CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER ONE
TO KEEP THE CHURCH GOING
Very few Christians really know how the Church is run. The Church is there, and they go to it on most Sundays in the year. The plate or bag for the offerings comes round, and they put into it a coin, sometimes the smallest which they happen to have with them. But they do not ask where the money goes, or what use is made of it, or how much of it is spent on each part of the work of the Church. From time to time the minister tells his people
© from the pulpit that they ought to be giving more than they are, or asks them to give as much as they are able
to some special object for which money is being raised.
Perhaps for a few weeks they give a little more, but usually such good resolutions do not last very long. The Church has always been there; they feel that it always will be there to serve them when they need it. It is only in times of danger, when the Church no longer seems to be safe, and the order of its life is threatened, that the ordinary Christian wakes up to what is happening; then he is driven to ask what his own share is, or should be, through his life and through his gifts, in keeping the life of the Church going.
Much of this is true even in the younger Churches that have come into being in the lands where the great majority of the people are non-Christians. It is strange that it should be so, since most of those Churches are weak and Christians are few, and it is never certain that their life can be carried on from year to year. But customs can take deep root in a very few years, and Christians in these younger Churches learn as quickly
as their brethren in older Churches to take things for granted, and to believe that all will go on for ever as it is now. It is hard for Christians to understand that the Church is their Church, and that it can live only by their life. In many of the younger Churches, wrong teaching was given at the start; or perhaps it would be truer to say that the right teaching was not given at the start. New Christians were taught that they must give themselves to God; they were not shown clearly that this self-giving must show itself, among many other ways, in gifts of love made to God and to His Church. They were not taught how and why, as Christians, they should give. It is not easy for right teaching later on to drive out wrong ideas that have already taken root.
It is easy now to see why mistakes were made.
At the start of the work, before any converts were won, the missionaries were the only Christians. If anything had to be paid for, they were the only people who could pay for it. Some of the first converts were driven out from their homes and their villages. They had lost everything; the missionaries had to give them food and clothes and home, until they could find work. Many of them took up work in the mission as teachers and preachers, and naturally the mission continued to pay them for their work. If a church had to be built, there were usually kind Christian friends in Western countries who would send the money with which to build it. Sometimes these friends built such large churches that the people were not able even to keep them in good order; and for that, too, the missionaries had to find the money. In the old days, it was a common custom that, instead of parents paying school fees for their children, the parents were paid for sending their children to school. The parents said, " We are poor people. Our children work, and we cannot do without their work. If you want the children to come to school, you must pay us for the time they spend in school to please you instead of working for us."
This seemed a fair argument; and the missionaries were
so eager to have children in their schools that they often agreed to this plan, without seeing that by agreeing to it they might be doing great harm to the future of the Church.
We must not forget that most of the early converts of the missions were very poor. It is as true as it was in the days of the New Testament that not many wise, not many mighty are called into the Kingdom of God. Now, as then, it is for the most part the poor and weak who have heard gladly the good news of God. The missionaries, seeing the poverty of their people and being sorry for them, felt that it would be laying too heavy a weight upon them to ask them to give for the support of their
Church. This does not mean that those simple Christians gave nothing; but, when offerings were collected, it was usually for some special object and not for the day-today work of the Church. Even in those days, missionaries often spoke of the time when the younger Churches would have to become independent; but by their actions they denied their words. By giving too much and too long, they taught the younger Churches to be dependent on the West in matters of money and support. They gave the impression that kind friends in the West would continue to give, and that there would be no limit to the _ funds that they could provide. On the whole, the younger
Churches were well pleased to have it so. Had they not been told that salvation in Christ is freely given? In old days, they had had to.take animals from their flocks to offer very expensive sacrifices to the gods; was it not much better now to have many fathers and mothers in Christ, who would see to it that their children lacked nothing ?
For a long time people did not see clearly how dangerous this situation was. ''he nineteenth century was a time of long peace. The wealth of the West was growing all the time. Interest in missionary work continued to grow also. It seemed that this state of affairs could go on for a very long time, and that there was no need to
make any great change in the relations between the older and younger Churches.
In the twentieth century all this was changed. Interest in missions no longer continued to grow in the Western
Churches, as it had grown in earlier years. Gifts increased, but they could no longer keep pace with the demands of the work; and growth in one direction had to be balanced by cutting down work somewhere else.
The value of money began to fall all over the world. In 1931 the great Trade Depression hit the world; people gave less to the Churches, because they had so much less to give; grants to missionary work had to be seriously cut. Many of the younger Churches were compelled to realize for the first time that they could not count for ever on gifts coming from the West in the same way and on the same scale as they had always come in the past; if they wished to live, they must learn to grow up, and to take a far greater share of responsibility for the life of the Church than they had ever done before.
Many sharp lessons were learned through the first world war. German missionaries were removed from many areas where they had been working. German money could no longer reach these fields. Help was provided by other Churches, and means were found to keep the work going until the end of the war and after. But a new question had been asked of the younger Churches.
If a time comes when you are wholly cut off from your friends in the West, and can no longer receive from them any help in the way of money or of the service of missionaries, will you be able to carry on your work? Will you be able to stand firm and to witness, living on your own resources without any outside help?
This question made clear the difference between a real Church, and a Church which was living merely as a colony of a Western Church. In the political sphere, great countries like Canada and Australia, which had begun as colonies, had grown into independent nations.
_ It was seen that the time had come when the younger
Churches must cease to be colonies, and must grow up to be independent Churches, within the great family of God which is the Universal Church. But a Church which cannot itself find the money which is needed to carry on its work, and is always asking for gifts from another
Church, can never be more than a colony. Progress towards self-support is a necessary element in progress towards spiritual independence.
The same warning came from another source. In many parts of the world the work of the missions had been able to grow quickly only because governments were willing to help mission schools, and to pay a large part of the salary of the Christian teachers. This was true of India, of Indonesia, and of large parts of Africa. The twentieth century has been marked by the rapid rise o national feeling all over Asia and Africa. It was clear that, when the peoples of Asia and Africa gained their freedom, the new governments would not be Christian governments; it was probable that they would wish to take over all education themselves, and that they would no longer be willing to spend their money on Christian schools. So the Churches were faced with the question what they would do if they lost all the help which had been coming from the government. How many schools would they be able to keep going from their own funds?
And, in the thousands of villages, where the village teacher, paid mostly by the government, had been in charge of almost all the work of the Church as well, how could all this work be kept going? New plans would have to be made to meet a new situation.