Visiting Foreign Mission Centers
By A. G. Daniells
ON June 3 I sailed from San Francisco on the steamship “Wilhelmina” to fill appointments in Australia, China, and India. The arrangement to visit these fields was made at the General Conference held a year ago. The representatives from all the centers of our work outside of North America came to that conference with a united and earnest request that the officers of the General Conference spend more time attending the general meetings of the division and union conferences and missions throughout the world. This request, with the reasons therefor, was given careful study by the full committee, and was agreed to as a part of our general policy hereafter. In harmony with this decision it was then and there arranged that I should spend the summer of 1913 in the European Division Conference, the following winter in the North American Division, and start on my present trip in the spring of 1914. It was also decided that I should attend the biennial union conferences in Argentina and Brazil, South America, during the early part of 1916. As this extensive traveling may seem to some of our people who are giving of their hard-earned means for the support of our work, to be an unnecessary expenditure of mission funds, I feel that a brief statement of our present situation throughout the world should be made. We are connected with a living cause. It is continually growing, enlarging, and advancing. For this reason conditions are continually changing. Changes in conditions call for changes in plans of administration. There was a time when we had no organized conferences nor institutions of any kind. We occupied but a small section of territory. Then our plans were very simple. We wrote, printed, and distributed small papers and tracts, and preached the message in schoolhouses and small halls in villages. But a great change has taken place. The cause of present truth has extended from that small section into every part of the world. Churches, local conferences, union conferences, and great continental division conferences have been organized. In foreign mission fields, local, union, and continental division missions have been developed. In all these organized fields there have been established institutions for the printing and circulation of literature on a large scale, and for the education and training of workers in many languages. It may now justly be claimed that this is a world-wide movement. In the Western Hemisphere its representatives are hard at work all the way from Alaska to Cape Horn. In the Eastern Hemisphere they form a line along the arctic circle from Iceland eastward through Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Siberia, and extending on into Korea and Japan. From this long line in the north, the work of the third angel’s message has been established in nearly every important division of territory as far south as men dwell in the Southern Hemisphere. The movement has not been like a great tidal wave rolling over the continents, but like gentle showers falling upon all lands. And in every part of the world where the message has been proclaimed, believers have been gathered, new avenues have been opened, new conditions formed, and new demands created. Unless one follows the development of this work very closely, its advance will get far beyond his realization. One must study all phases of the work in every part of the world field in order to form true conceptions of its onward march. Few realize how many conferences have been organized and how many new countries entered during the last ten or twelve years. At the General Conference held in Battle Creek in the spring of 1901, a very definite and earnest call came to us to reorganize our administrative affairs, to bring more men within the circle of management, and to extend our operations far and wide throughout the world. Since then we have increased our union conference organizations from two to twenty-three, and our local conferences from forty-five to one hundred and twenty-eight. At that time we were operating missions in forty-two different lands; now we are working in more than one hundred. In all these foreign lands the growth in membership, funds, and the sale of literature has been very encouraging. The European Division Conference has increased its number of believers from 7,500 to nearly 32,000, a gain of over three hundred per cent. At the same time its annual tithe has increased from $46,000 to $364,000, an increase of seven hundred per cent. Its offerings to missions have been raised from $15,000 to $106,000, a gain of six hundred per cent. The sale of literature has been increased from $75,000 to $482,000, a gain of more than five hundred per cent. This great division conference, embracing all Europe, Asiatic Russia, Asiatic Turkey, Persia, Arabia, and the northern half of Africa, is now entirely self-supporting. With the close of the year 1913 this territory, with its millions of people, was removed from our General Conference appropriation list, thus allowing us to concentrate our offerings to missions on other needy fields. The Australasian Union, with its institutions and all its island mission fields in the South Pacific, has also become fully self-supporting. While writing this report, I am sailing over the Pacific Ocean along the same track I traveled twenty-eight years ago on my way to New Zealand. I am having some quiet hours for study and reflection. My heart is thrilled as I review the progress of the message during these twenty-eight years. Then we were just beginning our work in the Southern Hemisphere. We had not entered either Africa or South America. There were no Sabbath keepers on any of the islands south of the equator, except Pitcairn. There were only two ministers in the Southern Hemisphere. These were in Australia; and they were being supported by contributions from the brethren in America. Now one may find fellow workers and believers in every important seaport in the Southern Hemisphere. When I went out to New Zealand in 1886, our cause seemed a large and important one to me. We had 23,000 members, 28 local conferences, and nearly 400 conference laborers. Now we have more than 100,000 members, 128 local conferences, and more than 5,0007conference workers. We were then working in three foreign mission fields. At the present time we are operating in 103. At that time our total annual tithe was $146,000. Now it is $1,750,000. Our book and periodical sales in 1886 amounted to $76,000, while last year they mounted up close to $2,000,000. From the statistical point of view, the European Division alone is far stronger today than our whole movement was when I came on this long journey twenty-eight years ago. What is true of the growth of believers, tithes, offerings, and the sale of literature in the European Division, is true of many other parts of our world field. A dozen years ago we were carrying on missionary work in but one country of the Asiatic Division. That was Japan. Now we are permanently established in Korea, China, the Philippines, the Malay Peninsula, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo. We now have in this territory so recently entered more than 2,000 believers, paying an annual tithe of about $8,000, and selling more than $5,000 worth of literature each year. These converts also contribute $2,000 a year to the cause of foreign