Mission Service Worthy of the Best

This article is a frank appeal from the mission field to capable workers in the home bases not to disparage a call that may come to them to devote their lives to over­seas mission service. I have written out of a full heart, from convictions that have deepened with a few years of experience overseas. In many cases calls from the mission board go unanswered because strong and successful lead­ers at home are considered by themselves and others as too valuable to devote their lives to ministry in more backward parts of the earth. But my conviction is that backward peoples need more than backward leadership. Their very condition calls for the services of the most far-sighted and capable men the church can send.

It is true that on the whole the mission fields need the services of young recruits who are physically able to endure any hardships and personal adjustments necessary to life in new and strange places, as well as being able to and willing to master a difficult language. Youth and physical hardihood are indeed excel­lent assets to missionaries. But if mission work overseas is to be built solidly, and native be­lievers are to be given clear, inspiring spiritual vision, some of the most capable and successful workers who have already proved themselves must also be secured for mission service. Un­fortunately this is contrary to the rather wide­spread opinion taken for granted in the home bases, that a man who has made an outstanding success in either evangelistic or administrative work is entirely too valuable to "waste" on the more or less primitive mission fields. The scope of the work there would be too limited for a man of real capabilities, it is concluded. He can accomplish more for the Lord where his out­standing talents will attract the plaudits of the denomination and its constituency.

So it is thought that the mission fields should be content to secure the services of practical folk who can lay bricks, keep books, saw tim­ber, repair broken machinery, start stalled model T's, and manage a hundred and one other things, as well as "pinch-hit" at either preaching or classroom teaching. Although it is true that practical men with mechanical and building abilities will always be needed where mission work is growing, yet it should be stressed that if the work is to be finished in the mission fields, more and more men are needed there whose all-consuming life purpose is the winning of souls. The mission fields are in need of the best talents, brains, and spiritual understanding available. Let it be known that the regions beyond are not a "putterer's para­dise."

A veteran missionary was once asked by a young would-be missionary, 'What, in your opinion, is the first requisite for a missionary?" "Adaptability," was his ready answer. "And what would you say the second requisite would be?" queried the youth. "Adaptability," was the reply again. "And what would you recommend as the third requisite?" asked the appointee. "Adaptability!" was the emphatic reply.

Upon consideration, this well-known reply of the veteran missionary does not seem to be vainly repetitious. A threefold adaptability is the basic essential of a mission­ary's equipment. Unless he can adapt his min­istry to meet the peculiar spiritual needs and problems of an entirely different race of people with exotic religious backgrounds; unless he can adapt his approach and psychological ap­peals to challenge the thinking of an entirely different type (I did not say level) of mental­ity; and unless he can acclimatize himself to new, though rarely unbearable, conditions of living, and is willing to sacrifice the physical desire for certain creature comforts indigenous to his homeland, he will certainly not meet the needs of mission fields today.

Actually this same threefold requisite of adaptability is required for aggressive and suc­cessful evangelistic work in the homeland. Every city and town entered by an evangelist requires a different approach if the worker is to make a worth-while impression upon it. The stereotyped evangelist in the homeland, with his "canned" loose-leaf sermons, and his bag of psychological tricks, is sooner or later cer­tain to meet his Waterloo. Thus we see that the adaptability which will make a man a good missionary overseas will contribute as well to his outstanding success in the homeland. Con­versely, the qualifications that make a man valuable in the homeland are the very qualifica­tions so poignantly needed in the underprivi­leged lands overseas today.

It is a grossly mistaken attitude that influ­ences successful men at home to disparage a call to a mission field such as Africa, for in­stance, on the assumption that their talents would bloom unseen and useless on the desert air. It must be remembered that from a human viewpoint there was a seemingly prodigal waste of ability, talent, and wisdom when the Com­mander of heaven quit the land of light to enter the dark and depraved mission field of this earth, where He was unknown and unappreci­ated. And it must also be remembered that the work He thus began will never be finished until men endowed with rich capabilities and or­dained of the Holy Spirit condescend to follow His example.

