3^ YV\ _ W, v 5 
 
 \ 
 
 Co-operation from the 
 Home Base in Missionary Admin¬ 
 istration on the Foreign Field 
 
 Being a Paper Presented to the For¬ 
 eign Missions Conference of North 
 America, January 9, 1917, at the An¬ 
 nual Meeting in Garden City, New 
 York, by the Sub-Committee on Prin¬ 
 ciples and Methods of Administration, 
 of the 
 
 Committee of Reference and Counsel 
 
 PRICE FIVE CENTS 
 
 FOREIGN MISSIONS CONFERENCE OF NORTH AMERICA 
 
 25 MADISON AVENUE 
 NEW YORK 
 

CO-OPERATION FROM THE HOME BASE IN MIS¬ 
 SIONARY ADMINISTRATION ON THE 
 FOREIGN FIELD 
 
 By the Committee on Principles and Methods of Ad¬ 
 ministration 
 
 Charles R. Watson, Chairman 
 
 ED. F. COOK FLETCHER S. BROCKMAN 
 
 W. I. CHAMBERLAIN DWIGHT H. DAY 
 
 ROBERT E. SPEER MRS. W. A. MONTGOMERY 
 
 The very wording of the topic announced presupposes, 
 first, that the administration of missionary work is recognized 
 as legitimately centering largely on the foreign held; and, 
 secondly, that a legitimate and vital part of that administra¬ 
 tion should emanate from the Home Base. 
 
 By way of introduction, it may be worth while to explain 
 why a discussion of this topic appears to be called for at this 
 time. 
 
 First of all, it may be stated that both missionaries on the 
 foreign held and Boards and Societies at the Home Base are 
 either agitating the question or moving actively along the 
 lines of its suggestion. In several instances coming under 
 investigation the request emanated from the foreign held, 
 that the Board’s representative should visit the helcf. Letters 
 had proved unsatisfactory. The problems to be dealt with 
 were too intricate. The absence of adequate Board co-oper¬ 
 ation and information was too damaging. For these rea¬ 
 sons, Missions themselves requested fuller co-operation on 
 the part of the Board. In other cases, again, the Boards at 
 the Home Base have become conscious of their isolation, 
 estrangement, limited knowledge and inadequate contribution 
 to the problems facing their missionaries and have begun to 
 bestir themselves as to the exercise of their legitimate func¬ 
 tions in sharing in the administration of work abroad. 
 
 In the second place, present-day conditions present many 
 problems which are either new or new in the measure of their 
 importance and which call for co-operation from the Home 
 Base in the administration of work on the foreign field. The 
 Secretary of a leading American Board enumerates these 
 three: 
 
 (a) The interdenominational movements which require constant 
 conference at home, many of which can only be carried through suc¬ 
 cessfully in their first stages at the home end. such as the proposed 
 university and women’s college for Japan. This home, co-operation 
 depends upon the intimacy of relationship between the home admin¬ 
 istration and the work on the field and the courageous assumption 
 offered by the home agencies of responsibility for field action. 
 
(b) Because of the ecclesiastical problems which constantly arise 
 both in each denomination and between denominations in the move¬ 
 ment of co-operation and union. These problems must often be dealt 
 with in the home ecclesiastical courts by the Mission Boards in be¬ 
 half of the Missions and the Churches on the field. 
 
 (c) The problems growing out of the special object gifts and the 
 financial support of the work and money considerations which affect 
 Mission policy. Oftentimes a proposed gift at home for a particular 
 work or institution may involve in the most radical way the policies 
 of a Mission on the field. 
 
 In the third place, the difficulty of initiating and then of 
 maintaining proper co-operation and supervision from the 
 Home Base gives unique value to this discussion. It seems 
 certain that almost every Board anti Society and every Mis¬ 
 sion and missionary will find the subject one of vital interest. 
 Proper co-operation and supervision may mean more and it 
 may mean less than now obtains. There is such a thing as a 
 Board meddling too much in the affairs of its Missions, and 
 there is likewise such a thing as unmercifully casting these 
 Missions adrift to work out their own salvation. What les¬ 
 sons each will need to learn will depend largely upon the stage 
 to which each has arrived in its missionary development. 
 
