MISSION WORK AT HOME by Ole Andres Olsen

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 9, 1913

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 90, No. 41.

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MISSION WORK AT HOME

By Ole Andres Olsen

For Other Tongues in the United States and Canada

The Home Foreign Mission Field

“LIFT up your eyes, and look on the fields; for they are white already to harvest.” — Jesus.

“Through foreign missions we are sending the gospel to the ends of the earth. As a home mission God is sending the ends of the earth to our shores and very doors.” — Howard B. Grose.

The population of our country is a unique one. Besides the English-speaking people, which are known as the native stock, we have here peoples from all nations and tongues on the globe. There is nothing like it in any other part of the world.

One writer places the estimate of this total immigration at forty-six per cent of our entire population. No wonder that thoughtful Americans stand aghast before it. At the same time the only thing to fear is failure to understand the situation and meet it.

The tide of immigration from lands across the sea, which began to trickle this way a hundred years ago, has now become a veritable flood. New England is foreign today; the Middle States are foreign today. Not only the great cities, but the smaller towns as well; not only the hillsides, but the valley farms are peopled with men and women who have strange faces and strange ways. So much for the conditions of this foreign population in general. We now come to —

The Situation in Our Cities

New York is a city in America, but is hardly an American city. It is “a Hebrew-German-Irish-Italian-Bohemian-Hungarian city — a veritable cosmopolitan race conglomeration.” “In thirty-three of our largest cities the foreign population is larger than the native; in Milwaukee and Fall River the foreign percentage rises as high as eighty-five per cent.”

In 1907, 1,285,349 immigrants landed on our shores, breaking all previous records for the number coming in one year. This number is larger than the entire population of Nebraska at its last census, and larger than the single population of twenty-one States of the Union. In view of this, we can appreciate what one writer has said: “Through immigration the United States is in a unique sense the most foreign country and the greatest mission field on the globe.”

Our Duty

What can be the meaning of this situation? Is it a mere “happen so,” a mere accident? That cannot be; O, no! We must see in this a divine providence, a part of the great plan to hasten the finishing of the gospel to all the world in this generation.

That being so, what is our duty? Is it not to exert ourselves to give the message to these people of many nationalities, and thus hasten the work to its conclusion? If it is a duty to send missionaries to bring the gospel to people of other lands, are we not under even greater obligations to bring the message of God to these millions of foreigners that the divine providence has brought to our very doors? Surely it is. This immense foreign element in our midst presents a marvelous opportunity for missionary work, but I fear we have neither fully appreciated nor improved it as we should have done.

Nor Is This a Barren Field

The Christian missionary has found the immigrant as ready to respond to his earnest efforts here as in foreign lands. One writer has stated, “I know of no instance where individual work has been undertaken in the true spirit without being a success,” and with this our own experience agrees.

But for some reason it is easier to raise an interest and create sympathy for missions abroad than for the same people when they come to our own shores. That is not as it should be. Are not the foreigners who have come here as worthy of the gospel as those that remain at home?

The work among the Germans represents 109 churches with nearly 4,000 members; and the results from our efforts among the Swedes, Danes, and Norwegians are well up to that among the Germans. Our Swedish, German, and Danish-Norwegian seminaries are well patronized, and we have in attendance nearly three hundred students of as fine and promising a class of young people as can be found anywhere, under preparation and training for missionary work in the needy home field as well as in foreign lands.

For some time a work has been in progress among the French-speaking people in the States and Canada. We have a number scattered in various places in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, New England, and Canada. The work among the French has been neglected, but an effort is being made to revive the work, and the outlook is favorable.

Our Hungarian mission in New York City has been blessed the past year. Twenty-one have been added by baptism. The outlook for the present is very promising. A beginning has been made in New York among the Italians, Bohemians, Slovaks, and Finns. At Newark, N. J., we have a mission among the Slovaks, Bohemians, and Poles. The last year a commodious chapel has been built. This will add greatly to their facilities, and give a new impetus to the work there.

A small beginning has also been made among the Italians and Hungarians in Chicago; and in Cleveland, Ohio, among the Roumanians. In North Dakota work has started among the Russians, and several churches have been organized. A Russian department, though small, has been opened at the Sheyenne River Academy, in North Dakota, for the training of workers in the Russian tongue. In Rouleau, Saskatchewan, Canada, an interesting

work has been started among Roumanians, Bohemians, and Servians. Thus we find these people responsive to the call of the gospel wherever earnest work is done.

Urgent Needs

We are glad for the beginning that has been made among the Germans, Scandinavians, and others, but so far we have touched only the fringe of the work. Here are scores of nationalities among whom not even the smallest beginning has been made. In Chicago alone we have more than one hundred thousand Bohemians, and not a single worker. We have one hundred thousand Poles, and not a worker among them. We might mention more than a score of other nationalities in the same situation. What we have said of Chicago is true of all our large cities. Truly, we have here a home-foreign mission field that is both large and important.

Workers of proper experience and adaptability, persons with a passion for souls, whether American or European, must be set apart to lead out among the Italians, Hungarians, Roumanians, Portuguese, Slovaks, Poles, Bohemians, Servians, and many others, not in a desultory manner, but in real earnest, just as they would were they in a foreign land. Then, as individuals from these various nations and tongues accept the truth, this home foreign missionary should assist and instruct them to labor for their own people.

Now is the time to work. The fields are truly white for the harvest, and unless immediate help is rendered, much will be lost. Why should these foreigners at home be neglected? Again we say, Now is the time to work, soon it will be too late.

O. A. OLSEN, Secretary North American Foreign Dept.