Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions Part 1

Missionary Survey As An Aid To Intelligent Co-Operation In Foreign Missions.

by Roland Allen.

PREFACE.

This book, written by Mr. Allen, bears both our names because we studied the material together, and settled what should be included and what excluded. We discussed and disputed, and finally found ourselves in complete agreement. We therefore decided to issue the book in our joint names, on the understanding that I should be allowed to disclaim the credit for writing it. But the book would never have been written at all save for the inspiration and help of Mr. S.J.W. Clark, who, in his travels in nearly every mission field, has brought an unusually acute mind, trained by a long business experience, to bear upon mission problems, and has done more hard thinking on the question of survey than any man we know.

Let anyone who doubts the need for survey study the present distribution of missionary forces. He will find little evidence of any plan or method. In one region of the world there are about four hundred and fifty missionaries to a population of three millions, while in another area with more than double the number of people, there are only about twenty missionaries.

After travelling in the latter region I asked one of the senior workers what in his opinion would be a large enough foreign staff, and he indicated quite a moderate addition to the existing force. Suppose I had suggested a total of a hundred missionaries, he would have declared the number far too large. Perhaps he was too modest in his demands.

Conditions in one area differ from those in another. But such a wide difference in distribution and in demands makes the need of survey to ascertain facts and conditions absolutely imperative, especially when we remember that to the force of four hundred and fifty in the territory with the smaller population, missionaries will probably continue to be added and unevangelised regions will have to wait.

After surveying one of the better staffed divisions of the mission field, a missionary declared that not more missionaries were needed, but a more effective use of the force at work; and fortunately in that particular field central direction is beginning to secure that end. But usually there is no central direction and no comparison of plans between neighbouring missions on the field, although several missions may be located in the same town or city; and two Mission Houses in London may be almost next door neighbours, and may have missions in the same city in the Far East, and may yet be entirely ignorant of each other's plans for work in that city. They might be rival businesses guarding trade secrets! Hence it is not strange that when late in the day a survey of a city in China is made in which there are about two hundred missionaries, it is found that not one of them is giving full time to evangelistic work! Across the city of Tokyo a line could be drawn west of which all the foreign workers live, while east of it there are nine hundred and sixty thousand people without a single resident missionary!

But not only is intermission planning, based on survey, sadly lacking; few missions have thoroughly surveyed their own fields and their own work, and fewer still have surveyed them in relation to the work of others. The result is that policies are adopted and staffs increased in a way which--for all administrators know to the contrary--may be adding weight where it should be diminished, and may be piling up expenditure in the wrong place.

It should be pointed out, however, that survey is beginning to come into its own. It is being more and more realised that it should be the basis of all co-operative work, and the survey of China now nearing completion places that country in a premier position as far as a foundation for wise building is concerned. Recently in London, neighbouring Mission Houses have been getting into touch with each other, and the Conference of British Missionary Societies and the a.n.a.logous body in America have made conference between missions frequent and fruitful. But there is a long way yet to travel before we can have that comprehensive planning which the present world situation imperatively and urgently demands.

But just as neighbouring missions should get to know about each other's work and plans in order that funds may be spent most effectively; so a world survey is necessary if the command of Christ is to be adequately obeyed. The unit is the world, and survey in patches may misdirect money which would have been spent differently if the whole need had been before the eyes of those who are charged with the responsibility of administration.

We make bold to affirm that no Society can be sure that it is spending the money entrusted to it wisely unless it has a satisfactory system of survey in operation, a system which takes account not only of its own work but also of the work of others. We go further and say that the chances are the money is _not_ bringing the maximum return. When world need is so vast it is time to challenge a reasoned contradiction of this a.s.sertion. If each Society did what in justice to its const.i.tuency it ought to do, a survey of an area such as a province or a country would be an easy task, and a survey of the world would be neither difficult nor expensive, and after all, until we know the whole, we cannot intelligently administer the part.

The missionary enterprise waits for the men who will take the comprehensive view and become leaders in the greatest and most fundamental task of all time. Until these leaders appear, mission work, for those who seek to understand it as a world enterprise, will, as a layman said recently, remain worse than a jigsaw puzzle!

THOS. COCHRANE.

CHAPTER I.

THE IMPORTANCE OF A DOMINANT PURPOSE.

It is a marked characteristic of our age that every appeal for an expression of energy should be an intellectual appeal. Emotional appeals are of course made, and made with tremendous force, but, with the emotional appeal, an emphasis is laid to-day upon the intellectual apprehension of the meaning of the effort demanded which is something quite new to us. Soldiers in the ranks have the objective of their attack explained to them, and this explanation has a great influence over the character and quality of the effort which they put forth.