An experienced and capable ordained Afri­can minister recently stated that in his lifetime he had known only three Europeans who had come to understand the African mind and how to labor for the African. His was not an ex­pression of chronic grumbling and discontent but merely a revelation of how seldom the threefold requisite of adaptability in mission­aries appears evident to the African. His re­mark did not mean that other missionaries were not loved and respected, but indicated that the most capable talents of pastoral and evangelis­tic ministry are deeply appreciated by thought­ful native peoples.

To illustrate the fact that what is good for the mission field is good for the homeland, and vice versa, consider the experience of one of the three European missionaries mentioned by the African minister. After three or four terms of service in Central Africa, during which time, according to prevailing beliefs in the home­lands, he should have dried up quite thoroughly mentally and otherwise, he grasped the oppor­tunity of engaging in large city evangelism in his homeland while on furlough. As a result, he had the privilege of holding one of the larg­est and most successful public efforts that had ever been held in that conference, and in the second largest city of the land. It seems evident that the same gifts of adaptability which made for him a warm place in the hearts of his peo­ple in the mission field also made his work out­standingly successful at home.

Will years spent in mission work necessarily make one a mental dullard and mark him as a "back number"? Dr. Al­bert Schweitzer, after spending many years in the Congo jungles, has made for himself an honored place among the world's great in the fields of music, literature, medicine, and phi­losophy. David Livingstone, because of his nat­ural abilities, would have been one of the out­standing figures of his century had he never come to Africa. Paul, in the deserts of Arabia, where he conferred not with flesh and blood, thought through and grasped his wonderful conception of the plan of redemption as re­vealed in the cross of Christ, that turned the ancient world upside down. Service in the mis­sion field will not make a man become a mental dullard; it will merely show up his mental lazi­ness.

Rather than be considered a drawback to mental and spiritual growth, mission life should be recognized as a challenge. A lazy-witted and spiritually sluggish worker who can barely stumble along from one ministerial institute until another conference workers' meeting is held, dependent on strength derived from fre­quent injections of inspirational adrenalin, would do well to pause before accepting a call to the regions beyond. Here ministerial insti­tutes or other such gatherings of workers are often more rare than full General Conference sessions at home. The benighted souls of dark­ened lands are eagerly awaiting the ministry of men of God who know how to receive inspira­tion on their knees from open Bibles—men who themselves know how to gather the heavenly manna and to stimulate the thinking of native people.

The average person at home still thinks of Africa as one vast slum reeking with black magic and impenetrable ignorance. The mis­sionary who comes today, however, must come prepared to meet the challenge of a keen intel­lectual awakening in many parts of the Dark Continent.

A recent issue of the Uganda Herald carried the report of a masterful address delivered in Kampala before a group of 1,200 students and parents by a Uganda native who had just flown out from America, having received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in an American Univer­sity. Crowning one of Kampala's seven hills, stands a lofty and beautiful native cathedral, where the African choirs sing the choral works of Bach with pipe organ accompaniment, cred­itably rendered by an African organist. This advancement is typical of the awakening evi­dent not only in Africa but in other "dark," heathen lands.

The missionary who comes today must be able to command the interest and respect of clever minds. He must not imagine just because he is a European or an American that other races will be so stupid and naive that they will perforce flock to hear his every idle word with breathless interest. He cannot depend upon his white skin and his college sheepskin to procure him the love and sincere respect of educated natives today.

The great native church of the mission fields will collapse under the sheer weight of its own numbers unless it can be shown a leadership capable of lifting it out of its spiritual imma­turity. Native believers need the ministry of missionaries of keen perception, skillful in spiritual diagnosis of the deficiencies of their religious experience, able to provide nourish­ing meat in due season. Surgery on human bodies with black skins requires as much skill as surgery on bodies with white skin. Is it to be wondered at that African believers need just as understanding and skillful pastoral care as believers in more favored lands?