The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1932, Page 189

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THE LUTHERAN PIONEER

189

Death of Pastor William Henry Luke. — The
Pioneer has lost a good friend in the passing of
Pastor Luke, the efficient editor for the past five
years of our Missouri Synod Sunday-school litera-
ture. In his capacity as Secretary of Sunday-schools
Pastor Luke did much to increase the usefulness of
our Sunday-schools. He was a man who lived for
Christian education, and his mind was ever busy
thinking of ways and means to raise its standard
among us. Thorough indoctrination, evangelical
teaching, convincing instruction of our children, was
what he longed to see realized as fully as possible
among us. The writer seldom came to St. Louis
that Pastor Luke did not ask for a few minutes of
his time to talk with him upon some phase of Chris-
tian education. — As man judges, the Church stood

Pastor William Henry Luke.

in need of Pastor Luke’s services for years to come;
but God in His wisdom found it best to take him
into His eternal rest. Sorrowfully, perplexedly, but
yet submissively we bow our heads to what God has
done and say, “Lord, Thy will be done!”

Changes. — Rey. H. Bates has accepted a call to
Jackson, Mississippi. He had been stationed at
Chester, Pennsylvania. — Rev. H. Grigsby has ac-
cepted the call into the Mission. He is stationed at
Atmore, Alabama.

New Opportunities. — Columbus, Ohio, Peoria
and East Moline, Illinois, and in particular Omaha
and Detroit are offering promising opportunities for
Colored Mission work.

Lutheran Foreign Missions. — A general sum-
mary of the Lutheran Foreign Mission statistics of
the Lutheran churches having headquarters in the
United States and Canada, according to the Rev.

George Linn Kieffer, D. D., Litt. D., Statistical
Secretary of the United Lutheran Church in
America and Statistician and Reference Librarian
of the National Lutheran Council, reveals that there
are 719 missionaries at work in the fields in India,
Africa, Argentina, British Guiana, China, New
Guinea, Madagascar, South Africa, Japan, Santal,
and Persia, aided by 5,446 native workers in 2,804
congregations, which have a baptized membership of
247,762 and a confirmed membership of 103,698.
The accessions according to the latest reports were
14,721; inquirers, 16,305. The Sunday-schools
have 55,761 pupils; other mission-schools numbered
;772, with 60,690 pupils. The natives contributed
$168,484 toward the work of the missions. There
were 26 hospitals, with 118,521 patients, and 15
dispensaries, with 30,699 patients.— News Bul-
letin, N. L. C.

His Prayer. — A missionary woman had a little
boy named Shadi, a Hindu orphan. One night,
when he was six years old, she said to him, “Now
pray a little prayer of your own.” What do you
think Shadi’s prayer was? It was a good prayer
for any little child to make. It was this: “Dear
Jesus, make me like what you were when you were
six years old.” — Fachange.

Lutheran Home Mission Work in the United
States. — We take the following figures from the
News Bulletin, published by the News Bureau of the.
National Lutheran Council: All the Lutheran
church-bodies have 1,214 Home Mission congrega-
tions, with 2,283 missionaries and mission-workers,
with a total outlay of $4,024,682. The News Bul-
letin is also authority for the statement that in
Canada more than 200,000 individuals told the
census enumerators that they were Lutherans, but
had no church home. Of the 394,000 nominal Lu-
therans in Canada only 125,000 have been found by
the Church. In the United States there are probably
five times as many unchurched Lutherans. Besides
these hosts of unchurched nominal Lutherans think
of the millions of adults and youth, probably
65,000,000 all told, who have no contact with any
form of religion.

Do Foreign Missions Pay ? — Misgivings as to
the value of preaching the Gospel to the heathen
will be dispelled by the report of the Madras
Government in India in its recent publication en-
titled Village Statistics of Guntur District Census
of 1931. The total population of the district is
2,035,660, which is an increase of 226,098 since the
last census in 1921. The rate of increase in popula-