Each significant attempt at map or statistical presentation of Protestant missions has called forth suggestions and criticism, while the shifting problems and situations to be recorded in any new atlas themselves call for adjustments and changes in method, yet there is no continuing bureau for the study of the science and technique of cartography and statistics as applied to the world-wide spread of the Gospel. Each time the demand for a new atlas becomes sufficiently vocal to call for the specific and sustained effort required, the machinery for producing results must be set up anew. Those who comprised the working staff for compiling the World Missionary Atlas are already scattered? to three continents, in fact. The Edinburgh Geographical Institute continues; the Missionary Research Library, with its store of information, continues; the Institute of Social and Religious Research, which made that atlas possible, continues. But the staff which produced the atlas has been dismissed and could not be reassembled. At this writing, only one or two individuals disciplined in research, and perhaps not a single clerical worker trained in the multitudinous technical details of the task, could be brought beck. All the others are already fully committed elsewhere. Neither the missionary enterprise as such, nor the Christian forces of the world, have yet reached the place where continuous effort and constructive thought, fed from international springs of purpose and of scientific ideals, are applied in this field. The day for it is not here as yet, and indeed may never come. Suffice it to say that atlases and world statistics of missions are the sporadic output of the missionary enterprise.
For many years the major sources of information about missions have been the offices of societies and boards to which the reports from their missionaries were constantly being sent. These reports have been occasioned in large measure by the demand of the home base for materials which would help to keep interest keen on the part of the constituency which provided both the missionaries and their support. So far as statistics were called for by society officials from the fields the categories used were in marked measure those to which the giving constituencies were accustomed in connection with their own church life. A widely variant technique was thus developed by the different communions, Only in part did the schemes of classification reflect conditions on the fields. Any attempt to provide world statistics of missions had to reckon with the incongruity of the returns securable from the home base offices.
An attempt to bring some sort of order out of chaos was made by a sub-committee of the Continuation Committee of the World Missionary Conference (the Sub-committee on Securing Uniformity in Statistical Returns). This sub-committee worked for a time on the selection and definition of statistical headings that might be expected to be most useful to a science of missions. Two reports on the subject were prepared and circulated, and doubtless the annual reports of certain boards reflect currently the results of this study made after 'Edinburgh, 1910.'
The world war, however, made heavy drafts on life in the different nations affected. Board office staffs became depleted for reasons of economy or because of the demand of the war leading to the shifting of personnel. Many annual reports were cut down in size to save printers' bills. So it has come about that often neither in printed matter issued by the societies nor through correspondence with society officers are statistical facts concerning their missions as easily obtainable as a decade ago, although the will to help has markedly developed, as shown in the temper of replies to atlas correspondence.
For many years the major sources of information about missions have been the offices of societies and boards to which the reports from their missionaries were constantly being sent. These reports have been occasioned in large measure by the demand of the home base for materials which would help to keep interest keen on the part of the constituency which provided both the missionaries and their support. So far as statistics were called for by society officials from the fields the categories used were in marked measure those to which the giving constituencies were accustomed in connection with their own church life. A widely variant technique was thus developed by the different communions, Only in part did the schemes of classification reflect conditions on the fields. Any attempt to provide world statistics of missions had to reckon with the incongruity of the returns securable from the home base offices.
An attempt to bring some sort of order out of chaos was made by a sub-committee of the Continuation Committee of the World Missionary Conference (the Sub-committee on Securing Uniformity in Statistical Returns). This sub-committee worked for a time on the selection and definition of statistical headings that might be expected to be most useful to a science of missions. Two reports on the subject were prepared and circulated, and doubtless the annual reports of certain boards reflect currently the results of this study made after 'Edinburgh, 1910.'
The world war, however, made heavy drafts on life in the different nations affected. Board office staffs became depleted for reasons of economy or because of the demand of the war leading to the shifting of personnel. Many annual reports were cut down in size to save printers' bills. So it has come about that often neither in printed matter issued by the societies nor through correspondence with society officers are statistical facts concerning their missions as easily obtainable as a decade ago, although the will to help has markedly developed, as shown in the temper of replies to atlas correspondence.