THE Missionary Council of the Church Assembly is part of an all too cumbrous machine with which the Church at home has saddled itself. To justify its existence it is about to set forth on an elaborate inquiry. The Council will prepare in co-operation with the Missionary Societies “a comprehensive statement of the spiritual needs of the world in terms of money and personal agents”. Such a statement will serve a useful purpose if it arouses the Church at home to a fuller realization of its opportunities and responsibilites. The inquiry, and drafting of a report, should not take long, for the shortage of both men and means is an obvious fact. We know it only too well by the letters we receive almost every week from the foreign mission field. The cry is not so much for money as for men. We judge from the lists printed this week that the supply of ordination candidates is far from satisfactory, being still behind the pre-war figures. If the thirteen bishops who, we are told, are to be employed to prepare “the mind of the Church to receive the forthcoming reports of the Council”, will give their attention to the raising of funds for the education of those who have heard the call to the ministry and desire to follow it, some advance will have been made. What is wanted, too, is an ecclesiastical Foreign Minister to consider the comparative needs of the various oversea dioceses. And we fear that it must be remembered that the Church of England cannot, nor is it called upon to, evangelize the whole world.
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