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Foreign Mission Board
October 19, 1948
The Foreign Mission Board met in semi-annual session on October 19, 1948 at
7:30 p.m. with Mr, Jenkins presiding.
Dr. R. Kelly White of Florida led the devotional period.
The follovd.ng members we re present at the evening session or the morning
session on October 20:
State: John L. Slaughter, Alabama; M. Ray McKay, Arkansas, M. P. German,
D. C.j R. Kelly 'White, Florida; R. G. Gresham, Georgia; ^earcy Garrison,
Georgia; H. Leo Eddleman, Kentucky; YT. A. Bell, Mississippi; V. B. Richard¬
son, Maryland; D. M. Nelson, Jr.; Missouri; R. A. Herring, North Carolina;
R. Knolan Benfield, North Carolina; J. E. Rawlinson, South Carolina; J. W.
Storer, Oklahoma; R. B. Jones, Tennessee; 0. E. Turner, Tennessee; A. Hope
Owen, Texas; C. S. McKinney, Texas;
С.
E. Hereford, Texas; R. P. Downey, Va.
Local: T. F. Adams, Mrs. Simeon Atkinson, R. E. Alley, T. Rupert Coleman;
S. B. Cousins, J. Levering Evans, Clyde V. Hickerson, L. H. Jenkins, Mrs.
Paul LaRoque, J. G. Loving, R. C. McDanel, Hill Montague, Mrs. P. Earl Wood,
77. -Kish Loving, John C. Williams.
Staff: M. T. Rankin, Everett Gill, Jr., G. W. Sadler, Frank K. Means, S. E.
Maddox, L. P. Seay, E. P. Buxton, E. L. Deane, P. J. Snider, Mary M. Hunter,
Nan F. Weeks, Marjorie E. Moore, Edna Frances Haw}cins> Fon H. Scofield.
Visitors: Dr. R. G. Lee, Dr. E. C. Routh, Dr. Merrill D. Moore.
On motion of Hr. Adams it ms voted to dispense with the reading of the
minutes of the September meeting.
Dr. Rankin read the following report of the Executive Secretary:
REFORT OF EXECUTIVE SECRETARY
If figures could talk what thrilling stories some of them could tell. Since
we must consider the annual budget at the October meeting of the Foreign
Mission Board each year, we shall be dealing with rows and long lists of
figures at this meeting. If we were to present the long lists of hundreds
of separate items which make up our total budget, you will find the study
of so many details tedious and tiresome. But suppose you could go back
behind these figures and see where they came from and where they are going.
There would be nothing tedious or tiresome about the things you would see.
These figures would become alive and the stories they would tell would
thrill our hearts. What are the things that we would see and what kind, of
stories would we hear?
V.'e would see people, millions and millions of them, a world full of them:
people who have been saved through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ; tens of
thousands of them in all the mission fields together. Picture them to your¬
selves mentally as they march by: people from Mexico, from Guatemala and
Honduras, from seven republics in South America, from Nigeria and the Gold
Coast of Africa, from countries in Europe and the 'Tear East, from the vast
nation of China, from Japan, and from the Hawaiian Islands. These people
have been born into a new life in Christ Jesus. Many of them who live under
the most desperate and trying circumstances have been given courage and hope
that will enable them to meet life triumphantly and victoriously.
But we see other people, hundreds of millions of them: People who are not
saved, who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ; people who toil and toil and
toil, who hunger for peace and hope and joy even more than they hunger for
bread. Of the earth’s two thousand million people, less than 800 million
make any kind of profession of belief in Christ. Almost thirteen hundred
millions of these people are without Christ. The figures that we are deal¬
ing with in our budget rep resent our effort to let these hundreds of millions
know about Christ.
