How Can the Ten-Cent-a-Week Plan Be Made General and Effective?
By W. A. Colcord
I AM quite thoroughly convinced that the ten-cent-a-week plan will not be generally adopted by our people until all our churches use the little mission envelopes provided for the purpose by the General Conference Mission Board. These are neat, handy, and admirably adapted to the purpose, and cost those who use them nothing. And I am quite as much convinced also that all in our churches will not use these envelopes regularly until provision is made whereby each individual church-member attending church can get one of these envelopes each week without fail, and in the easiest and handiest possible manner; and this is by having a supply of the envelopes placed in a little pocket or receptacle directly in front of the individual, or at least in convenient places about the church or place of meeting, and the envelopes containing the offerings collected regularly each week. To talk of each individual handing the church treasurer $1.30 each quarter is foolish; first, because probably not one in five of our people would ever adopt this way of giving; and second, because the ten-cent-a-week plan as stated in the recommendation adopted by the last General Conference, does not contemplate that each individual shall give just ten cents a week, but that each church shall aim to give an average of ten cents a week per member, some giving more and some less than this amount. Ten cents a week is the average gift aimed at by the church as a whole, but not by any means the amount specified which each one should give. Some can easily give more, while to others it might be a hardship or even an impossibility to give this amount regularly. And, except perhaps in very small churches or companies, to ask the church officers to go around each week and distribute the envelopes, and then go around again and collect them, or to attempt to do both at the same time, is an awkward, undesirable, and time-killing way of doing things. The little envelope pockets relieve all this extra work and embarrassment. If local zeal in world-wide mission work, or local ingenuity, is not sufficient to supply these, then I am confident that it would pay the Mission Board of the General Conference many times over, and in a very short time, too, to supply these to our churches. The little envelopes will accomplish nothing unless they are used; and they will not be used unless the people get them; and the way to have the people get them is to place them where they can see them and can get hold of them, and where their very presence and proximity will be a constant reminder of their purpose and use. This, to my mind, is the common-sense way of looking at this matter, and the only logical solution to the successful carrying out of the ten-cent-a-week plan.