p. 9 | Twenty Cents a Week by J. L. Shaw

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park, Washington, D. C. · Aug 21, 1913

Twenty Cents a Week

By J. L. Shaw

FOR a number of years our mission fields depended for their financial support upon what was known as the Ten-cent-a-week Fund. Later, owing to the great demands which came from the mission fields for more men and means, an increase was proposed, and in answer to this call our people responded loyally, and an average of nearly fifteen cents a member was raised last year.

When we came up to the last General Conference, funds were available for sending out to the mission fields more than one hundred and fifty workers. This was a very remarkable undertaking. Never before in our history have so many been appointed to service in other lands. It is very probable that our denomination is sending out this year more missionaries than any other Protestant society in North America, which is a manifest mark of the rapid advancement of this movement. Going eastward and westward and southward, laborers are now making their way across the seas to various lands, to strengthen the work in hand, and reach out into unoccupied territory.

We are getting letters from the fields which show their great appreciation of the loyal way in which our people in the home land are enabling them to go forward with their work. In some countries one laborer, in a trying climate, has been endeavoring to do the tasks of two or three men. To toil singly and alone, with such a pressure of duties, is a great strain, and the news that funds are in the treasury, that men are on the way, that they will soon be relieved and have associates to counsel with them and help them, is a source of satisfaction which only those who have passed through such experiences can fully appreciate.

But now that so many are answering the call to the regions beyond, there comes a greater need of providing still more funds for their support and maintenance. The support of a missionary and his family, from the time he gets into a heathen land until he becomes acquainted with the language and is able to acceptably teach the people the truth in their own language, entails an expense of two or three thousand dollars. And yet what is that compared to the great possibilities before those who have for the people the message of God for this time?

In order to enlarge our mission work at home and abroad, at the last General Conference a resolution was passed raising the fund from fifteen to twenty cents a week. We are glad to hear of the loyal and enthusiastic way in which the twenty-cent-a-week plan is being received by our people in attendance at various camp-meetings in this country. It shows their interest in the rapid extension of this message in all parts of the world.

If twenty cents a member can be realized from year to year, it will mean that our sanitariums and schools, which are doing so much to help forward the cause of missions, will be able, little by little, to be relieved of the indebtedness which they are now carrying. The work is all one. The institutions in the home land are the means of preparing laborers for the mission fields. If we go to Africa, India, or China, and visit our mission stations, we shall find perhaps at one station a nurse who received her training at one of our sanitariums. There she received her incentive to dedicate her life to God's service, and there she received her preparation and training for the mission field. At another station we meet a teacher, or a minister, who received his education at one of our colleges. He looks upon the school which he attended as the means in God's hands of preparing him for the work that he is now doing. And so we might go from one mission station to another, finding in nearly every place those who are the product of institutions in the home land that have prepared young people at great cost, involving sacrifice and debt. Is it not, therefore, right that these institutions should be regarded as a part of the great missionary enterprise, to be helped, sustained, and strengthened for the God-given work entrusted to their care?

It is not because our schools are paying high wages to their teachers that debt has come; but notwithstanding earnest efforts to carry on their work, debt in some instances has resulted. Our educational institutions differ from those of other denominations, which oftentimes have wealthy donors and benefactors, who provide endowments. It is, therefore, incumbent upon us to realize at this place in our work more fully than ever before the character, sphere, and support of the institutions in the home land which are providing recruits for the extension of the cause in the regions beyond. They are the mills that provide the missionary product to extend the work.

Our efforts in Asia and Africa have only begun. We have, as it were, skirted the coast line, and established a few stations; but the great duty of proclaiming the gospel of present truth in heathen lands lies still before us, and efficient laborers will be our continuous need until the end. As the institutions are strengthened and released from debt, new courage and vigor will be realized by them, and more laborers, better trained for various lines of gospel endeavor, will surely be the result.

The twenty-cent-a-week plan is a wise provision. As every individual in every church in every conference understands the plan, and enthusiastically responds to this call of freedom to our institutions, the whole mission enterprise of the denomination will be relieved. Little by little they will work out of debt, and we shall be a free people to hasten on in every land the completion of the work. May God greatly stir our hearts to this end, that wise plans, enthusiastically promoted, be laid in every conference.

J. L. SHAW.