 Speaking generally, the relationship which the Board at the 
 Home Base sustains to its Missions seems, according to in¬ 
 vestigation, to pass through three stages as- follows: 
 
 (a) First, the relationship is personal. Each missionary 
 communicates with his Board and the administration of the 
 work is almost entirely from the Home Base. This is natural 
 and unavoidable, for the missionaries in such new fields are 
 few and an organization on the field is impossible. Further¬ 
 more, such new missionaries are inexperienced where the 
 Board at the Home Base possesses the experience of its other 
 Missions or of the Missions of other churches. 
 
 (b) The Second stage arrives, when with the increase in 
 the number of missionaries or the growth of the Native 
 Church, a Missionary Association or an Ecclesiastical Confer¬ 
 ence becomes organized and takes over the administration of 
 the work hitherto distributed between missionaries and the 
 home office. Perhaps this process is carried too far and then 
 comes the Third stage. 
 
 (c) Here a new emphasis is placed upon the functions to 
 be performed by the Board at the Home Base in co-operating 
 and supervising and in making adjustments and giving sugges¬ 
 tions to the workers and their work on the foreign field. 
 
 At whatever stage a Board and its Missions may have ar¬ 
 rived, it will be of the highest advantage for them to gain a 
 clear idea of the part which the Home Base should take in 
 the administration of work on the foreign field. In all prob- 
 
 2 
 
ability discussions of this paper will yield sharply opposing 
 judgments, just as proved to be the case in letters received in 
 connection with the investigation incident to its prepara¬ 
 tion. It may safely be predicted that such opposing 
 views will be found perfectly reconcilable by simply noting to 
 which of the three stages mentioned a Board and its Missions 
 have arrived in the history of their missionary development, 
 and the inevitable consequences of a shifting emphasis upon 
 Home Base authority and influence. To pass from one stage 
 to another invariably involves vigorous agitation and discus¬ 
 sion. Missionary and ecclesiastical tradition will be invoked 
 against any change in the methods or in the degree of admin¬ 
 istrative authority exercised at the Home Base. Every argu¬ 
 ment will be found to be a “two edged” sword. It will be 
 said that direct authority at the Home Base leaves each mis¬ 
 sionary freer than where he is subjected to the majority vote 
 of his fellow missionaries. It will also be argued that author¬ 
 ity at the Home Base is autocratic and unreasonable. The 
 argument of expense will be invoked likewise both against 
 Mission organization involving Mission meetings and against 
 Home Base administration involving journeys of Secretaries 
 to the foreign field. Such confusion of thought and opinion 
 argues for the value of discussing the topic under considera- 
 
 . • i - -w- irr 
 
 tion. , i 
 
 In the fourth place, a present-day absorption of Boards at 
 the Home Base in the task of cultivating the home Church 
 and of raising money, makes it necessary to place a new em¬ 
 phasis upon the service to be rendered by the Board at the 
 Home Base to its Missions abroad in the administration and 
 supervision of their work. Comparing foreign missionary 
 Board activities in America todav with those of a generation 
 ago, one cannot .fail to notice that, relatively, at least, the 
 emphasis has shifted very largelv from functions of foreign 
 missionary administration to those of money raising. Where 
 formerly the Boards were largely dependent- for their finan¬ 
 cial resources upon the activities of volunteer agencies within 
 the congregation or upon the personal initiative of mission- 
 arv pastors and other ecclesiastical leaders, foreign Boards 
 today have laraelv taken over these functions. It is now the 
 Boards that plan and execute missionary campaigns within 
 the home Church. It is their Secretaries that have become 
 chargeable with the raising of budgets. Such movements for 
 the cultivation of the home Church as the Laymen’s Mission¬ 
 ary Movement and the Missionary Education Movement af¬ 
 fect their chief eoiPncts with the Churches thev seek to culti¬ 
 vate, through the Boards of the^e Churches, until it may be 
 seen that the life and thought, the administrative powers and 
 
 3 
 
energies of foreign Boards today threaten to become em 
 gulfed in problems connected with the home Church as a 
 base of supplies, to the neglect of a proper supervision of the 
 work abroad and a proper co-operation in its administration. 
 
