# The Lutheran Pioneer_St. Louis_1930_S95 # Machine transcription, uncorrected — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration) 94. THE LUTHERAN PIONEER. e A Far-Off Subscriber. — Recently Pastor O. C. Schroeder, the editor of the Lutheran Herald for the Blind, received a subscription from a German blind finger-reader in Nazareth, Palestine. The Power of the Word. — Livingstone tells a strange story about the African Negroes among . whom he spent his life. He did not merely preach the Gospel, but he also, for a time, did the work of a medical doctor. He performed some of the most painful operations upon these men. But he says they would not shed a tear. They would say, “A man like me never cries; it is children that cry.” To which Livingstone adds: “And it is a fact that men never cry, but when the Spirit of God works on their minds, they cry most piteously, trying to hide their heads in their karosses; and when they find that won’t do, they rush out of church and run with all their might, crying as if the hand of death were be- hind them. One would think that they would stay away; but no, they are at their places at the next meeting.” The Church and Missions. — “The grave danger in the American Church is that the people can be caught by the last immediate thing and the most obvious thing — the Main Street mentality. If Christianity is to be saved from this Main Street mentality it must rest back on the local situation, with the pastor leading. We must insist that mis- ,sionary work is not something imposed from outside, but that it grows as a natural expression of the local situation. We must lay the cause of missions on the: soul of the local church, so that the interest will be spontaneous. That cannot be done by boards or bishops, but by the pastors. No church need fall down in its local missionary giving if the pastor does not want it to fall down.” — L. Stanley Jones. Inner Mission Activities of Our Church. A more or less superficial study of the annual reports rendered by two inner missionaries to their _ respective supporting societies have given the writer a hint of the wonderfully great opportunities for service offered our Church in the larger cities. Rey. Kase, the energetic city missionary in Cin- cinnati, last year made 118 trips to the Hamilton County Tubercular Sanatorium, held forty-four ser- \Nices, delivered 220 ward addresses, and made 1,188 bedside visits in this one institution. Besides, he gave ninety-six periods of instruction preparatory to baptism or confirmation. No less than 3,393 persons Teceived spiritual attention from the missionary. To the Cincinnati General Hospital Rev. Kase in the year made 129 visits, conducted forty-one ser- vices, delivered 197 addresses, and made 1,860 bed- side visits. With the help of Pastor Kroger, of White Oaks, seventy-six visits were made at the Hamilton County Home, fifty services were held, 189 addresses were given in the hospital wards, and 751 bedside visits were made. The two missionaries in this in- stitution served 9,535 persons with Christ’s Gospel. Longview Hospital is an institution for the men- tally defective. The missionaries made fifty trips during the year and came in direct personal contact with 250 inmates. A number of ladies were very helpful to the missionaries. The Chronic Hospital is regularly visited every Monday afternoon by Pastor Kase. His weekly ser- vices are well attended. Besides the institutions mentioned Rev. Kase also visited others with more or less frequency. Thus the missionary called at the Wilson Home quite fre- quently and held a number of services there, and he made twenty-five trips to other hospitals. Pastor Kase’s record for 1928 was: Trips, 339; addresses, 482; services, 111; bedside visits, 2,850; hearers, 10,415. The record for 1929: Trips, 443; services, 14.1 ; addresses in wards, 716 ; bedside visits, 4,390; hearers reached, 17,399. Rev. H. F. Wind, the efficient city missionary in Buffalo, and his assistant do a great deal of chil- dren’s-friend work. The institutional work for the past six months included 310 trips to fifteen insti- tutions.’ These visits brought them into direct per- sonal contact with 3,527 patients, 1,052 of whom were Lutherans. A total of 214 services and Bible classes were conducted, two lectures were given, 147 were communed, twenty-one were baptized, and five were buried. From these items our readers may judge how very strenuous the life of our city missionaries must be. But it is also most gratifying to learn that our faithful missionaries come in contact with so many thousands in the course of their work. What the above statistics tell us of the work done in Buffalo and Cincinnati gives us an idea of the work that is done in other cities by our hard-working mis- sionaries; for the same kind of faithful, efficient, and energetic men are laboring in Chicago, Mil- waukee, St. Louis, San Francisco, and other cities of our land. Only Judgment Day will tell how many souls have been brought to the Savior by the agency of our city missionaries. ¥F.J.L.