It was a sad day for the disciples as they stood there on the mount called Olivet and watched the cloud receive their Master and their Friend up and out of their sight. The Messiah had come and gone. What should they do? They stood there somewhat dazed and bewildered, not knowing just which way to turn, or what to do next. Perhaps they were waiting for someone to tell them what to do. More likely they were hoping for some further word from Christ Himself.
They recalled the Saviour's commission, "Go ye therefore, and teach ["make disciples, or Christians of," margin] all nations . . . and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world," and they well remembered His last words spoken just before He was taken up in the cloud ; "Ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto Me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth."
That gave them the whole picture. They at once saw their duty and their task. The church of Christ was to begin in Jerusalem, where they were to tarry until the power of the Holy Ghost came upon them. Then they were to go out as Christ's witnesses into the near-by provinces, and thence on and on, clear out to the very ends of the earth.
At no place does the record say that the entire burden of preaching the gospel to every nation was to fall upon or be borne by the eleven disciples, nor by the church which was at Jerusalem. As God has raised up Christians, He has placed, upon them the same burden of becoming witnesses for Him in other places. Thus we must come to the conclusion, that neither the burden of leadership nor that of financing the work of the church is to fall solely upon the Christians in Europe or America. Rather, each Christian, of whatever nation he might be, is to feel the burden of telling others about the Christ he has come to know; first in his own home town, and then in the near-by counees, states, and nations.
American Christians, for instance, carry the good news to the people of India. Some Indians become Christians, and immediately they are commissioned to carry the gospel to other Indians near and far, and finally to share in the responsibility of finishing the task of warning the whole world. Thus it is in Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, and Africa. It stands to reason that to finish such a stupendous world task will require Christians of every land to do all they can, first for their own people and finally for all people. In this way will "this gospel of the kingdom be preached . . . unto all nations," and then shall the end come.
Commission Given to All Christians
Ever since the time of Paul, the first fore;gn missionary of the apostolic period, down to our own day, the home bases have sent out witnesses and called them foreign missionaries. These brave, earnest men and women of God have gone forth filled with a holy zeal. They have met opposition and endured conditions which heathenism alone could produce and perpetuate. They have left home and comforts, friends and relatives to serve their Master, often in unfavorable and very unfriendly environments in order to preach the gospel and share their knowledge of the true God, and this not without results.
God has good men and women with honest hearts in every land. Soon these will have accepted the truth as it is in Jesus, and will be trained to become bearers of the message to their own people. Some of them become real leaders in the cause of God, and with power demonstrate their call to the ministry of the church.
When the Y.M.C.A. sent its foreign inissionary secretaries to overseas mission fields, it is said that they instructed their men to "Go, make Christians, train them for positions of leadership, work yourselves out of a job, and come back as soon, as possible." National leaders everywhere are undertaking to carry on the work of the Y.M.C.A. without foreign missionary assistance and apparently with good success.
A number of missions have followed somewhat the same plan, and today very capable national leaders are carrying on the work of the Christian church with or without financial support and assistance from abroad. This is as it should be, for the Christian churches in America. or Europe can never supply enough men and money to evangelize the whole world. The Christian church in every country must more and more assume the responsibility for manning and supporting the work within their respective national boundaries. They must increase, while the foreign missionary must decrease.
Legitimate Types of Work
There is and always will be a work for the foreign missionary, not so much among the older established churches, but rather in the opening up of new territory, and the extension of the mission enterprise into new and hitherto unentered areas. Thus he will be carrying Out the Saviour's own words "to the uttermost part of the earth," and storming one stronghold after another until the banner of Prince Emmanuel floats over every nation, kindred, tongue, and people. As it looks to a number of foreign mission administrators there are at least four types of work for the foreign missionary in the overseas fields :
1. The pioneer work, which demands strong young men and women who are filled with the Spirit of God, the spirit of the frontiersman, the spirit of service. This work of pushing the frontiers of the Christian church onward and forward demands courage, fortitude, zeal, earnestness. It calls for the finest type of Christian soldier we can find in the ranks of the Christian church.
2. The training work, which requires still another type of foreign missionary. Here the church must use its Christian scholars, its wise, kind, patient, sympathetic men. The training of national Christian leaders is a work which takes time, skill, and vision. It requires someone who is not easily discouraged; one who is willing to serve in the quiet halls of learning; one who cares not for the limelight of adventure and heroism, the daring and thrilling experiences about which the laity back home love to hear; one who is happy to teach and mold and train while occupying a secondary or somewhat subservient position; one who is willing to have a national Christian as his principal or president; and one who feels delight in the achievements of the product of his hand and mind and heart.
3. The supervisory or counseling work, calls for foreign missionaries who know the answers, the plans, the policies, the methods ; missionaries who are rich in experience and labors of love for the cause of God; missionaries who have become like John the Baptist, filled with the spirit of humility, possessing that rare quality of rejoicing in the success of others, of being satisfied to stand behind or beside a national leader, helping him to do a mighty work for God and his fellow men. Such a missionary is at once a friend, a brother, a counselor, an adviser, a helper—a power, so to speak, behind the throne.
4. The administrative work in lower as well as higher positions of responsibility demands men of vision, imagination, wisdom, tact, and skill as leaders of men. These men are the "thinker-uppers," the men who see into the future, who anticipate the needs and demands of the work, who are prepared with the plans, methods, and materials by which the work can grow and expand into a great and mighty movement. These men in the mission fields should each have a national understudy or an associate who is being groomed for their positions, and upon whom those responsibilities should be placed as soon as advisable, or when an emergency develops which may necessitate the withdrawal of missionaries.
There is still another type of foreign missionary which must be sent out in overseas mission work. He is what we might call the "specialist." His specialty may be in some field of medical work or industrial education or some other line in which the national Christians are not yet trained or ready to carry on.
The foreign missionary and his board must ever bear in mind that the world must be evangelized, and that means every nook and corner of it. Therefore, the missionary must go to his task with but one aim in view—to make Christians of the native people to whom he is sent, and then train them so that they can take up the burden of the work in that place, thereby releasing the missionary so that he can press on into new areas and repeat the process. Thus the native people can become responsible for the leadership and financial support of the work in the established centers, or areas, while the General Conference supports the missionaries who are pressing on and pushing the conquest of the whole world for our Lord and Master Jesus Christ. This seems a natural and very logical way of carrying on the foreign mission enterprise of the Christian church, and the only one by which a world may be warned and made aware of the soon coming of Christ.
There is another side to this picture which we must present, and we will endeavor to do so objectively and impartially. That has to do with what some are wont to call a "Psychological Revolution" which is taking place in every part of the world. It is manifest to some extent in every country. In some countries the attitude and feeling on the part of many has become almost hostile toward peoples of other nations. This psychological revolution is behind the troubles in Indonesia, in India, in Korea, in China, and other parts of the world.
—To be concluded in February
