Beginning with this issue, The Ministry, entering its eleventh year of service to our workers, makes its bow as a forty-eight-page magazine with a new and more attractive format—larger and destined to be increasingly better, we believe, than ever before. There are three conspicuously new features, each worthy of separate notice. The first is our new and distinctive "Medical Missionary" section, which will receive about a third of the supplemental space, or approximately eight pages. This important department will be discussed separately in the next editorial.
The second additional eight pages make provision for two new fields of vital discussion : (1) "The Challenge of a World Task—a Survey of Mission Problems, Methods, and Relationships ;" and (2) "The Realm of Research—Historical, Archeological, and Scientific Findings." The avowed purpose of the foreign mission section will be to foster mission-mindedness and world-consciousness, discussing intimately, clearly, and constructively these fundamental problems, as pertaining to and affecting our worker body the world around—for we are all tied together in this world-embracing movement.
The materials will be gathered from the men all over the world field who are best fitted to prepare them. They will include careful, dependable surveys of our unfinished task, together with a study of God's provisions for its consummation; the manning and maintenance of such a world movement, as to both missionary man power and finance; the unique, central, distinctive principle in the leading false religions that confront this movement, which must be understood and met; our relationship to other religious bodies and to governments; the language and the illiteracy problems; dealing with the primitive mind; distinctive native evangelistic methods; and the vital changes that bear upon our world task taking place in the attitudes, customs, and conditions in various mission lands and their peoples. These are but suggestive. To state the scope is to visualize its far-reaching importance.
The other portion of this second eight pages will be devoted to scholarly articles of interest and profit to all, but especially pertinent to theological training and development in our colleges. These contributions will be prepared largely by the experienced Bible and history teachers of our colleges and seminary, and should constitute a bond of increasing unity between our field workers and our teaching fraternity. This section especially will be used in our theological training schools for collateral reading and class assignment. Thus the ministerial students, their teachers, and the field ministry will have a community of interest surpassing all previous provisions.
The concluding third of the Ministry enlargement will be utilized as advertising space appropriate to ministerial and churchly needs, such as stereopticons, films and film slides, religious books and Bibles, gospel tents, amplifying and audiphone equipment, organs, evangelistic cuts and posters, communion-service sets, baptismal robes, church bulletin and hymnal boards, church seats and pulpit equipment, typewriters and duplicating apparatus, missionary supplies, rail and water transportation, and the like.
These suitable and legitimate advertisements speak for themselves, and may properly appear in our columns. Along with our augmented subscription list, they help make possible the material enlargement of our journal. But in order for this advertising feature to prove continuously successful, the advertisers must be made aware of its effectiveness as an advertising medium. We therefore urge our readers, when patronizing the concerns and products displayed, or in asking for their catalogues, to specifically mention The Ministry by name as the prompting agency. This will influence favorably, if not indeed assure, the continued patronage of our columns by these concerns—and thus the continued enlargement of the workers' own journal. Please accept our advance thanks for your cooperation on this important point. May you enjoy your new Ministry.
L. E. F.