Labourers demand and expect every day a larger and fuller understanding of the meaning of the work which they are asked to perform. They need to enjoy the intellectual apprehension of the larger aspects of the work, and the relation of their own detailed operations to those larger aspects; and it is commonly recognised that the understanding of the meaning and purpose of the detail upon which each operative may be engaged is a most powerful incentive to good work. In the past leaders relied more upon implicit, unreasoning obedience, supported often by affection for the leader's own character, and profound trust in his wisdom, and a general hope of advantage for each individual who carried out orders unhesitatingly and exactly; but they did not think it necessary, or even desirable, that the common workers should understand their plans and act in intelligent co-operation with them: to-day, intelligent co-operation is prized as it has never been prized before, and its value is realised as it has never been realised before.

If this is true in the world of arms, of labour, of commerce, it is equally true in the world of foreign missions. The common worker, the subscriber, the daily labourer, is beginning to demand that he shall be allowed to take an intelligent part in the work, and missionary leaders are beginning to see the importance of securing intelligent co-operation. In the past the appeal has been rather to blind obedience, and immense stress has been laid upon the "command"; the appeal has been to the emotions, and love for Christ, love for the souls of men, hope of eternal blessings, hope of the coming of the Kingdom, and (for direction of the work) trust in the wisdom of great missionary leaders or committees, have been thought sufficient to inspire all to put forth their best efforts; but to-day, as in the labour world, as in commerce, as in the army, so in the world of missions, the intellect is taking a new place. Men want to understand why and how their work a.s.sists towards the attainment of the goal, they want to know what they are doing, they want to understand the plan and to see their work influencing the accomplishment of the plan.

It is no doubt true that the demand for intelligent co-operation, both on the part of the subscribers and workers on the one side and of the great leaders and boards of directors on the other, is at present slight, weak, uncertain and hesitating; but it is already beginning to make itself felt, and must increase. Certainly it is true that the support of a very large body of men is lost because they have never yet been able to understand the work of foreign missions. They are accustomed in their daily business to "know what they are driving at,"

and to relate their action to definite ends; and they have not seen foreign missions directed to the attainment of definite ends. They have not seen in them any clear dominant purpose to which they could relate the manifold activities of the missionaries whom they were asked to support; and they cannot give to the vague and chaotic that support which they might give to work which they saw clearly to be directed to the attainment of a great goal which they desired by a policy which they understood. The att.i.tude of these men is the att.i.tude of those who await an intelligent appeal to their intelligence.

For a true understanding of foreign missions it is necessary first that their aim and object should be clearly defined. Without such a definition intelligent co-operation is impossible. Unless the objective is understood men cannot estimate the value of their work. They cannot trace progress unless they can see clearly the end to be attained; they cannot zealously support action unless they are persuaded that the action is truly designed to attain the defined end. There may indeed be many subordinate objects, and men may be asked to work for the attainment of any one of these, but there ought to be one final end and purpose which governs all, and intelligent co-operation involves the appreciation of the relation between the subordinate and the final end.

Consequently if many objects are set before us, as they are in our foreign missions, it is essential that these many purposes and objects should be presented to us not simply as ends to be attained, but in their relation to one another and in their relation to the final end which the directors of our missions have clearly before their eyes.

Now it is just at this point that we fail to attain satisfaction. All societies publish reports and statistics, but the reports and statistics do not provide us with any clear and intelligible account of progress towards any definite end. They seem rather designed to attract and to appeal to our sympathy than to satisfy our intelligence. They set before us all kinds of work unrelated, indefinite, changeable, and changing from year to year, as though the compilers selected from the letters of missionaries any striking statements which they thought would attract support in themselves and by themselves. No goal is set before us, and the progress towards that goal steadily traced from year to year; still less is the relation between the different methods and means employed to attain each subordinate objective expressed so that we can see, not only what progress each is making towards its own immediate end, but what is the effective value of all together towards the attainment of a final end to which they all contribute.

But would not the definition of one great end or purpose hinder us? Are not all the great ends which we set before ourselves indefinite enough to include a host of different and mutually separate and even occasionally incompatible subsidiary objects, aims, and methods? Would not the rigid definition of the aim of our foreign missions, by excluding a great many legitimate aims and methods, weaken and beggar our missions, which are strong in proportion as they admit all sorts of different aims and methods? There are men who speak and act as if they thought so, and in consequence welcome as a proper part of the missionary programme all Christian, social, and political activities.