 Finally, importance attaches to the discussion of this topic 
 because according to the ecclesiastical polity of the over¬ 
 whelming majority of the Churches, the Board is formally as¬ 
 signed a position of final responsibility and authority in rela¬ 
 tion to the Missions of the Church in foreign lands. Episco¬ 
 pal Church polity presents a partial exception to this ruling, 
 but even here the authority of the Bishop is regarded as 
 shared by or guided by the Board which supports the work. 
 The relation of the Board of Missions to the Bishop in the 
 case of the Protestant Episcopal Church is defined by the fol¬ 
 lowing Canon : “That in the management of the Foreign Mis¬ 
 sions the Bishops shall have as their Council of Advice the 
 Board of Missions for the general schedule of expenditures; 
 but for the details of the local work they may have as their 
 advisers the Council of Advice of their respective Districts. 
 In the management and general expenditure of the Foreign 
 Missions, the Bishop shall act with the advice and consent of 
 the Board of Missions.” Whatever the definition of relation¬ 
 ship, it is inherent in the situation that the Board that holds 
 the purse-strings must be recognized as largely responsible for 
 work supported bv the funds it administers. Where such 
 authority or responsibility is conceded or implied, it is im¬ 
 portant that there be a full and frank discussion of the wisest 
 exercise of the Board’s authority in administration and super¬ 
 vision of work abroad. 
 
 These five reasons may suffice for the justification of this 
 paper and serve to emphasize the vital importance of the topic. 
 We next consider: 
 
 I. THE SERVICES TO BE RENDERED BY CO-OPER¬ 
 ATION AND SUPERVISION FROM 
 THE HOME BASE 
 
 To remove any remaining anxiety in the discussion of the 
 topic, two observations may be made: 
 
 (a) The co-operation and supervision proposed relate 
 only to larger questions of policy. It is recognized that the 
 routine administration of missionary work belongs properly 
 to the foreign field. The following statement of tiie rights of 
 a Mission to administer its own affairs is one which there is 
 no desire to change and one which, with change in terminol¬ 
 ogy, will be found accurately descriptive of the great major¬ 
 ity of mission fields: • 
 
 4 
 
“From the beginning the Board has granted to its Missions very 
 large liberty in administering the work in the fields. In each held 
 there is an Association composed of all regularly appointed mission¬ 
 aries in the held. These Associations meet annually, or semi-annu¬ 
 ally, for the. transaction of business. The Board leaves almost en¬ 
 tirely to the Associations in the fields the matters regarding their in¬ 
 ternal policy, although it requires the sanction of the Board for the 
 opening of new Stations or of Institutions above a certain class. The 
 meetings of the Associations are submitted to the Board for ap¬ 
 proval. Estimates for the support of the work are made annually, 
 and submitted to the Board to be approved and presented to the 
 
 General Assembly. Generally missionaries sent out by the Board are 
 
 not appointed to a particular Station but are located by the Mission 
 in the held. The Mission has power to transfer funds within certain 
 classes and to transfer missionaries from one kind of work to an¬ 
 other without reference to the Board, excepting in cases where mis¬ 
 sionaries have been sent out at the request of the Mission for a par¬ 
 ticular kind of work. As I remarked in the beginning of this para¬ 
 graph, our Missions have always had large liberties in shaping their 
 own internal policies and controlling the work in the fields.” 
 
 (b) A second reassurance may be found in the fact that 
 
 the co-operation and supervision proposed to be extended 
 
 from the Home Base to the foreign held, will be advisory, 
 suggestive and persuasive in character rather than manda¬ 
 tory. Nothing finer can be quoted than that which a mission¬ 
 ary in India wrote home in 1857, when the American Board, 
 by a series of inquiries, sought to discover whether its Secre¬ 
 tary, Dr. Anderson, on his visit to India the previous year, 
 had exercised too autocratic an authority: 
 
 “As to our senior Secretary, I may say to you, what delicacy would 
 forbid me to write to the Missionary House, that I have known him 
 well for twenty-six years, and I know of no one less disposed to 
 exercise authority than he. In all his official intercourse with us, 
 whether by letter or by personal visitation (and he has been here 
 twice), it has been always transparently evident that he wished to be 
 governed himself, and to have us governed, by facts and substantial 
 arguments. He brings to the discussion of every missionary question 
 a mind clear, systematic and comprehensive; rich in the stores of a 
 long and well husbanded experience, and deeply imbued with the spirit 
 of primitive Christianity. Of course, such a man must have positive 
 opinions, and who would desire to see one in his position that had 
 not? But I have never discovered in him the slightest inclination .to 
 domineer. 
 
