Strategy
Strategy Nee for the practical outworking of the problem. Visions inspire, but they do not map out one's procedure. "Ideals are like stars: you will not succeed in touching them with your hands, but like seafaring men on the desert of waters, you choose them as your guides and, following them, you reach your destiny," said Carl Schurz.
We had arrived in a strange land, deeply embedded in old religions. What are we to do now?
When it is a mission, not an individual, that is planning to enter, there is a certain amount of missionary statesmanship needed. The forming of strategy—that is where experience is useful. The Captain of our host is the Lord Jesus
Christ, and He does our planning for us. We do not forget this, nor would we have our friends forget it, but experience teaches us that there are certain ways of which He approves.
He made known his ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel (Ps. 103:7).
Those Christians whose centre of life is their own affairs and to whom Christ is mereiy on the circumference, so to speak, recognize His acts. But to those who make Him the centre of their life and thinking, there comes gradually a knowledge of His ways—quite a different thing.
What is the way in which He is most glorified? At our historic Bournemouth Conference in England in 1951, the China Inland Mission discussed this matter in the light of its eighty-six years of experience.
It was the unanimous decision of our leaders that the indigenous church was the method that glorified Him most. It was that kind of church in China which stood, when other churches crumpled. The indigenous church, of course, is that which is self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. And so the decision was prayerfully made, that the newly organized Overseas
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Missionary Fellowship of the China Inland Mission was committed to the indigenous pattern.
This immediately bound us to certain methods. We would not be able to establish ourselves in a big city and hire native evangelists to go out into the mountains and make contacts with the heathen. The indigenous plan necessitates doing that rough initial work ourselves, and that binds us to the hard primitive living which will be evidenced in the pages that follow. Why is this necessary ?
In the early stages of evangelism it is important that the Gospel be presented by messengers who are obviously not gaining anything from it. A hired native has sacrificed nothing, really; he is accustomed to the native food, and the bamboo sleeping floors are ordinary Thai style. The hireling is being paid to preach, and the tribes will inquire into that matter from the first contact. Remember, they have never met anyone, not only in their own personal lives, but in all their racial memory, who climbed to their village just in order to help them and with no desire to make gain out of them.
That the purpose in coming is only to love and help them —that is a weapon the missionary pioneer cannot afford to lose. And so we are committed to difficult living conditions.
"I sat where they sat'? (Ezek. 3:15) must be our beginning.
We shall be well repaid for it later on in the spiritual gain of our people. Amy Carmichael has well called it: "The working out of the law of pains for the pioneer. Was there ever one who was not tested to the uttermost, beset behind and before, crushed and milled till nothing was left for the eye of man to find beauty in, or any power? And so it is when the work is accomplished the excellency of the power is shown and known to be of God and not of us."
Now let us return to this matter of strategy. How are the tribes to be reached?
I would like to draw a parallel with Sir John Hunt's, The Conquest of Everest. That book must mean more to the pioneer hill-missionary than to others, because the difficulties besetting the climbers are so similar to our own. The mere planting of one's feet on Everest's slopes and climbing to the top was the simplest part of Sir John Hunt's expedition. His real difficulty was keeping men alive while they climbed.
STRATEGY ea Men must breathe, eat, and sleep. How to get oxygen, food, fuel, bedding and tents up those heights along with the men?
Supplies. Miserable, mundane, headaching, time-consuming business for pioneer missionary or for famous mountain climbers. The matter of supplies must take a real place in the forming of strategy.
Sir John Hunt preplanned this expedition while he was still in England. He had each step, and the supplies for that step, and the time consumed in hoisting those supplies to that step, all carefully mapped out before he left England. In all they had nine camps, by which to feed, sleep, and nourish climbers to the top of Everest. With apologies to him, I am going to borrow some of his camp language: Base Camp;
Advance Camp; Summit Camp. We, too, used them all. Of course he was working at superhuman altitudes and we weren't.
But he had only to get two of his party to the top, and then return home. We were there to stay until a self-governing church was established. And so our supply-headaches silently continue.
As the Mission faced the unexplored (from a missionary point of view) mountains of North Thailand, it was apparent that first they must select a spot for Base Camp: a place not too distant from the tribal habitats, yet where supplies could be obtained easily, where telegraph and postal communications with headquarters were reasonably fast, and where there were banking facilities. The old city of Chiengmai, situated at the end of the railroad, and yet hub of many motor roads leading to the mountains, north, west, and south, was obviously the spot. So Chiengmai became Base Camp.
We could plan that in America, but entrance was not quite so easy! The Thai government would not permit a new mission to enter unless a previously established one sponsored the newcomer. Who would sponsor the C.I.M.O.M.F.? In North
Thailand were five different missions, all telling the Thai government that they were Christian. The American Presbyterians had been longest there—some seventy years. Then came the Roman Catholics, the Seventh-Day Adventists, the Jehovah's Witnesses, and in 1951 one couple of the American Baptist Mission arrived. With the exception of this latter couple, the Rev. and Mrs. Alfred Vanbenschoten,
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who were to work exclusively among the Sgaw Karen tribe, none of the others was making any attempt to reach the mountain peoples.
It was the American Presbyterians (A.P.M. for short) who kindly sponsored our Mission. They invited us to enter with the understanding that we would not be working among the Thai, who are their field, but that we were set for the unreached tribes in the mountains. This explains briefly why, though Chiengmai is Base Camp for us, we have no work there.
Now! We are properly sponsored. Who is going to spearhead for us and find a house for the O.M.F. in Base Camp city ?
John and I were still on furlough. But Mr. and Mrs. Orville Carlson, failing to secure residence permit from the Burmese government to work where many of our Lisu had gone as refugees, were seeking further direction. Orville spoke Chinese and Lisu, and they were young enough to get other languages easily.
So behold, in early 1951, Orville, Hazel, and baby Mary Sue Carlson sailing up the Chao Prya, their eyes eagerly searching the northland. They were to establish Base Camp in a strange country. What would it be like? Who would receive them? Would the Thai language be difficult? Would it be a long time before they could contact some of the tribes ?*
Peak of Everest, where are you?
*I learned later that Orville Carlson set out to seek the Lisu the second day after his arrival in Chiengmai.