_Anything_, they think, which makes for the amelioration of life, _everything_ which tends to enlighten and uplift the bodies, the souls, and the minds of men, is a proper object for the missionary to pursue, and the missionary should a.s.sist every movement towards a higher life in the heathen community as well as in the Christian, and should introduce every method and plan, industrial, social, or political, literary, or artistic, which tends to enn.o.ble the life of men. It may be so. It may be true that the introduction of everything which tends to uplift and enlighten is a proper object for missionary activity, but we venture to argue not all at once, in the same place, nor even any one of them at the whim of any missionary at any time, anywhere. Nor all in the same order. There is a more and a less important. And we do urge that if we are to take an intelligent part in foreign missions and to give those missions intelligent support, we must know what is the more important and what the less. We are told that the duty of the foreign mission is to bring all nations into the obedience of Christ, and that "all the nations" means all the people of all the nations, and all the capacities, powers, and activities of all the people of all the nations, individually and collectively, and that any work which tends to bring any part of the collective action of any non-Christian people under the direction of Christian principles is, therefore, the proper work of the missionary, and that the most important is the particular social, industrial, or political scheme which the missionary who is addressing us believes to be the pressing need of the moment in his district.

So long as foreign missions are presented to us in that way, so long as any mission may serve any purpose, we cannot possibly take any intelligent share in foreign missions as a whole. We are lost. We cannot co-ordinate in thought the activities of the missions, as we see plainly that they are not co-ordinated in action in the field itself. And it is practically impossible for us to imagine that the missions are directed on any thought-out policy, because a policy seems to involve necessarily the sub-ordination of the aim deemed to be less important to another which is deemed to be more important, and the less or the more must depend, not upon personal predilections, but upon closeness of relation to some one dominant idea; and, therefore, the definition of the dominant idea is the first necessity for the establishment of a reasonable missionary policy.

To some minds the idea of a policy in connection with missions seems to be abhorrent; but can a society with an income of something between half and a quarter of a million pounds, or even less, afford to aim at every type and form of missionary activity? Is it not necessary that it should know and express to itself, to its missionaries, and to its supporters what forms of activity it deems essential, what less important, what aims it will pursue with all its strength, and what it will refuse to pursue at all? It cannot afford to pursue every good or desirable object which it may meet in its course. It must have a dominant purpose which really controls its operations, and forces it to set aside some great and n.o.ble actions because they are not so closely related to the dominant purpose as some other.

A society with the limited resources which most of us lament cannot do everything. In medicine it cannot afford to aim at a strictly evangelistic use of its medical missions and at a use which is not strictly evangelistic. We hear men talk sometimes as if it were the business of a missionary society to undertake the task of healing the physical afflictions of the people almost in the same sense as it is the business of a missionary society to seek to heal their souls. We hear them talk sometimes as if it was the duty of a missionary society to supplant the native medical practice by western medical science as surely as it is their business to supplant idolatry by the preaching of Christ. And the tolerance of these ideas has certainly influenced the direction of missions. The evangelistic value of medical missions has not been the one dominant directing principle in their administration, and the consequences have been confusion of aim and waste of power. Nor has any other dominant purpose taken control; no other purpose, philanthropic, social, or economic, ever will take control so long as the vast majority of the supporters of foreign missions are people whose one real desire is the salvation of men in Christ. But the admission of another purpose has blurred the aim.

Because they have been pioneers in education, missions earn large praise and not in-considerable support from governors and philanthropists; but they have sometimes paid for these praises and grants dearly in confusion of aim. Many of them started with the intention of relating their educational work very closely to their evangelistic work; but because the evangelistic idea was not dominant, a government grant sometimes led the educational mission far from its first objective.

Similarly, the establishment of great educational inst.i.tutions altered the whole policy of a mission over very large areas, because no dominant purpose controlled the action of the mission authorities. The inst.i.tutions demanded such large support, financial and personal, that when once they had been founded they tended to draw into themselves a very large proportion of the best men who joined the mission. In this way a great educational inst.i.tution has often altered the policy of a mission to an extent which its original founders never antic.i.p.ated, and a mission which was designed primarily to be an evangelistic mission has been compelled not only to check advance, but even to withdraw its evangelistic workers and to close its outstations. But that was not the intention of the founders of the inst.i.tution. The difficulty arose because there was no dominant purpose which governed the direction of the mission. There was no purpose so strong and clear that it could prevent the foundation of, or close when founded, an inst.i.tution which was leading it far from its primary object.