 “I have sometimes thought that, to a mind complacent in itself and 
 unwilling to yield, no greater weapons of tyranny can appear, than 
 strong facts and arguments, and so far as my knowledge goes, Dr. 
 Anderson has never wielded any other weapons of tyranny than 
 these.” 
 
 (1) The first service to be named as resulting from proper 
 supervision and co-operation from the Home Base is in the 
 development of the corporate life of a Mission where such life 
 # is undeveloped. There are three outstanding causes for an 
 imperfect development of the corporate life of a Mission. 
 
 5 
 
First, it may be young. Its missionaries have not yet recog¬ 
 nized the value of a corporate life. This is especially likely 
 to be the case if they are new missionaries rather than mis¬ 
 sionaries transferred from other fields. And it is especially 
 likely to be the situation where there are strong characters 
 with accentuated individualities. A Second cause will be 
 found in the fact that a Mission is small. Where there are 
 only three or five foreign missionaries, the functions and pos¬ 
 sibilities of a corporate life will not easily be recognized. A 
 Third cause for inadequate corporate development will be 
 found in the fact that a Mission is spread over a great area. 
 The time and expense involved in coming together, the isola¬ 
 tion of the stations, as in Western China or many sections 
 of Africa, will operate in the direction of preventing the de¬ 
 velopment of the corporate life of a Mission. As in the days 
 of the Judges, each man is likely to do what is right in his 
 own eyes. 
 
 The following opinion expressed by one connected with a 
 large Board in America will set forth the services which ad¬ 
 ministration from the Home Base may render in the afore¬ 
 mentioned situations: 
 
 “A great service can be done for the Missions in helping them to 
 develop a corporate life, making them feel that all the work under 
 their care in the various Stations hangs together and is one work. 
 This may require at times a relinquishing of funds by one Station 
 giving the extra amount to another Station because of some special 
 opportunity there. It may mean that a certain Mission policy, which 
 has been found to be successful in one district, ought to be adopted 
 in other Stations in order to promote the work there. If the Sta¬ 
 tions are far apart geographically the attitude and the correspondence 
 of the Secretary or executive officer can often bring them together in 
 spirit and in common purpose. Representatives in Stations far dis¬ 
 tant from each other perhaps do not see each other often and there 
 may be a tendency to draw away from each other and after a while 
 annual Mission meetings, which ought to bring all the Station repre¬ 
 sentatives together, are made intermittent or are omitted altogether. 
 Nothing is more fatal to the right spirit of co-operation within a 
 Mission itself than such omissions, and it is the duty of the super¬ 
 vising executive to insist that the Mission get together at least once 
 a year to talk over the work which is common to all and to spend at 
 least one full day together simply in devotional study, in prayer and 
 in mutual building up of the individual spiritual life. In some cases 
 this day of prayer at annual Mission meetings has been omitted, to 
 the great detriment of the work and to the spiritual life of the mis¬ 
 sionaries. When this serious omission was pointed out by an officer 
 from the Board at home the Mission recognized it at once and at the 
 very next annual meeting followed a very different policy and has 
 reported that the spiritual life of the Mission has been made new by 
 not neglecting this very important part of their combined meeting.” 
 
 (2) A second service to be rendered is in the securing of 
 general surveys of the mission field and its needs. These are 
 
 6 
 
to be ‘‘secured ’ rather than “made” by the executives of the 
 Home Base, for it is the missionaries themselves who must 
 contribute to their making. Only so will they be effective, 
 imparting new vision and purpose to the missionary force 
 itself. 
 
