The Qualifications of a Home Missionary j These are just the same as the require ments for a missionary anywhere. First of all there must he a love for the Lord (John 4:34). In our Saviour’s heart there was a deep and abiding love for the Father which spurred Him on to do the will of the Father. The same should be true of all who become the children of God through faith in the finished work of Christ. Another qualification is that of a sense of urgency. This is brought out clearly in our Lord’s words in John 4:35. He speaks of a “harvest.” This word calls our attention to the urgency of soul winning. Like a harvest, souls are perish able. The farmer does not dare let his harvest become ripe and then let it lie. There is a certain time during which that grain must be gathered in or it will be lost. So with precious souls. Study Matthew 9:37,38 in this connection. A third qualification for missionary service at home is a passion for souls. Study Romans 10:1,2; John 3:16; John 4:31-38 in this regard. The believer needs o sense of personal responsibility for souls. Paul had this (Acts 15:36). Ask your own heart, Are these things true of me? April 26, 1953 THE CHRISTIAN LOOKS It is a significant thing that wherever the gospel has gone in its purity and power men have become free. The gospel has great liberating power (John 8:32; Rom. 1:16). It is true that during the Middle Ages the church shackled the minds and souls of men, but this was the fault of the church, not the fault of the gospel.1 At the time of the great Reformation in the church at the beginning of the 16th century, the Bible was given back to God’s people, and with it came the freedoms and privileges enjoyed by the peoples of enlightened lands. It is not just an accident that the public school system, the very bulwark of human free dom and liberty is the direct product of Protestant Christianity. The Present Day Issue On Human Rights One of the noticeable trends of these days in which we live is the tendency to merge the individual into corporate or mass movements. The 20th century has witnessed more than any other century of human history a world-move in the direction of one culture, one government and one religion. All of these things will result in the total loss of individual and private rights. No wonder, then, that thinking people, and especially Christian I people, are concerned about the contem porary situation. World communism is a threat to indi vidual liberty. It is the boast of com munism that in that system alone is there complete happiness for the masses. In ] AT HUMAN RIGHTS Zech. 7:8-14; Gal. 5:1, 14-21
Saviour busy winning people at home to Himself. This He did one by one. Surely there is a great lesson for us in this account. The best fruit is hand picked. Probably most believers have been won by individual contact. This is God’s way and it opens wide the door for every Christian to be a personal soul-winner right at home (see Prov. 11:30,31; Psa. 126:6; John 1:40,41). The passage in Acts 16 discovers the Apostle Paul laboring for Christ in the region of his own home; he covered this area before he moved on to a wider horizon (cf. Rom. 15:19-24). The same is true in Romans, 10:1-10: here is the Apostle’s great love expressed for his own people that they might know Christ. It was the Apostle’s custom to minister first in the Jewish synagogues as he traveled from city to city. This he did because he had a passion for the souls of his own “ kinsmen according to the flesh.” The Need for Home Missions Let us think for a moment of the tre mendous need right here at home for the gospel light. In America (and in your community) are hundreds of boys and girls who do not have the privilege of a Christian home. The Bible is never read, prayer is never offered, the church is left out. These children are your task; they are your responsibility. Let us not overlook these thousands and thousands of needy children as we look into the fields of the world. What are you doing to gather in the children of your neigh borhood? There are mission societies right here in the homeland that are in desperate need of spiritual and material help from God’s people. Many American Christians do not know that there are thousands of people in the mountain regions of Kentucky and nearly every mountainous State, people who are isolated from the broad stream of American life, and many of whom are without a gospel witness. We think of the fine work being done by missionaries in the mountain areas of our country. These people have gathered dozens of homeless and deserted moun tain children, have given them a home, clothing, and most important of all have given them love. There is the mission to migrants, a fine work carried on among the thousands of migrant families in America. There are missions to the down-and-outers in our large cities; there are missions to soldiers and sailors; there is the splendid work of the CSO in many cities of our land. There is a good work for children being carried on by the Child Evangelism Fellowship and other national and local children’s agencies. There is missionary work being carried on among the Indians of America, among the Negroes of our land, and there is mission work in operation in the large housing projects in some of the larger cities of the nation. All these, and hundreds more, need your prayers and your gifts. Let us riot forget them in our missionary outlook.
Churth Bells Chimes-Corillons
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