Self-support is now one of the most common missionary catchwords.  We hear it on every platform at home; we hear it in the mouths of large numbers of our converts abroad.  There exist in the mission field large numbers of what are called “self-supporting churches”.  Our missionaries often set this self-support before their converts as a status of honour, and offer them encouragements of various kinds to induce them to become self-supporting as soon as possible.  At home, if we ask concerning the progress of the native Church, they often answer us by telling us the numbers of these self-supporting churches.

What then is meant by a self-supporting Church?  We might naturally suppose that a self-supporting Church was a Church which was independent of external support; we might suppose that it could maintain itself without any assistance from mission funds; we might suppose that, when a Church became self-supporting, the mission, so far as finance was concerned, could withdraw and move to some fresh place.  That is sometimes the case, but very rarely.  We know, for instance, a case where fourteen Christians in a small town provided their own chapel and its furnishing and upkeep, and all subsidiary expenses without any assistance.  They had no paid ministers and therefore no salaries to pay.  They were from the very beginning entirely self-supporting, and the missionary could, and did, leave them and go to others who needed him more.  But in this case there was no mission compound, no elaborate system of mission education, and no mission fund from which the chapel could be built and a pastor provided, before the converts were ready to provide these things for themselves.

Most commonly the mission does all these things, and then self-support does not necessarily imply independence of foreign support.  We have met native Christians who assured us in one breath that they were members of a self-supporting Church and that their Church did not receive its fair share of mission funds.  Self-support does not necessarily mean independence of external pecuniary aid.

What then does the status of a self-supporting Church imply?  Nothing certain, but just what the society, or the missionary, chooses.  Take a case.  In a newly opened outstation the converts subscribed $5 Mexican, a head, per annum.  The missionary in charge of the district estimated that $500 per annum would pay the rent and upkeep of the chapel, and the salary of the pastor.  Therefore he calculated that when the membership of the chapel reached 100, the congregation would be self-supporting.  But if a school were founded and fees paid, then the day of self-support would be very far off.