Mission Funds by W. T. Knox

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Feb 3, 1916

Mission Funds

By W. T. Knox

HEREWITH is submitted, with much gratification on the part of the writer, the report of receipts on the Twenty-cent-a-week Fund for the year 1915. The report is worthy of the careful consideration of all readers of the REVIEW AND HERALD. The gifts of the denomination in North America have been based on the membership for 1913, which is

given as 68,478, which should have resulted in donations to the amount of $701,402, after making an allowance for the colored membership of 826 in the Southern Union, 706 in the Southeastern, 226 in the Southwestern, and 108 in Virginia, whose gifts were based on fifteen cents a week instead of twenty.

With this exception in favor of the colored membership in the South, the object at which we aimed was to secure from each member in North America, first the equivalent of fifteen cents a week for foreign missions, and second the equivalent of five cents a week for the relief of our training schools. Six union conferences have paid into the treasury in excess of the amount required. Of these, three—the Atlantic, the Eastern Canadian, and the Northern—make the excellent showing of every local conference in their territories remitting in excess of the amount required, while for the first time since the present plan has been inaugurated, every union conference has raised its full portion for foreign missions, thus supplying to the General Conference treasury for its world-wide work the sum of $524,838.60, and for the relief of our institutions in North America, $167,639.11.

Of the seventy local conferences and two mission fields, thirty-six, or one half, have raised in excess of the full amount required. The remaining thirty-six show a combined shortage of $69,312.08. Without doubt a much better showing would have been made in the Central and Pacific Unions had it not been that other and special campaigns were being carried on by them for the relief of their schools.

Taking the report as a whole, it is one that should bring courage to the hearts of all. It does give great satisfaction to the officers of the General and North American Division Conferences. It has placed in the treasury of the General Conference every dollar they requested for their operations for 1915, and makes it possible to turn back into the twelve union conferences $167,639.11 for the benefit of their training schools, which will in some instances place their schools entirely free from debt.

A new year is already upon us, bringing to us increased responsibilities in our mission fields, where great expansion in our work has been planned for this year. It has been agreed that the North American membership shall be asked to give to missions, as formerly, at the rate of fifteen cents a week a member; and for the relief of our institutions, five cents a week; and that all in excess of this shall also go to foreign missions. The Mission Board has appointed for 1916 to the fields dependent upon it in a very liberal manner, trusting that the liberality and devotion of our people will enable them to meet these appropriations. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the greatest success in this work is found with those conferences whose officers begin their efforts early in the year, and keep at it constantly, educating the people to give systematically, and according as God has prospered them, thus hastening the coming of the day of the Lord.

W. T. KNOX.