The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1929, Page 29

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

29

::..::°:°:°=tR—33030OwnaOWO08honam@aqa“m_»e<O< ssc

Home Missions in North Carolina. —'T'o regain
lost Lutheran territory in this State, a fund of
$100,000 was recently completed by members of the
United Lutheran Church. At the time of the Revo-
lution there were many prosperous Lutheran com-
munities, which in the course of years have lost their
complexion. ‘The income from this fund is to be
used to regain this lost territory as much as pos-
sible.

Need of Indian Deaconesses.— There is a move-

ment on foot to establish a deaconess home for the °

training of native women in India. The blessing
resting upon the work of the Christian foreign
deaconesses holds out the great promise that native
deconesses could do much to prove that Christianity
is not only talking, but also serving.

Number of Indians in America. — More than
100,000 of the 300,000 Indians living in the United
States are in Oklahoma, while Arizona has 42,000.
North Carolina and Wisconsin have each several
thousand, while in New York, Maine, Mississippi,
and Florida there are hundreds of them. Not all
of these have by any means been Christianized up
to this time.

A Great Home Missions Congress. — In Decem-
ber, 1930, a National Home Missions Congress is to
be called by the Home Missions Council, the Federal
Council of the Churches of Christ in America, and
the Council of Women for Home Missions. The
total Protestant church-membership in the United
States is about twenty-eight million, and twenty-
two million of these are connected with this group
of churches. :

Protestant Foreign Mission Statistics. — The

. total number of foreign missionaries in the field is
80,000, who are assisted in their work by more than

8,000,000 native helpers, who in most instances

were converted from heathenism. In the Protestant

foreign fields there are 50,000 elementary mission-

schools, in which almost two and a half million

pupils receive Christian instruction. In the 100

Protestant mission high schools there are 23,000

students; in the 300 normal schools, 11,600 stu-

dents; in the 460 theological schools, 11,000 stu-

dents. More than 1,100 Christian physicians serve

the people in these mission-fields through 858 Prot-

estant mission-hospitals. To maintain this exten-

Sive mission-work requires an annual expenditure

‘of $70,000,000. A large sum of money indeed, but
it cost the State of Massachusetts, for example, that

much money in 1924 to educate one-fourth as many

boys and girls in its schools as was the whole ex-

ule

pense in one year of all the Protestant missionary
enterprises. It goes without saying that no work
is carried on more economically than the mission-
work of the Church.

Farthest North! — At Advent Bay, Spitzbergen,
400 miles north of Norway, is said to be the most
northern church in the world. It is a Lutheran
chureh and is generally called “The Little Sailors’
Church.”

A Floating Church for’ Norwegian Islanders, —
In Finmark, Norway, there are people who must
walk seventy-five miles to church. For this reason
children are not baptized, and many of them grow
up without proper religious instruction. The plan
now is to build a floating church, that will go from
island to island and bring the ministrations of the
Gospel to all. This floating church will also carry
a library and a pretty complete stock of medicines
and drugs.

Lutherans in China. — A chain of eighteen Lu-
theran missions extends from Kwangtung Province
in the south, through the provinces of Hunan,
Honan, and Hupeh, to Shangtung Province in the
northeast. The Danish Mission Society is working
in Manchuria. Seven of eighteen Lutheran mis-
sions in China are American. The Lutheran Church,
has about 50,000 members in China. :

Chinese Christian Foreign Minister. — His Ex~
cellency Wang Cheng-t’ing, the present foreign min-
ister of the Chinese Republic, is a Christian. He
was born of Chinese parents in Shanghai, where his
father had been ordained a minister of the Methodist
Church shortly before Cheng-t’ing’s birth. He re-
ceived his elementary education in the Methodist
mission-schools of Shanghai, and his high-school
education partly in Japan, whereupon he returned
to Shanghai for a year’s college work. While there,
he was given a scholarship, which carried with it
the privilege of continuing his college work in Yale.
He graduated here with highest honors.

Hundred Years of Missions in Siam.—A full
hundred years of Christian mission-work has been
done in Siam. Karl Guetzlaff and Jacob Tomlin
arrived in Bangkok in December, 1828. In 1831
the American Board sent the first missionary. Soon
seventeen other workers arrived, sent by the same
board. Not long after the American Baptists took
up the work. The American Presbyterians began
in Siam in 1888, though the really permanent work
of the latter was not started till 1847.. The Pres-
byterians are at present the only foreign Christians
working in Siam; they have a communicant mem-
bership of about 8,000.

Nee