 It is a matter of history that almost all the general surveys 
 made on the foreign held have been suggested by the Home 
 Base authorities and this for several reasons. As one mis¬ 
 sionary put it: “Each missionary is so preoccupied with his 
 own station and district that he has little time or strength left 
 with which to consider the held as a whole. So driven is he 
 by the pressing claims of his own daily program that he can 
 not disengage his mind long enough to view missionary pol¬ 
 icy in its broad effects across the years.” Another very prac¬ 
 tical hindrance to effective general surveys is their cost in 
 money as in time. Conferences of missionaries are required. 
 Railroad travel and entertainment involve no slight expense, 
 and it is only as the Home Base comes forward and over¬ 
 comes this difficulty by providing the funds that it becomes 
 possible to make the desired survey. For still another reason 
 Home Base co-operation is important. Missionary surveys 
 usually involve a study not merely of the area occupied by a 
 given Mission but of the entire province or country of which 
 it is a part. How inadequate and fragmentary would be the 
 survey and how limited the conclusions resulting from it, if a 
 survey were to consider the needs of only some arbitrary sec¬ 
 tion of the Punjab or of Korea or of Palestine or of the 
 Philippines. Yet it frequently happens that the life of a Mis¬ 
 sion is so concentrated and its corporate life so accentuated, 
 that it regards itself and its field as a distinct entity, unre¬ 
 lated to the activities of other Missions lying adjacent. The 
 Home Base ought at this point to contribute breadth of vision 
 and secure a more comprehensive survey, because of the spe¬ 
 cial opportunities which are afforded at the Home Base for 
 interdenominational fellowship. It is to be noted, however, 
 that in many instances, through such field organizations as the 
 Federations and the Continuation Committees in Japan, China 
 and India, Missions on the field are outstripping their Boards 
 at the Home Base in taking whole views of the task and of 
 the field. 
 
 (3) A third service to be rendered by the Home Base is in 
 working out in co-operation with the Missions abroad general 
 policies and general methods of procedure which shall gov¬ 
 ern the life and work of the Board and of its Missions con¬ 
 jointly. This would include policies as to missionary educa¬ 
 tion, the Native Church, its self-support and self-control, 
 evangelistic work and the relation of the several departments 
 
to each other. It would also include the working out of rules 
 and regulations governing the holding of property, its up¬ 
 keep, the administration of funds and other such questions 
 involving method of procedure. A double advantage will ac¬ 
 crue from the participation of the Home Base in these mat¬ 
 ters. On the one hand, the Home Base is undoubtedly in a 
 position to make rich contribution to the solution of these 
 problems out of its acquaintance with the experience of other 
 Missions and other Churches. Furthermore, because these 
 policies are to determine lines of work across not years but 
 decades, they should represent the conviction not merely of 
 the Mission on the field but also of the Home Base. Nothing 
 can contribute so fully to efficiency and harmony as this link¬ 
 ing together of the judgment of the Home Base and the ex¬ 
 perience of the Mission. 
 
 On the other hand, the fact needs always to be recognized 
 that Mission work must in the long run reflect the will and 
 wish of the Church at the Home Base. If those wishes and 
 aims are unworthy and inadequate, it is the duty of Mission 
 and Board to endeavor to correct them, but any Mission that 
 ignores this vital relationship runs a serious risk of finding 
 itself estranged from its supporters and seeing, some day, its 
 work overturned. Mission policy should therefore be forged 
 in co-operation with the Board at the Home Base as repre¬ 
 senting the Church. 
 
 A Board officer who recently returned from visiting some 
 of the Missions of his Board gives the following testimony 
 as to the general value of Home Base influence in the work¬ 
 ing out of missionary policy on the field. He says: 
 
 “With regard to special policies of missionary education, thou¬ 
 sands and thousands of boys and girls have passed through Mission 
 schools and have been lost to Christianity. In a great school in Malay- 
 asia twenty-five thousand scholars had passed through the school and 
 not more than eight hundred could be identified after a period of 
 years. The rest had simply gone through the school and nothing was 
 known of their careers. A careful system of following up is not 
 only invaluable to the work, but it is essential if we are going to get 
 the results from our educational work that the Christian Church 
 should get. The school mentioned above has now inaugurated a card 
 catalogue system and is keeping track of its graduates and has a 
 large and effective system of correspondence with those Who have 
 been in the school and who have gone on into their life work. Cer¬ 
 tainly the officer at the Home Base can keep the main purpose of the 
 various lines of missionary activity before Mission workers on the 
 field to their great benefit. The problem cf native self-support some¬ 
 times drops out of the view of the missionary closest to it, but is 
 seen in its true perspective by a Secretary, especially a visiting Sec¬ 
 retary. He is able to show the missionary and the native leaders in 
 conference together that the native. Christians are not giving any¬ 
 thing like a proper proportion of their income in the support of their 
 Christian work, and to the great astonishment of the native Christian 
 