Again it is notorious that what we call the work of the evangelistic missionary is so manifold and variegated that it includes every kind of activity, every sort of social and economic reform. Our evangelistic missionaries are busy about everything, from itinerant preaching to the establishment of banks and asylums. Can we afford it? What purpose is dominant, what aim really governs the policy of those who send out evangelistic missionaries? What decides the form of their work and the method by which they pursue it? It is hard to guess, it is hard to discover, it is hard to understand.

Now when our missions are presented to us and we are asked to support them on all sorts of grounds, as though a society with its slight funds could really successfully practise every kind of philanthropic work, we begin to doubt whether it can really be wisely guided. Each mission station, each inst.i.tution, seems to be an isolated fragment. The missionary in charge often appeals to us as an exceedingly good and able man, and we support him, and we support the society which sends him and others like him. And we call this the support of foreign missions; but foreign missions as a unity we do not support because we can see no unity. The directors of foreign missions appear not to have hitched their wagon to a star, but rather to all the visible stars, and we cannot tell whither they are going. So we fall back on the individual missionary, or the isolated mission which at any rate for the moment seems to have an intelligible objective.

Hence the common conception of missionary work as small. We look at the parts, and the smallest parts, because our minds instinctively seek a unity, and only in the parts do we find a unity, nor there often, unless we concentrate our attention on one aspect of the work. But by thinking of foreign missions in this small way and speaking of them in this small way, we alienate men who are accustomed to think in large terms of large undertakings designed on large policies.

What we need to-day is to understand foreign missions as a whole. We want to take an intelligent part in them viewed as a unity. We want to know what is the grand objective and how the parts are related to that end. We do not want merely to support this mission because this missionary appeals to us; we want to know what dominant purpose governs the activities of the different societies, directs, and controls them, deciding what work good and excellent in itself the mission cannot afford to undertake, what it can and must do with the means at its disposal in order to attain an end which it has deliberately adopted.

We need more, we need to know on what principles the missionaries are sent here or there. We need to know what facts must be taken into consideration before any mission, evangelistic, educational, or medical, is planted in any place, what facts decide the question whether work is begun, or reinforcements sent, to this place rather than to that. It is not enough to be a.s.sured that there is a need. There is need everywhere.

We cannot supply all need; but we can have some settled and clear judgment what facts ought to weigh with us, what information we must possess before we can decide properly whether the claim of this place is more urgent than the claim of that. We ought to have same basis of comparison. The mere appeal of an earnest and devoted man, the mere clamour of a body of men, the mere insistence of a persevering man, is not sufficient to guide us aright. The mere offer of some supporter to provide a building ought not to suffice. Acceptance of the offer may alter the whole balance and character of the mission. We ought to know what facts must be considered and how.

We need therefore a reasoned statement of the work of our foreign missions expressed as a unity, which sets forth the work actually done in different departments showing their relation one to another and the relation of all to a dominant object. In other words, what we need is a survey of the missionary situation in the world in terms of these relations.h.i.+ps.

It may be said that such a claim is outrageous and impossible; but we are persuaded that with our present enlightenment, with the means of knowledge which we now possess, we could, if we thought it worth while, lay our hands on the necessary information. Our firm conviction is that, if we did that, and set out the results of our examination in a form intelligible to thoughtful laymen, we should obtain the support of a great number of men to whom foreign missions at present appear as nothing but the ill-organised, fragmentary and indefinite efforts of pious people to propagate their peculiar schemes for the betterment of humanity. Without some such statement we do not know how anyone can take an intelligent, though he may take a sentimental, interest in foreign missions.

CHAPTER II.

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.

1. We need a survey of the missionary situation in the world which will express the facts in terms of the relations.h.i.+ps between the different missionary activities and between them all in relation to a dominant idea or purpose. Such a survey is strictly scientific. All scientific survey is properly governed by the end or purpose for which it is made.

It is this purpose or end which decides what is to be included and what is to be excluded from the survey. If, for instance, we are making a survey of the acoustic properties of church buildings in England, it is not scientific to introduce questions as to the character of the gospel preached in them. A scientific survey is not necessarily a collection of all possible information about any people or country; that is an encyclopaedia; a scientific survey is a survey of those facts only which throw light on the business in hand. A scientific survey of foreign missions ought not then necessarily to look at the work carried on from "every point of view". The point of view must be defined, the end to be served defined, and then only those factors which throw light upon that end have any place in a scientific survey. We cannot be too clear about this, because in survey of a work so vast and so many sided as foreign missions we might easily include every human activity, unless we defined beforehand the end to be served and selected carefully only the appropriate factors. Carefully defined, missionary survey is not the unwieldy, amorphous thing which people often imagine. There is indeed a dangerous type of survey which starting with a hypothesis proceeds to prove it by collecting any facts which seem to support it to the neglect of all other facts which might disprove it. The procedure advocated here is the adoption of a definite and acknowledged purpose for which the survey is to be made and the collection of all the facts which bear upon the subject in hand. The facts are selected, but they are selected not by the prejudices or partiality of the surveyor, but by their own innate and inherent relations.h.i.+p to the subject.