missions. Such is the record throughout the world, with the exception of the increase of membership in the United States. Here there has not been the same increase in membership as there has been in tithes, offerings, and the sale of literature. Some would endeavor to weaken the confidence of our people in this movement by claiming that the lack of growth in the homeland is evidence of general inefficiency, weakness, and retrogression; but this is not true. While we are no doubt at fault somewhere in this matter, yet it can be said to the credit of the believers in the United States that for a number of years they have been working most earnestly for the great regions beyond. Conferences have cheerfully let their most promising young preachers go in answer to the call of the Mission Board. Schools have surrendered their best teachers to take charge of new schools being established in foreign lands. From the Atlantic to the Pacific, union and local conferences have divided their tithes with the needy fields abroad. The officers and administrative committees of these conferences have refrained from calling upon the people for needed funds to carry forward their local work, while at the same time they have united with the members of the Mission Board in the effort to continually increase the annual gifts to foreign missions. These offerings have been raised from $90,000 in 1900 to more than $500,000 during the year 1913, while the annual tithe has increased from about $400,000 a year to more than $1,000,000, and the sale of literature from a little more than $100,000 in 1900 to $1,172,000 last year. This review of progress is not given to glorify either the people or the movement. These comparisons are made to show what God has wrought. He has been fulfilling his word. Two thousand years ago he declared that this threefold message should at this time be proclaimed to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people; and now he is bringing it to pass. When we consider the age in which we live, and the character of the message we bear, its triumphant march through the world is truly marvelous. The hand of God is in this work. To be rightly connected with it is the greatest honor that can come to one in this world. Now this steady extension of our work from the New England States to the whole wide world has called for changes, adjustments, and enlargement of plans of administration. In the early days before there were conferences, Elder James White, whose administrative gifts were recognized by all the believers, took the general oversight of the work. He and Sister White traveled from place to place, visiting, instructing, and encouraging the little companies of Sabbath keepers. Later when churches and conferences were organized in a few States, Elder White as president of the General Conference, which was formed of these State conferences, took the general supervision of affairs in all these local conferences. For many years the president of the General Conference attended all the annual sessions of the local conferences, giving instruction in all the details of the work, and taking an active part in the work of the committees on nominations, resolutions, credentials and licenses, and auditing. He helped to audit the accounts of every laborer in the cause. But as the work enlarged and the organizations increased, the president of the General Conference began to drop details. Finally he found it impossible to attend the annual meetings of all the conferences. To supply the place of the president of the General Conference the general committee called to their assistance the most experienced and capable presidents of local conferences. Great care was taken to see that some representative of the General Conference was present at every annual meeting of the local conference. All this detailed supervision was right and necessary in those days when the administrative foundations were being laid; but we have journeyed a long way since those days. There came to be so many conferences and missions in so many parts of the world that large union organizations were fitted in between the General Conference and the local conferences, to take the supervision of the latter. And now great continental division conferences are fitted in between the General Conference and the union conferences to take the oversight of the unions. These developments have necessarily changed the field of operation and the problems of the officers of the General Conference from time to time. They have been steadily pushed on to wider stretches of territory and to administrative work of a more general character. This steady expansion, this firm rooting, and this systematic development have at last enlarged the territorial supervision of the General Conference from the six States of which it was originally composed, to the whole world. And so the call for the officers of the General Conference to visit the largest and most important centers of our work throughout the world seems as reasonable and as insistent as was the call for their help by the six local conferences at the time of their organization fifty-one years ago. The conference committees and the institutional boards in charge of the schools, publishing houses, and sanitariums in these widely separated union and division conferences and mission fields throughout the world, have their hands and hearts full. They are all struggling with perplexing problems that often well-nigh overwhelm them. They feel the need of the presence, the experience, and the help of the general men. The General Conference officers need the association and information to be obtained by visiting these great divisions. All this helps to bind our cause together everywhere, and to maintain the world-wide unity so necessary to the speedy finishing of our work. If I may here speak a personal, and somewhat confidential, word to our people, I will say that the extensive traveling required by this program is not my personal choice. Twenty years of knocking about on railway trains and ocean steamships has more than satisfied any hankering I may have had to travel in my younger days. I should prefer a quiet life and a settled home with my family, rather than tramping over the world, living in suit cases, and having no regularity regarding food, rest, or work. For three years I have had the privilege of being with my boy, who is now eighteen, about one month each year. For twenty years I have been separated from my wife from half to two thirds of the time. In all those years we have crossed the ocean together once. In planning for this present long absence abroad we felt that she ought to accompany me, provided it could be done at our own expense. I make these brief statements that our people may know that we are not spending our time traveling about the world on pleasure trips at conference expense. We should be glad if8all traveling expenses could be avoided, but for the present it seems to be my duty to spend a large part of my time with the workers in the widely separated parts of the world, and it does not seem right to us that our family life should be so continuously broken. But no matter what the expense and sacrifice may be, we all rejoice in the growth and development of the Lord’s cause throughout the world. For this we have prayed, and given, and toiled these years, and we praise God for what he has wrought. A. G. DANIELLS.