Our Mission Funds by W. T. Knox

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 13, 1916

Our Mission Funds

By W. T. Knox

SABBATH, July 29, has been appointed as the day upon which the General Conference will receive the usual Midsummer Offering for foreign missions. This is one of the two general offerings received each year to help make up the funds of the Mission Board, and comes in the very midst of what experience has proved to be, from a financial standpoint, the most trying months of the year; for from April 1 to October 31 the income of the General Conference is always insufficient to meet its operating expenses, thus many times causing the committee much anxiety, and sometimes real distress. Therefore they have always looked forward to the Midsummer Offering with much interest and concern, as affording an excellent opportunity nity to secure financial relief during these seven lean months of the year.

That the readers of the REVIEW AND HERALD may have a knowledge of the actual condition of the General Conference treasury up to the present date, the following facts and figures are placed before them. At the last council held at Loma Linda, provision was made for 1916 for an unusually large increase in the foreign mission work of the denomination, the total amount of the budget voted for all the operating expenses and appropriations being in the neighborhood of $650,000. In addition to this, the committee, as in former years, is to cooperate with the Division Conference Committee in raising a relief fund for the training schools and needy sanitariums of North America, amounting approximately to $185,000. This brings the total amount to be raised for the year up to $835,000; but it is the $650,000 in which the General Conference is most vitally concerned, for upon this amount is depending all our foreign mission work in all lands. Hundreds, yes, thousands, of our brethren are entirely dependent upon our promptness in securing these funds, for the actual necessities of life.

The sources from which the General Conference may meet this heavy draft are, first, the Twenty-cent-a-week Fund. The full portion of this fund belonging to the Mission Board would total $557,000. The portion belonging to the relief fund would, if the entire twenty cents a week per member was raised, bring the total to $743,000. From this, however, the Mission Board is first to be supplied at the rate of fifteen cents a member, or $557,000. This would still leave $93,000 for the General Conference work, to be provided for from other sources, such as the tithe from the different Division Conferences and miscellaneous gifts. But this is a much larger sum than has been realized from these sources in past years. Briefly expressed, these are the financial responsibilities placed upon the General Conference treasury for 1916, calling for a monthly expenditure of $54,000.

Now, what is the other side? How has the membership of North America been meeting this responsibility? The report of receipts on the Twenty-cent-a-week Fund up to May 31 shows that, to have realized the full, there should have been paid into the treasury at that time $311,443. Of this, $77,860, however, would have been relief funds. We have received only $188,800, leaving a deficit of $122,643. Judging by the past two months, our monthly mission receipts for the summer are about $30,000 as against $54,000 needed to sustain our work. We began the year's business with about $100,000 in the treasury as an operating fund. By the last of July, when an appeal for the Midsummer Offering is to be made, this entire operating fund will have been consumed, and the work will be confronted with an empty treasury; this, too, in the face of the fact that on August 1 a party of forty is to sail from San Francisco for the East, and these to be followed in seven days by another party of fourteen from Seattle, for India, Malaysia, and other far-eastern fields.

These statements are in no sense inspired by pessimism, nor are they intended to bring discouragement to the reader, but rather to give to all our brethren at this time a correct understanding of the true situation confronting us, in order that all may intelligently respond to the appeal of the General and Division Conferences for large and liberal offerings. Brethren, the need is most urgent that funds in large amounts should at this time be given to our foreign work. We appeal to you now to prepare for this service, and on Sabbath, July 29, appear before the Lord with substantial evidences of thankful and appreciative hearts for all God's many benefits bestowed upon us.

W. T. Knox.