; to consult them would puff them up and make them presumptuous. According to the other,—while, of course, those who are responsible for the use of funds must control in regard to expenditures, and, consequently, must retain a veto power as to almost all projects for concerted work,—still suggestions from the brethren are cordially welcomed and carefully considered, and they are encouraged to work for Christ, with earnest prayer for His guidance, each in the way Christ points out specially to him. The one is apt to say, “Do as you see us do, accepting our standard and walking by our rules;” the other inculcates principles—faith, hope, charity, and believes that with these in the heart the young disciple may become a law unto himself. I scarcely need say which of these two is the “Congregational way.”
There are various objections made to this way; one, and the chief, is that it is not adapted to these undeveloped Christians—babes in Christ. They are but children, and must be treated as such. It is urged on foreign missionary fields with greater show of reason possibly, but it is the same objection which for so many years hindered the planting of Congregational churches in our new settlements at the West. We were told that Congregationalism was good for New England, but not stout enough for the rough-and-tumble, heterogeneous communities in the younger States. It is the same which is now urged against Congregationalism in the South. The negro race, we are assured, is too emotional, too ignorant, too easily carried away by every wind of doctrine or of feeling, to be entrusted with self-government.
If you work upon this scheme among converts from heathenism, it is certain that you will find trouble. If you work upon the other, you will find trouble also. No good work in this evil world ever went forward without trouble. But this “Congregational way,” it is supposed by some, opens the door specially wide to all sorts of dissatisfaction and dissension. False brethren, unawares brought in, will scatter seeds of heresy and lead off into all sorts of back-slidings. Time will be wasted in disputes that had better be given to study and prayer. Ill-considered and impossible projects will be pressed upon you, and you will find the exercise of your veto power involving you in ungracious, even hostile, criticism. Thus your influence will be weakened, and your usefulness impaired.
These objections are plausible, and address themselves to principles in human nature which the new birth, and even a missionary’s consecration, do not at once supplant. If we are not mistaken, they have gone far to determine the method in much of the missionary work of the world.
But if we have read the New Testament correctly, the method against which these objections may be urged, is the one under which the first Christian missions were conducted—the one to which the teachings of the Master point, and which the example of his Apostles has endorsed. And the heathen among whom these primitive missions were conducted were just such as we find in the world to-day, only, if possible, more corrupt—a less promising material for a self-governing church.
It is certain, furthermore, that those primitive churches, organized on this scheme of Christian liberty, did get into difficulties—into just such difficulties as these objections suggest. The epistles give mournful evidence of this. The hearts of the Apostles were often heavy on account of it. And yet no other scheme was substituted for it until long after the Apostles’ day, and liberty, with all its dangers and all its inconveniences, was preferred to any yoke of bondage, however well contrived.
I believe that the Apostles were right in this, and that we do well to follow in their steps. It may be that we shall have trouble which, under a less democratic régime, we might have escaped; but these troubles, if the hearts that are exercised by them are really renewed, may be made means of grace; while, if there be lurking hypocrisy, it will be, by the same means, brought to light. And, then, the smothered discontent under a system of churchly government in distinction from Christian fellowship, may be more poisonous than even open disputes can be. Encourage the free and frank expression of what lies troublesome within; thus often a few words of explanation remove the cause of friction, or, possibly, the very effort to express one’s discontent reveals its futility and unreason. Furthermore, let me add, out of oft-repeated experiences, the suggestions of these brethren who have come out of the depths of heathenism, and know it as no words could possibly portray it, are often very wise. The superintendent of mission work, no matter how well schooled he be in the language and literature, the history, philosophy and laws of the people for whom he labors, can never know their heathenism as they know it themselves. A system which invites such suggestions, which encourages the idea that the work is not mine only, but theirs also, which thus nurtures frankness and freedom of utterance, has advantages which no system of constraint and repression can possibly secure.
And, then, it is only under conditions of liberty that the educating process can go on to best advantage. Men learn to swim, not by hearing lectures on the art, but by swimming; and men are educated up to manhood in Christ, to self-denial and self-control, only as they have it thrown upon them to control themselves. Men learn their weak points by being put to the test; and the weak are strengthened best by well-timed, well-measured exercise. And Christ has organized His churches with reference to this; not for the smoothest possible working of Gospel machinery, but for the highest possible attainment in faith and hope and love by each individual soul.