Home missions

“ The place and need of Home Missions as a present day healing force can be more fully realized when we consider the conditions peculiar to our country, which call urgently for greatly increased facilities for physical regeneration. ”

“ Since the early days when Roger Williams pressed into the wilderness of Rhode Island, the Christian preacher and teacher have followed the advancing line of the successive frontiers—no hardship, no denial, no scarcity of food, no privation, no want or cold so great that Home Missions hesitated to go, with its spiritual healing, its community service, bringing the very heart of Christ's love and service into these new centers. ”

“ Home Missions, too, must be watchful and efficient in its attitude toward the student body and recent graduates, that it may offer the special presentation of its scope and appeal, and the concrete objects of interest to which the students may contribute service best fitted to meet their peculiar requirements.
With the superficial dominance of the materialistic in our civilization has come also a marked relaxation of standards in social and religious life. ”

“ Home Missions faces forward, realizing that infinitely greater responsibility and service must now enter into the mission of the church at home, if this country is to remain Christian itself and be a force for Christianity in the world. ”

“ When the frozen North called men with its lure of gold, an indomitable missionary led in all that made for the better life. When a devastating war had spent its fury and a helpless Africa, bound by heaviest chains of ignorance and superstition, waited, Home Missions responded. ”

“ Home Missions is one of the greatest contributors to national righteousness. Through it the higher life of the community is developed in the formative period; through it belated peoples receive the spiritual transforming dynamic that makes them reach up to the higher and better in their surroundings and gives them a developing effectiveness and efficiency. ”

“ In a land where progress calls to progress, where the results of hasty development create a large share of its problem—a land where the need of Christian effort is paramount, and where such effort is so vital to the world, the decadence of the country church is of far-reaching significance. Home Missions is called to direct its energizing, constructive ability to the solution of this baffling and discouraging feature of its problem to a greater degree than ever before. ”

“ Back of your foreign work is that of home missions, the religious care of the ignorant, vicious, and neglected within our own borders; back of home missions is the manly culture of our professedly Christian constituency, the care and compact handling of our local churches; back of your local church life and work are those of your separate homes—influences secret, subtle, but all-pervasive, for in the Christian homes are the primary historic sources of all great inspirations and achievements, both for personal character and for social improvement. ”

“ Of the great Eastern universities and colleges it will be recalled that many were established by the Christian church. Among these are Harvard, Williams, Columbia, Princeton, Rutgers, Vassar and many others.
Home Missions is still an active and deeply needed educative force. It brings the most powerful influence to the great groups of the neglected in our land, giving them visions of bettered physical conditions, yearnings after higher spiritual purposes, and determinations for a fuller realization of life in all its meaning, with the power of attaining these ideals. ”

“ The Council of Women for Home Missions, formed in November, 1908, was organized that there might be a medium through which National Woman's Home Mission Boards and Societies might consult as to wider plans, and, co-operatively, do more efficient work for the Homeland. ”

“ The ships carrying America's gifts of food to starving Belgians, the ship laden with the Christmas gifts of America's children to little sufferers across the seas, the hospital and Red Cross ministry given to mitigate the devastation of a war in which America has no part, express the real spirit of America. Whether a controlling Christian impulse is to continue in this land, the church of Christ—Home Missions—must answer. ”

“ All honor to the men and women of character and ability who, as Home Missionaries, are devoting their lives to such fields—the most difficult in the world—where no picturesqueness of scenes or people relieves the strain—where sordid sin, monotony, crudity, and newness prevail, but where the returns in character-building contribute to the life of a nation whose mission is the world. ”

“ The past ten years has also witnessed combinations of religious and missionary organizations, such as the Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America, The Home Missions Council, The Council of Women for Home Missions, The Federation of Foreign Missions Boards, and a number of others which exist for the purpose of obtaining the fullest information on all aspects of their particular fields of activity and to secure the execution of important lines of endeavor which can not rightly be undertaken by one Board. ”

“ Home missions aid foreign missions by creating the conditions of more income and more missionaries for foreign fields. The work of this Association has done this already to some extent; without doubt it is to do it to a far greater extent in the future.
In taking people from the ignorance and poverty of slavery and savagery, it could not be expected to form them at once into large givers or efficient workers for foreign fields ”

“ Home Missions must also face to-day the infinitely complex and rapidly increasing problem involved in the adjustment of our population to cities and away from rural districts. Thus cities are becoming dominant factors to be reckoned with in all the elements that enter into the question of religious and moral uplift, as well as the ideals and the welfare of our nation. ”

“ Some say they only believe in home missions, while there are others who are always pitting [379] home missions against foreign missions, forgetting that they are but the two branches of the same great work.
The late Bishop Brooks of America said that a man who opposed foreign missions in the interests of home missions was like a man who had murdered his own father and then appealed to the judge for mercy because he was an orphan!
Where would we have been, and what would have been the state of our native land to-day, but for foreign missions? Our forefathers the Britons were cannibals. ”

“ It brings the most telling force possible to the upward struggle of our primitive and dependent people, patiently leading them by the road of sympathetic understanding into some strength to stand amidst the overpowering complexity of the civilization that surrounds them, in which they as yet are not advanced enough to become more than a problem.
The Negro and Indian testify to the marvelous transforming power of the Gospel of Christ brought by Home Missions—a power that gives moral fiber, a wholesome attitude of life in which work and ambition have place. ”

