The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1930, Sheet 96

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94.

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

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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.