p. 5 | Organization in Foreign Fields by G. B. Thompson

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 30, 1907

Organization in Foreign Fields

By G. B. Thompson

THE organization of any work is necessary in order to secure the greatest efficiency. Nowhere is this more true than in the successful carrying forward of a message like that of the third angel—world-wide in its scope. As the work expands, and increases in power, it will always be necessary to have a growing organization through which it can express itself, and thus secure the co-operation of all the departments and agencies employed.

Warfare against organization is always to be deplored. It may produce heat, but not light. Emotion may be displayed, but it is not the conviction born from an intelligent and careful consideration of all the facts.

Nowhere is organization more necessary than in carrying forward our work in foreign mission fields. Workers who leave home and friends and cross the seas have a high and a holy function, and they feel the need of having behind them some organized body to help them in planning their work. They do not care to go to these distant fields depending on some local church. A few have done so, but it has proved in each instance disastrous to the best interests of the work. Those who advocate different schemes of disorganization should go into some distant land, and in the heat and malaria of some tropic jungle, amid superstition and ignorance, put their theories to a practical test. They will then be able to speak from experience. But it will require only one such experience to dissipate forever their views against organization. The futility of attempting to carry on a missionary campaign without an organization behind it will then be perfectly apparent. Organization does not hinder the work, nor does it rob the cause of God of the power and energy of the Holy Spirit.

The writer is now in an important foreign field, and for a time has had the privilege of associating with the workers here. While all believe in organization, and help to take advance steps, I see no evidence that they are in any sense trusting in organization itself for power to carry the message to the millions of heathen, or that organization is in any way a hindrance to the work. Knowing full well that there is no life in a mere form, they earnestly seek God for the power of the Holy Spirit to give life. But because there is no life in a skeleton, shall we conclude that bones in the structural make-up of man are injurious and a hindrance to the performance of his proper functions?

How could it be any better for one sent to a foreign field if he should have to look to a local church for counsel and support rather than to a conference? Is it better to trust in a fragment than in the whole? Are we to conclude that it is better to trust in a few than in many?

Then if organization is an evil thing, why organize a church? If organization is an evil principle in which people trust for power, why do we find this so-called evil thing placed by the Lord in the church? There is no difference in principle between a small organization and a large one. Conference organization is simply an extension of the principle of organization which the Lord himself placed in the church that the church may systematically carry forward her work in the earth.

Our missionary work abroad should be carefully and thoroughly organized. My visit to India—one of the greatest mission fields of the world—has served to impress this very deeply on my mind.

As the work increases here and in other fields as well, great and varied agencies will necessarily be created, and it will require careful planning to execute the work well. Fragmentary operation will result only in collision and confusion. At our late meeting, for example, the place had been reached in our work when it was necessary in order to properly carry on the work to form a legal organization to hold property. If, however, the principle of organization is wrong, then legal organizations in home and foreign lands are wrong in principle, and we must have no system in financial matters. Why should the financial department of our work have organization, and the evangelical department no organization? There is no difference in principle between a legal organization to hold a certain property, and an evangelical organization to manage and carry forward the work in that property.

No one believes that matters of detail in the missionary operations in distant fields should be autocratically directed by a Board thousands of miles away. Those on the ground must have a very large voice in conducting the affairs of the work in which they are engaged. But in the furtherance of our work as a whole it is certainly an aid to have the counsel and help of men of large experience who are in full sympathy and close touch with this work. And it is just this that the splendid system of organization in this work affords.

Suggestions and well-formed plans, from time to time, from a central home committee will always be helpful. No mission can succeed where policy is shaped by the caprice of some individual. Think what a babel would result from trying to carry forward a world-wide missionary work with as many different policies as there are churches or individuals in the denomination!

To have no fixed policy is like shooting without having a target, and a policy should be shaped only by study, counsel, prayer, and careful deliberation. This can be done only through organization. Why should it hinder the outpouring of the Holy Spirit any more for a committee to outline a policy, and suggest to laborers some lines of work, than for a local church to do so, or even for a single individual to follow his own plan? It is quite within the bounds of possibility for one person to set in operation a plan with which the Lord has nothing to do, and a plan born of one individual is as dangerous as one born of a committee. It is quite possible we believe for a number of persons alike interested in a work to ascertain the mind of the Lord, and in doing this they in no sense take the place of God, or hinder any individual from seeking God for light and direction.

Our work in the foreign fields is taking on rapid growth. And one hopeful feature is that it is not in an unorganized condition. We have the same general organization extending throughout the world, not as a stiff, iron-clad thing, but with life and growth in it, so that it adjusts itself to the needs and development of the work in the various fields. As the work grows in the fields, it is necessary from time to time to strengthen and further develop the organization. The babel of confusion that would result if we should seek to do aggressive evangelical work, operate printing houses, sanitariums, and our great educational work, with no system of organization is beyond human conception. That any thinking mind would advocate such a ruinous policy is strange indeed. Yet printed documents reach us in this far-away field, which, followed to their logical conclusion, mean just this.

The work of this message has been persistently opposed by the confederacy of evil from its very beginning, but it has gone steadily on. Satan well knows that he will be unable to check the advance of the disciplined and organized hosts, that, clothed with the preparation of the gospel and bearing the weapons of truth, are giving God’s last message to the world. So, while having his own legions under a perfect organization (see Eph. 6: 6-12), he is making a special effort at the present time to seduce the church of God into the idea that they can best cope with his cohorts as a disorganized mass, without any unity of action. Let the church of the Lord stand firm, giving no countenance to this voice out of the darkness, but hold fast and strengthen the principles of organized effort which have been with us from the beginning.

G. B. Thompson.