That Pacific Missionary Trust Fund
On another page this week will be found an article from "Your Weekly Hollywood Visitor", the regular weekly publication of the Hollywood Church of Christ in Hollywood, California. The article is written by Dr. C. A. Darnell, one of the elders of that congregation. This is the congregation for which Dr. Wade Ruby of Pepperdine College faculty is the preacher, and is the occasional worshipping place for some of the movie colony who are members of the church. In fact, Brother Pat Boone, a TV and radio personality of some note, was the speaker for the Sunday morning service the week the bulletin was dated.
We print this article from Brother Darnell as typical of the kind of thinking which will certainly take the more liberal congregations among us farther and farther from the simplicity that is in Christ. The zeal back of such promotions is indeed commendable; we have not the slightest doubt that the brethren who are so zealously pushing such ventures are fully persuaded they are doing that which God would have them do. Such fervor and enthusiasm have always characterized men of noble heart — and limited Bible knowledge.
But Bible students will note that this "Trust Fund" is to be used not merely for "supporting a few missionaries" but also for "the erection of buildings, or schools, or even hospitals." This is the loose, liberal thinking of the "We Be Brethren" group among us, and is certainly a long way from what most of us (even of these brethren themselves) have hitherto understood to be the mission of the church.
As a matter of fact, Brother Darnell himself realizes that this "Trust Fund" is a new departure in Christian missions; for he declares: "We admit it is big, and that we are ambitious to even start such a program. It has never been even proposed before." And he states further that, "For nearly two thousand years the lack of some such program has yielded barren crops in too many parts of the world." So this big, new, hitherto unknown type of cooperative endeavor is to be enthusiastically pushed.
But it is perfectly evident that Brother Darnell and the brethren so enthusiastically working with him are not only ignorant of the Bible, but of the most elementary facts of Restoration history as well. Far from being something new and that has "never been proposed before," this plan is apparently nothing other than a revival of the old, old, and long since discredited "receiving, managing, and disbursing eldership" type of cooperative endeavor which developed in Texas following the War Between the States, and which inevitably prepared the way for and finally grew into the Texas Christian Missionary Society, formed at Austin, Texas, in July, 1886. It has certain new features, of course — things our digressive brethren did not contemplate in that first departure, but which were developed later — such as schools, hospitals, etc. But the essential elements of the plan are all there. It represents a way, a means, a method by which the church universal can be activated and made to become a functional body.
It will be interesting to see how soon — and how far — this venture develops as an implement for doing "greater things for God" by following the unscriptural and unrealistic philosophy that "the end to be gained is sufficiently worthy to justify the means necessary for its accomplishment."
— F. Y. T.