Missions

Missions
"MISSIONS."
BY F. B. SHEPHERD.

There are two great, personal, heart-searching questions that have confronted man in all ages, upon the answers to which hinges his eternal destiny; i. e., "Where art thou?" "Where is thy brother?"

"Where art thou?" is a tremendous question and one vital in every walk of life, to which God and man demand an answer. He who has no strong convictions of his own upon which he entertains no doubt is a spineless member of soci­ety. To the professed Christian the question, "Where art thou?" on the vital dogmas of the Church —Faith, Repent­ance, Confession, Baptism, The Supper, Discipline, MIS­SIONS —is a test of his integrity. Do you believe the mis­sion of the Church is the grandest mission man has ever had or will ever know? Is this an all-absorbing faith or a mere tacit acknowledgement?

"Where is thy Brother?" In Romans 1:14 Paul ex­presses the true philosophy of life-debtors to others. Service was the crowning glory of the life of Christ, the outstanding feature of the Apostles' ministry, and should be the motto and slogan of the church to-day. It includes all that is high­est, noblest, and best in life. The Christ life, the great ideal for man, was the embodiment of unselfishness sympathy, service (Php_2:5-8); so now the Christian who is simply conserving a creed, and is not exemplifying the life of the Christ, is a blight upon the Vine. The fact that the standard of greatness in the Kingdom is service (Mark 10:42-52) ought to make us appreciate that: — A crucial test of the scripturalness of a church is as much its WORK as its WORSHIP. It is not merely what we know but what we do and are; an attitude of mere tacit acknowledgement that "Jesus is Lord" falls short of the divine requirement (John 12:42). The church of Christ must be something more than a mere assembly, It should be the expression of the life He lived, and which He left us to exemplify; it should be an aggressive force. Being entrusted with the "Word of Reconciliation" (2 Corinthians 5:18), and constituted, as it is, the only institution through which the Spirit is to propagate the "Power of Cod" to the salva­tion of a lost world (Ephesians 3:20), its right to he termed "Christian" or "Of Christ" depends upon its being the ex­ponent of Him who gave His life that we might live. When we behold the "Lamb of God," "The Lion of the Tribe of Judah," we must be impressed with his untiring energy .and all-absorbing zeal during the three and a half years of his personal ministry and must strive to emulate it. With the early church, membership in the body was not a matter of mere formal creed, but of conscious, living union with the Fountain Head; so its phenomenal growth resulted as much from the implicitness of its trust, the fervency and devotion of its obedience, and the vehemence with which it told the simple story, as from the orthodoxy of its theology. ()ne thing it learned, which we to-day seem slow to grasp, was that Christ commissioned them, not to convert the world, but to "preach the Gospel to every creature." Had the subterfuge resorted to by stingy ones to-day, "We need to convert the heathen at home before going abroad" been offered by the apostles, the Kingdom of the Lord Jesus would never have reached beyond the confines of Palestine, and we of the western hemisphere would still be in the dark­ness of paganism. That there is an urgent need for a definite policy for the doing of Missionary Work at home and abroad is self evi­dent in view:
Of the spread of falsehood in religious things.
Of our high claims to apostolicity, which make it incumbent upon us to evangelize to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Of the facts that the salvation of men depends upon their acceptance of the Gospel, and our salvation de­pends largely upon the effort we make to preach it fully.

There are 900,000,000 heathens in the world while we have but nine American missionaries in foreign fields. Of the something like 9,000 churches of Christ in America, fewer than 100 give regularly and fewer than 500 give anything for the spread of the primitive teaching beyond their own borders. These 9,000 churches with a membership esti­mated at half million give about $7,000 a year for such work, which amounts to the munificent sum of one and two- fifths cents per capita per year. Certainly this fact in itself is a rather insignificant argument against the work of the F. M. Societies, etc. Hence the questions, "How shall we do?" What shall we do?" are poignant.

Undoubtedly, the local congregation is the one God or­dained missionary society to send evangelists into all parts of the earth preaching the Gospel to every creature. We have seen the failure of self-appointed missionaries amenable to no one, dependent for financial support upon no one in par­ticular, but the brotherhood in general. For years one man has devoted himself to an almost fruitless effort to find men with the qualifications who are willing to go overseas to the work, and then to get their support assured. There is little more apostolic precedent for either course than for the "F. M. S.," and with less practical results. Where, then, shall we turn? What provision has the divine mind made to meet the need? The greatest missionary in the Christian dispen­sation, the Apostle Paul, was SENT by the church at An­tioch to the work. In this case (Acts 13:2) the Holy Spirit was directly responsible for the selection of the men who should go, but the church was made the agent to do the send­ing and the board to which the missionaries were subject (Acts 14:26-27). Were such a course followed to-day and missionaries SENT by local bodies, those bodies would have a definite missionary policy; and, if one church was not strong enough itself to support a man, it would solicit help for him. Its local evangelist would preach definitely and specifically about some "Mission" rather than for "Missions" in a general vague, unsystematic way. Shall the church in the aggregate send missionaries? If so, it needs some official board and the Bible makes no provision for such. Is it not the God-ordained appointment of the local institution? This course would also remove the possibility of unscriptural institutions growing out of a combination of churches to support one man, and a missionary thus sent would be under the over-sight of the congregation sending. Such a dis­graceful condition as we now have in India would be easily dealt with, for some congregation would have jurisdiction over the men and could recall them for trial, passing on the case and dealing with the guilty as the New Testament pre­scribes, rather than merely withholding financial support until an investigation can be made by nobody knows who. Reason itself demands that workers in India, Japan, or Africa be under the over-sight of a congregation as much as a worker in the U. S.

Then, again, what have we in the way of organized churches in these foreign fields? Did not the apostles or­ganize local congregations, appointing elders in every church? (Acts 14:23) teaching them to become independent local bodies from which should go out other missionaries to establish other congregations? Are we in this country to carry one, two, or a dozen native congregations indefinitely? Is it possible they will never become self-supporting, not to say missionary? If it is true, as has been demonstrated, that the best way to assist our own foreign element is to leach and encourage them to help themselves, will not the same plan work successfully abroad? The Presbyterian Church in England has for years been systematically with­drawing part of its financial support from certain African missions, and those missions have automatically assumed the responsibility. Such a system would conduce to the growth and ultimate independence of some mission points and would release funds and men for work elsewhere until we should establish the primitive Gospel in every corner of the globe. In conclusion let me urge that we throw off our spiritual neurosis, and, in view of our unique position in the religious world with no man-made theories to propagate, ecclesiastical system to protect, or human creed to adhere to, of the scrip­tures in the freedom, let us get a vision of "Greater things for God" in a systematic way. Let us become a people of leaders and boosters, not just hinderers and knockers. Too long have we practiced iconoclasm instead of being propa­gandists. What we need is to be pro-gressive (Php_3:13) that we may expose the unscripturalness of di-gression: and, if this is to be, we must first of all get an all-consuming love for Christ burning in our hearts, which is the only true in­centive to service. Let us see the millions of earth, weak, erring, driven to and fro by winds of adversity and false teaching, "sheep without a shepherd," and remember the depth and quality of our love for Christ can be expressed only in the attitude we sustain towards the salvation of men. "Lovest thou Me more than these?" Then reach out after the ones for whom He died. There is hope for the man who possesses a consuming desire to honor God, no matter how far wrong he may be, hut the case of the indifferent is almost hopeless. Let us show a more excellent way.