“ As the church sent out the school in the early days to become one of its greatest contributors to our national life, so ever since, the church has earnestly sought to supply the neglected with that knowledge which is power.
It is increasingly the aim of the schools founded and maintained by Home Missions to lead to self-realization and self-help, to bring the Christ motive to the inner life, and efficiency and effectiveness to the mastery of outward circumstances through the training of minds and hands. ”

“ The employers are finding it to their interest to spare their workers for certain hours and days for such schooling because of the increased efficiency and intelligence of their service.
A peculiarly neglected group in the foreign quarters of all our cities are the older women—workers and mothers in the homes. To these Home Missions is striving to bring some knowledge of the tongue of the new country through classes arranged especially for them. ”

“ The Woman's Home Missionary Union includes not only home missions as represented by the American Home Missionary Society and its Auxiliaries, but all the other great societies which act as the almoners of the gifts from our churches for missionary work in this country. ”

“ That is what they call it at Chautauqua when a great many speak about one thing. I heard a man telling his little girl about it on the boat,” said the fish.
And the woodpecker wrote it down.
“What was that other you said?” asked a sharp little chipmunk.
“Missionary Day,” said the fish.
“And what is that?”
“Why, there are home missions and foreign missions,” said the fish. “And they talk about them both. I think they have a day for each, or maybe two or three. Missions are doing good to some one, but I don’t [80] exactly see the difference between home and foreign missions.” ”

“ In lumber sections, in mining camps, on Alaskan river boats, in far back mountain settlements, in the patios of Porto Rico and our island possessions, with the Negroes of the South, the Orientals of the Pacific coast, the backward peoples, the Mexicans and Indians, the depressed of our great cities, at the gates of the nation—wherever the cry of human need in our land has been met by Home Missions, there these ministers of healing have carried their blessed service.
If the nurse, or deaconess, is to fulfill her mission to the sick, she must have training. ”

“ It has taken me some time to learn that in a hot country a cool and spacious house is a primary necessity of life, if the missionary expects to endure a climate where the thermometer at times goes up beyond a hundred degrees and stays there. And ordinary comfort cannot be obtained without servants to do your cooking and running. The large house can be built for half the cost of such a structure at home, and the servants can be obtained for only a few cents a day for each one. ”

“ First, then, the mission home is an example to the non-Christian people around it. It is frequently open to them, and they can see its workings. They often share its hospitality and sit at its table. Their keen eyes take in everything, and a deep impression is made upon them. ”

“ Some of the strongest and most venturesome among the clergy, unwilling to turn back to the safe life after the thrill of the trenches, will seek adventure in pioneer work in our own land and abroad. Home missions will come as a challenge to men inured to danger and hardship. ”

“ And yet, such has been the inventiveness and large-mindedness of our missionaries themselves, that in all the great centers of our work, they are housed better than the average pastors of our churches at home. I wish we could double their strength by the establishment of summer rest-houses in the hills, and by presenting every one of them with a motor-car. But even now, the days of extreme hardship are past, and no man of ordinary vigor need fear coming to the foreign field on account of its physical discomforts. ”

“ The church at home needs also to come frequently into contact with its missionaries. Nothing will so stir up interest and zeal in the mission cause as to see and hear its needs from living, {223} active workers, fresh from the field. If missionaries were more frequently employed to represent the cause to the churches at home perhaps our mission treasuries would not be so depleted. Mission addresses from home pastors are abstract and theoretical; those from missionaries are concrete and practical. ”

“ The educational department of mission work has in recent years been coming more and more into prominence. This feature of the work attracts the attention of the visitor from the home lands more than any other, because it makes more show. ”

“ The literature distributed in general should be interdenominational and not of a proselyting nature. (4) The New York Bible Society and the American Tract Society are requested to supply missionaries with literature for distribution in hospitals and detention rooms. (5) The Home Missions Council is requested to supply special tracts for young men and young women with advice for immigrants in general. (6) The Home Missions Council is requested to supply the detained immigrants with daily papers, periodicals and if possible with library books. ”

“ She is often a Slavish or Bohemian girl, knowing from actual experience all the sordidness, the monotony, the tragedy that envelop the mine and its workers, for in many cases she herself has been a part of it, herself Christianized, educated and trained by Home Missions. ”

“ Increased facilities are afforded us, and open doors invite our entrance and full occupancy. The real value of these missions is often overlooked or forgotten by Church census-takers and statistic-reporters of our benevolent associations. We can but repeat that this field, which seems almost, by common consent, to be left for our occupancy, is one of the most important and promising in the history of missions. At home even its very humility obscures, and abroad a mistaken philanthropy repudiates its claims. ”

“ Just here arises one of the greatest difficulties the missionary has to contend with in his private life. The people are so inquisitive naturally, the mission home is so attractive to them, and our idea of the privacy and sanctity of the home is so lacking in their etiquette, that it is hard to keep {212} the home from becoming public. ”

“ Studies of rural church conditions made by the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions and other agencies, of rural health by the National Public Health Service and by a number of the large philanthropic foundations, of educational conditions by the United States Bureau of Education, and of other problems by various agencies concerned, have revealed the more important conditions and have made possible the organization of programs for their amelioration. ”