Interdependence of Home and Foreign Missionary Work
By M. E. Ellis
THE carrying of the gospel message to all the world is not a part of the work of this people, but it is the work, and there can be no distinction in the mind of the Lord as to the relative importance of home and foreign work, except such as is based on the need of any locality. “The One who, of all who ever walked the earth, was the most tender and faithful in what we call home missionary work, was the same who said, ‘Go ye into all the world.’ The voice broken with weeping over Jerusalem, the city of his love, was the same which uttered the sublime words, ‘That repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations.’ And when we drop out of our life-work the ‘universal thought,’ it has lost the spirit of Him who said, ‘The field is the world.’” —“The Missionary Idea,” page 30. The same thought is emphasized in “Testimonies for the Church,” Vol. VI, page 27: “The home missionary work will be farther advanced in every way when a more liberal, self-denying, self-sacrificing spirit is manifested for the prosperity of foreign missions; for the prosperity of the home work depends largely, under God, upon the reflex influence of the evangelical work done in countries afar off. It is in working actively to supply the necessities of the cause of God that we bring our souls into touch with the Source of all power.” Again and again has this experience been worked out in our churches. “The companies who appreciate that “the field is the world,” whose foreign missionary services are not the droning over of the readings prepared and furnished them, but the active assimilation of the material sent because it feeds their souls, thirsting for “news from the far countries,” are invariably the churches whose home activities reach out into every field of local endeavor, and whose means seem to be replenished as the widow’s meal and oil, as repeated calls for its “sharing” become more frequent and more insistent. The Lord, who has made of one blood all nations of men, has so closely united the interests of “all nations” that to get an idea of his love, is to find our minds broadening and our hearts enlarging to take in the scope of the whole field. And the call to lift up our eyes, and look on the fields has, ever since the moment of its utterance, had a meaning broader than the Samaritan harvest-fields, and demanded eyes strengthened by faith and focused by intelligence, to see fully its wonderful extent and its possibilities. Rev. E. K. Alden says: “The foreign missionary purpose is the definite aim to carry the riches of the gospel of Christ as speedily as possible, to the utmost of our ability, to every unevangelized people on the face of the earth. It emphasizes the claims of the human race as such—all its millions everywhere as they reach the period of personal accountability alike responsible, according to their measure of opportunity, to the same God; alike guilty and ill-deserving; alike summoned to repentance; alike recipients, to some degree, of divine grace; alike called upon to accept that grace and be saved. It emphasizes the claims of the most needy,—those who have received the least of that light ‘which lighteth every man that cometh into the world,’ and who are most imminently disposed to sink down into everlasting night. . . .” “This is the burning, controlling thought of the genuine foreign missionary spirit. No wonder it has sent, and is sending, hundreds of devoted men and women away from the thousands, however needy, of lands nominally Christian, to the more needy millions of lands positively heathen. No wonder that gifts and prayers from those who can not personally go, pour themselves out in lavish measure from thousands of grateful hearts. The wonder is that the messengers, gifts, and prayers are not all multiplied a hundredfold, with a fervor of consecration a hundred times more intense. “This very statement of what the distinctively foreign missionary spirit is, indicates how vitally it enters into every department of Christian work at home. Since there are multitudes, as already suggested, who are necessarily prevented from becoming personal messengers, who may nevertheless be as completely filled with the same burning zeal as those who go, this flame of burning zeal must express itself in every conceivable form of Christian activity for the salvation of every man, woman, and child accessible all around us. . . . “The hour has now come when these two interests, home and foreign missionary work, must move on not only simultaneously, each pressing on in its own distinctive purpose and each encouraging and supporting the other, but also with redoubled earnestness and zeal, with largely increased forces, and with a united front, determined on a common victory. It is the hour for a far broader and more thorough missionary movement as related to the whole world and to the responsibility of the present generation than has hitherto been known in the history of the church. “Recognizing our one necessity, the salvation of a lost, perishing world; our one deliverance, the crucified and risen Christ; our one commission, the gospel of reconciliation, by us received to be communicated to all; our one responsibility, personally to bear the good tidings to the utmost of our ability to the ends of the earth; and our one opportunity, the present earthly life; shall we not bow our heads to receive our one anointing, the baptism of the Holy Ghost?” M. E. Ellis,
Miss. Sec. Neb. Conf.