The Foreign Missionary Author:Arthur Judson Brown Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION WORLD evangelization being the supreme work of the Church, the method of administration should be commensurate in scope and d... more »ignity with the task to be performed. Such a work cannot be properly done by individuals or by congregations acting separately. It is too vast, the distance too great, the single act too small. Local churches do not have the experience in dealing with missionary problems or the comprehensive knowledge of details necessary for the proper conduct of such an enterprise. Moreover, the individual may die or lose his money. The single church may become indifferent or discouraged. Even if neither of these alternatives happened, the work would lack stability. It would be fitful, sporadic, too largely dependent upon accidental knowledge or temporary emotion. A chance newspaper article or a visit from some enthusiastic missionary might direct a disproportionate stream of gifts to one field, while others equally or perhaps more important, would be neglected. The wise expenditure of large sums of money in far distant lands, the checks and safe-guards essential to prudent control, the equitable distribution of workers and forms of work, the proper balancing of interests between widely-scattered and isolated points, the formulation of principles of mission policy—all these require a central, administrative agency. This is a spiritual warfare on a vast scale, and war cannot be prosecuted by individuals fighting independently, however numerous or conscientious. There must be an army with its centralization of authority, its compactness of organization, its unity of movement, its persistence of purpose. The Japanesedefeated the Chinese, not because they were abler, but because they were better organized. A church or a conference can, wi...« less