 8 
 
leaders, as experience has shown. A Mission may actually he pau¬ 
 perizing the native Christians and not know it until it is pointed out 
 by a visiting Secretary. So in the matter of the leadership of the 
 native Church the Secretary can point out ways in which responsi¬ 
 bilities hitherto assumed by the missionary can be placed upon the 
 shoulders of native pastors and leaders.” 
 
 (4) The contribution of the Home Base to foreign mis¬ 
 sionary administration and supervision should include spir¬ 
 itual quickening. All too inadequate is the recognition of 
 this duty resting upon the Board at the Home Base in rela¬ 
 tion to its Missions and missionaries. Surrounded by all the 
 depressing influences of heathenism, with his energies con¬ 
 stantly drained by the severe exactions of his overwhelming 
 task, the missionary needs and should have spiritual refresh¬ 
 ment and human sympathy. Where shall he find it? He can 
 not turn to his spiritual children in the Native Church. He dare 
 not draw upon his fellow missionary whose resources barely 
 suffice for his own needs. Where can he find this help ex¬ 
 cept it came from the Board that sent him forth and the 
 Board Secretary who was instrumental in his appointment. 
 The history of missions fortunately presents some conspicu¬ 
 ous illustrations of Board officers who, by letter and personal 
 interview, by visits to the field and contacts effected at home, 
 have ministered to the spiritual power and refreshment of 
 their missionaries, both men and women, renewing their 
 courage in days of disappointment, comforting them in ex¬ 
 periences of sorrow, and imparting to them largeness and 
 breadth of spiritual sympathy and vision when petty and 
 narrowing influences were threatening. 
 
 (5) Another function of the Home Base in missionary ad¬ 
 ministration abroad, is in the promotion of relationships of 
 harmony and the removal of friction which may have devel¬ 
 oped. The advantage in having such questions taken up by 
 the authorities at the Home Base will be obvious. Five 
 types of problems emerge and while concrete instances might 
 be cited under each heading and illustrations given of the 
 value of Home Base co-operation in such cases, the limits of 
 this article forbid more than a mere statement of the several 
 spheres where harmony requires to be promoted or friction 
 removed. These are: 
 
 (a) In relationships between the Mission on the field and the 
 Board at home. 
 
 (b) In relationships between missionary and missionary. 
 
 (c) In relationships between a Mission and adjacent Missions. 
 
 (d) In relationships between the Mission (or missionaries) and 
 the Native Church (or natives). 
 
 (e) In relationships between Missions and Governments. 
 
 9 
 
(6) A sixth service to be rendered by the Home Base by 
 its co-operation in missionary administration abroad, lies not 
 in the foreign field at all, but in the life of the Home Church. 
 There are few things that help to stimulate the Board at home 
 to active missionary propaganda like a vital co-operation of 
 the Board in the administration of work abroad. Eliminate 
 that, and the missionary activities of the Board lose their 
 passion and zeal. They become less and less driven by the 
 consciousness of need abroad, and they are made to rest more 
 and more upon considerations of mere financial efficiency and 
 church organization, which is to substitute mere human ma¬ 
 chinery for the mighty impulses of the Spirit of God and the 
 compassion of Christ. 
 
 Admitting the values of Home Base co-operation in mis¬ 
 sionary administration and supervision on the foreign field, 
 the following practical question arises: 
 
 II. HOW MAY CO-OPERATION AND SUPERVISION 
 FROM THE HOME BASE BE MOST 
 EFFECTIVELY RENDERED? 
 
 Methods : Certain outstanding methods have been used by 
 different Boards with large measure of success. 
 
