Fifty-six students are enrolled this school year in the two pastoral training classes conducted by the China Training Institute. Last year the class numbered thirty-two, twenty of whom are back this year continuing their studies. Of last year's class, eighteen came on the ministerial scholarship basis, and only two of this number failed to come back this year to carry on the second year's work. The new class of students receiving this training numbers thirty-two, the same as last year, sixteen of whom are receiving financial aid through the scholarship plan.
The setting of this plan into operation has served_to place the work of the ministry before the youth of our Chinese church, and has put it in a place of vantage in which it has not been before now. And with this group of nearly a score of students coming into the institute yearly to pursue this course of study, a nucleus is formed around which it is possible to gather many others to take the same course.
The students of this group are leading out in the spiritual activities of the student body. They are active in all the group meetings and departmental activities that are regularly conducted here. The second-year students are doing special work in the near-by villages such as has never been done before. Weekly Bible studies are being given in a dozen homes and villages in the surrounding territory. Nearly twoscore people are listening with great interest to the Word of God as it is given them weekly by these young men. In these meetings the second-year students take the lead and give the Bible readings, while the first-year students assist in singing, visiting, and in other ways. In Chiao Tou Tseng we now have a Sabbath school organized and regularly conducted by our students. This is by far the most thoroughly systematic work that has ever been conducted for the people of this vicinity.
The regular seminar of the pastoral training -group meets each Thursday evening at 6:45, and in this meeting, reports are given of the work being conducted, new groups are organized to fill new calls for village Bible readings, visiting brethren are called in to give instruction as opportunity affords, and round-table discussion of mission work and problems is conducted in a systematic manner with capable persons chosen to lead in the presentation of the assigned topic, after which, opportunity for questions is given. A general discussion follows.
It is sincerely hoped that the ministerial scholarship plan may be continued until a few groups have been graduated and sent into the field. Then, as they take up their work and come shoulder to shoulder with the workers who have been trained in other ways, it will be possible to make comparisons and determine scientifically the real worth of the scholarship plan.
We solicit the interest of all our workers in this phase of our educational work. Will you not continue to remember this group of students and their teachers before the throne of grace, that the work done here may truly bear the impress of the divine?
Chiao Tou Tseng, Siangsu, China.