A scientific survey can only be a collection of facts; but inferences will certainly be drawn from the facts which will direct the policy of those who administer foreign missionary societies. The drawing of these inferences from the material collected must be carefully distinguished from the collection of the material (i.e. the making of the survey). The latter precedes the former and is independent of it. Inferences hastily drawn, or prematurely adopted, would only tend to discredit missionary survey as a means to the attainment of truth. The adoption of a hypothesis and the making of a survey in order to prove it by a careful selection and manipulation of facts would not discredit survey as a means to the attainment of truth; it would only discredit and debase the moral character of the man who made such a survey.

2. The survey here treated of is missionary survey, that is to say, it treats of missions and is governed by a missionary purpose. And it is a survey of Christian missions; therefore it is governed by the purpose of spreading the knowledge of Christ. This statement is of great importance and needs to be carefully conned before it is accepted, because by it missionary survey will be distinguished from all other survey. For instance, medical boards survey medical inst.i.tutions. Their sole concern is whether those inst.i.tutions are well found and efficient.[1]

But when a missionary surveys a missionary hospital (if the principle which we propound is accepted), he surveys it not _qua_ medical establishment but _qua_ missionary utensil. The object is not to find out the medical efficiency of the hospital, but its missionary effectiveness. It may be answered that a medically inefficient hospital cannot be truly effective from a missionary point of view. That may be true; but it is not certainly true. Whether it is true or not, that does not alter the fact that an efficient medical establishment is not necessarily effective from a missionary point of view; it is not necessarily either missionary or Christian at all. Then to survey medical missions simply as medical inst.i.tutions is to ignore their real significance. Missionary survey must relate the information asked for to the missionary purpose; and unless it is so related the survey is a medical survey, not a missionary survey. The same holds good of educational work, and of pastoral work.

[Footnote 1: We could produce surveys of medical and educational mission work which are essentially of this character, dealing solely with medical and educational efficiency.]

3. The survey here proposed is designed for all societies so far as the societies can be persuaded to supply the information. It would perhaps be more simple to provide statistical returns for one society of which the ecclesiastical organisation is known and the ecclesiastical terms used consequently fixed. But survey of the work of a society, invaluable and necessary as that is for a society, is not sufficient by itself. It is essential to-day that we should be able to place our work in the world in relation to all the missionary work done. We can no longer afford to ignore the work of others and to plan our missions as though other missions did not exist. As we try to point out from time to time no society can act rightly in ignorance of another's work. Therefore we have attempted to design a survey which would show what is the work of any mission in such a form that its work can be related in some sort to the missionary work of all, and not only to the other missions of its own society.

4. Seeing that all survey is scientifically governed by the object for which it is made, it is essential that in a survey such as we propose the end for which it is made should be stated in each case as clearly and definitely as possible. This involves often such a definition of the end as implies a certain missionary policy. Realising this, we have not hesitated to set forth the policy implied in the terms which we use and the questions which we ask.[1] We are well aware that this lays us open to attack from men who may question the policy and dispute the value of the survey. It would be far more easy to set down simply the facts which we think any true survey should contain, leaving them unrelated to one another, so that no one could tell exactly what we were driving at. This is the common plan. Men say they want to know the facts of the missionary situation, any facts, all facts, indiscriminately, and they draw up a list of all the facts that they can think of and issue a _questionnaire_ which leaves the compiler of the answers in complete ignorance concerning the purpose of the questions. Such heaps of information might be used anyhow if they were really complete; but in fact since they have not been designed for any definite use they are generally deficient for any definite use, and remain mere ma.s.ses of information on which no true judgments can be based. So far from revealing the missionary situation they obscure it. We have, therefore, taken the risk of explaining why we want each piece of information, how we think it might be used, and have drawn our tables in such a form that it is actually seen at work. By so doing we open the door at once, both for intelligent co-operation and intelligent opposition. We frankly make criticism easy; we invite it; for we believe that frank criticism on the basis of agreed facts is extremely fruitful.

[Footnote 1: It does not follow that we approve the policy implied.]