 (a) First, letters and general correspondence. While every 
 Board maintains a measure of contact with the field, yet in 
 many cases such correspondence has become too much neg¬ 
 lected and reduced or too formal and technical to serve the 
 largest interests of the work. A Board Secretary writes with 
 some feeling as follows: 
 
 “The burden of correspondence must rest upon the Secretary. 
 This has been -one of my greatest weaknesses, due not to any lack 
 of appreciation of its importance, but to a want of time. I am 
 practically Financial and General Secretary of our Board. The mis¬ 
 sionaries feel the need of more frequent communications as much as 
 I do, but there seems to be no way open to remedy this shortcoming. 
 I do not wish to leave the impression that no letters pass between the 
 Secretary and the missionary, only this, that they are not as fre¬ 
 quent as they should be.” 
 
 In some Board offices, investigation shows a remarkable 
 organization and system cultivating such correspondence. 
 Here an ^accurate record is kept of the correspondence with 
 each missionary, this system bringing to light any extended 
 lapse of correspondence with any missionary. Furthermore, the 
 letters of the missionaries are definitely answered. It is not a 
 sort of correspondence in vacuo. Finally items of special 
 interest in missionaries’ letters (when not confidential) are 
 duplicated and sent to different members of the Board. To 
 encourage personal letter writing, the assurance is given in 
 
 10 
 
some Board offices that foreign letters will be opened only by 
 one of the Secretaries and not by a clerk. In other offices, 
 the burden of correspondence is so great that only letters 
 marked “Personal” are given this consideration. 
 
 o 
 
 (b) Conferences with new missionaries: This method of 
 co-operating from the Home Base with the life problem of 
 the Mission is of comparatively recent development. Some 
 Boards spend as much as $5,000 in bringing their new out¬ 
 going missionaries to some center where for a week or ten 
 days a carefully prepared program is followed and the Board 
 is able to communicate to its missionaries something of the 
 aims and ideals, the principles and policies of its missionary 
 undertaking. These conferences also afford opportunity for 
 social fellowship and personal acquaintance between mis¬ 
 sionaries and the authorities at the Home Base. 
 
 (c) Conferences with returning missionaries: Where the 
 preceding type of conference afforded contacts with new mis¬ 
 sionaries, this type provides for contact with missionaries al¬ 
 ready in service. All Board officers have undoubtedly 
 availed themselves in the past of the opportunity afforded by 
 the furlough periods for interviewing their missionaries as to 
 the progress of the work. More recently, however, it has 
 been proposed to hold a conference of the missionaries on 
 furlough, which, of course, yields richer values than separate 
 personal interviews. The Presbyterian Board is planning 
 such a conference. 
 
 (d) Visits to the mission fields: This represents one of the 
 most important forms of co-operation in supervision and ad¬ 
 ministration. Many questions at once suggest themselves: 
 
 Who should go? The executive officer of the Board, most 
 certainly. Preferably, he should be accompanied by some 
 sympathetic member of the Board. Deputations of several 
 members of the Board, or of discerning missionary leaders at 
 the Home Base, lay or clerical,—these have been most valu- 
 , able. 
 
 How often should such visits be made? Undoubtedly the 
 future will reveal a great increase in the number of those 
 from the home Church who will undertake visits to the mis¬ 
 sion fields. We are not concerned here with these somewhat 
 general missionary tours for pleasure or information. We 
 are dealing here with official missionary visits. There is little 
 likelihood of these becoming too frequent. On the contrary, 
 such visits in the past have not kept pace with the develop¬ 
 ment of missionary problems, and it is safe to say that once 
 in ten years (which represents the present frequency of such 
 visits) is not adequate. 
 
 How much time should be allowed? The first visit of a 
 
 11 
 
Board Secretary is likely to be too hurried because of his de¬ 
 sire to see all ot the helas at least once. Such visits have a gen¬ 
 eral value, but greater value conies from visits where time 
 enough is allowed for separate visits to each station, unhur¬ 
 ried interviews with each missionary concerning his work and 
 finally a conference with all the missionaries together, or 
 with such groups as stand related to specific problems that 
 are pressing. This means that a journey abroad may need 
 to be limited to one or at most two fields. 
 
 What previous preparation is required? There is a double 
 preparation necessary: first of the Board representative who 
 goes abroad; then, of the Mission which is to be visited. Only 
 so will time be saved and the visit yield its best results. 
 
