EMQ

What a heart-breaking tragedy to have fine young men wiped out at an advanced post by enemy fire simply through lack of artillery support or ammunition.

Mission agencies and the church face a major question with respect to the national churches that are emerging as a result of missionary evangelism. The question is no longer one of establishing indigenous churches at some future date.

There is much said and written today about the approaching end of world missions. Such views are usually supported by statistics and radically changing conditions in many parts of the world where missionaries have been expelled or excluded, or where normal missionary work is exceedingly difficult.

No one questions that our world of today is an exciting place to live. It has been called by many names: the Age of Science, the Atomic Age, the Space Age, and even the Erotic Age.

Some years ago a missionary from Africa confronted me with this problem: “As a missionary returning to a field that may quite conceivably be taken over by Communists, how should I approach my task of teaching the church?”

During the last decade we have been made vividly aware of the rapid increase in the population of the world.

How can we close the gap between the first sowing of the seed in a new town and the establishment of a church? That was the question that plagued us during our first two terms of service.

The strategic person in the church to motivate the people of God in the homeland to fulfill their world-wide obligation of evangelism is the missionary on furlough.

A half century of radically rethinking our methods in foreign missions has focused the attention of this generation on the indigenous church.

There has been a lot of hand wringing in recent times over the decline in the number of candidates for foreign missionary service.