 What report should be made of such visits? Naturally a 
 more popular report of missionary conditions will need to be 
 made to the home Church, perhaps not in a printed report, 
 but at least in numerous articles and addresses. Another re¬ 
 port dealing with the technical problems of the work and out¬ 
 lining the conclusions reached, should be carefully prepared 
 and printed. No more valuable material, contributing to the 
 Science of Missions, exists than that to be found in the print¬ 
 ed reports of Board officers and deputations visiting the mis¬ 
 sion fields. Emphasis is laid upon the printing of these re¬ 
 ports not merely because of their value to the students of 
 missions, but because a printed report gives to each mission¬ 
 ary of the Mission visited a permanent record of the conclu¬ 
 sions reached and of the arguments supporting these conclu¬ 
 sions ; this goes far toward making missionary policy effec¬ 
 tive. 
 
 TIL THROUGH WHOM SHOULD CO-OPERATION 
 EROM THE HOME BASE BE RENDERED? 
 
 In a sense the methods discussed involve implicitly the 
 agent or agency through which supervision and co-operation 
 mav be extended to the foreign field. Nevertheless, church 
 polity affects in measure the agency used. The following are 
 actually rendering the services named: 
 
 (a) The Board Secretary: In the majority of Boards, the 
 Secretary is the chief executive; in a few cases, especially in 
 Great Britain, it is the president. The office represents more 
 than mere Board relationships. It represents a relationship 
 to the whole home Church, for the Secretary of a Board is 
 not ordinarily selected or elected by the Board, but by the 
 highest judicatory of the Church. It is this relationship that 
 enables him to serve the widest interests of the Home Base as 
 he deals with the Missions across the sea. 
 
 (b) A Bishop or Ecclesiastical Official: There are Churches 
 
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whose episcopal polity introduces ecclesiastical authority into 
 the problem of missionary administration. Mission fields 
 have their own bishops. These, bishops really represent the 
 field rather than the Home Base, although their frequent re¬ 
 turns to the Home Base and their identification with the ec¬ 
 clesiastical life of the home Church give them also a unique 
 opportunity for maintaining the desired contact between the 
 Mission and the Home Base. Investigation reveals advan¬ 
 tages and disadvantages in the system. The manifest ad¬ 
 vantage lies in the presence of a single executive on the field 
 who may make real the much-coveted supervision and unifi¬ 
 cation of the work. The system calls, however, for two im¬ 
 portant safeguards: first, that the bishop’s relation to the 
 Board of Foreign Missions be clearly defined; secondly, that 
 the bishop shall actually reside within the mission field to 
 which he is assigned. 
 
 (c) The Field Committees of the Board: Some Boards 
 have not merely assigned certain mission fields to a particu¬ 
 lar Secretary for supervision and for the handling of corre¬ 
 spondence, but they have appointed within the Board from 
 among its members committees to superintend these fields. 
 These Field Committees at the Home Base acquire across the 
 years a very remarkable knowledge of conditions within the 
 areas assigned to them and can serve most efficiently in ren¬ 
 dering the services that have been discussed. The American 
 Board (A. B. C. F. M.) is a particular illustration of this 
 method. 
 
 (d) The Executive Secretary or Committee of the Mission: 
 Recent years have witnessed an increasing recognition in the 
 foreign field of the need of a committee or even an individual 
 wbo will have general supervision of the Mission and labor 
 for the unification of its policies and the correlation of its ac¬ 
 tivities. Where there is such a Secretary or committee a 
 unique agent or agency is afforded for the correlation of the 
 i Base and the Mission in the carrying out of missionary 
 policy and the exercise of effective supervision. 
 
 In bringing this paper to a conclusion, the Committee on 
 Methods and Principles of Administration recognizes that its 
 treatment of the subject can only be regarded as suggestive. 
 For this reason it requests a full and frank discussion of the 
 topic by the entire Conference. The committee presents no 
 recommendation, hut simply records its conviction that mis¬ 
 sionary efficiency today calls for a renewed sense of respon¬ 
 sibility on the part of Boards and Societies at the Home Base 
 for co-operation by them in the supervision and administra¬ 
 tion of the work in the foreign field 
 
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