Chapter 5

Training For Ministry

At the end of his career, Daniel McGilvary wrote,
"As I now look back over these years, it is plain to me that the great lack of the mission all the way through has been the lack of well-trained helpers; and for this lack the mission itself is largely to blame." (1)

One of the fundamental issues that every human community must solve is that of succession: who will follow those now in authority and how will future leaders prepare for leadership? This chapter describes how the Laos Mission dealt with these issues and how it prepared leaders for the church. The chapter follows on from Chapter 4, for the preparation of "native" church leadership depended upon the model for leadership exhibited by the mission itself. That model functioned as an example for performing church leadership and programmed the kind of leadership training provided by the mission. McGilvary's comment is important because it correctly described the failure of the mission to train church leadership while also stating correctly whose failure that was. His comment also contains the most common fallacy in mission thinking about leadership training, namely, that one can prepare leaders by training them to be "assistants".

April 1883. McGilvary had just returned from furlough, rested and restless with new ideas. In his absence, the mission hit a low point, and McGilvary, determined to strike off in new directions, chose as the forum for presenting his new ideas the organizational meeting of the "Chiang Mai Presbytery" (North Laos Presbytery). For some time previously, McGilvary had trained one elder, Noi Intachak, possibly from the Mae Dok Daeng Church, as an evangelist. Now, he wanted to expand his training work into a larger and more formally established program. The purpose of the new program was to train evangelists. McGilvary proposed that the mission hire about six elders at a rate of six rupees (about $2.00) per month to engage in full-time study of the Bible and in short,

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Three of the four chosen, however, declined to take part because they could not support their families on just two rupees per month. They needed more support because they could not farm and attend classes as well. McGilvary was left with only Noi Intachak, his original student, and he died within a year. (2) The first training attempt failed.

In Chapters 2 and 3, I described in brief the beginnings and the development of the mission school system. From the very first mention of the need for schools in 1870, McGilvary justified them as essential to the church. He firmly believed that intelligence and Christianity were necessarily and inevitably associated. (3) McGilvary and his colleagues in the mission, therefore, easily saw a particular need for church schools in the North where traditional education took place entirely in the temples. They considered the education given in the temples schools to be poor in quality and obviously unacceptable for Christian children. Furthermore, those schools did not educate women, a key educational concern for the mission. Lillian Curtis reasoned that the Christian church needed its own schools in order to strengthen it so that it could fulfill its role as the hope of the "heathen" world. (4) The mission built its educational policy on its perception of northern Thai society as "heathen," and proposed to free Christians from the bondage of traditional society by providing them with Christian schools. In a larger sense, the mission wanted to "civilize" northern Thai society by educating the church. (5)

The mission thought it faced one serious problem educationally: first generation Christian converts, the missionaries believed, clung in many ways to the old society they had been converted out of. The first generation retained too many of their old beliefs, ideas, and practices, as well as the forms of their old life, forms fixed too firmly and rooted too deeply to be given up. Therefore, the Christian school system sought to remove Chris-

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More specifically, leadership development (our concern here) served as another crucial justification for the mission's school system. The mission expected that the more capable students in its schools would become leaders of the church. Good church leaders needed the kinds of skills taught in and the level of education provided by the schools. The mission assumed that, very naturally, this better-than-average education would produce better-than-average leadership. (7) In other words, the mission school system formed the first step in the development of trained, capable church leaders. It provided the pool of talent out of which would surface the church's leadership.

Although the mission schools did produce some church leaders (8), the school system actually developed into an independent institution that competed with the church for funds and resources. It engaged considerable mission attention, again, competing with the churches for the time and concern of the mission. In 1895, when the mission's school system just began to expand, Briggs expressed concern over the direction of educational trends. He argued for a simpler educational system because the one then developing took too much time away from working with converts. He called on the mission to give more attention to "shepherding the flock." (9) In fact, the schools did not arise out of the life of the churches even though the mission founded them on the basis of what it perceived to be the needs of the churches. This competing institution quickly developed its own needs, one of the most pressing of which was for teachers to sustain and expand the system. The mission schools tended to siphon off the best students for teachers. (10) Thus, the strategy of using mission schools to prepare church leadership worked against itself from the beginning. Instead of putting the best potential leaders back into churches, the schools co-opted those individuals for its own purposes.

A second flaw in using a non-church institution to prepare church leadership was that as the years went by the schools more-and-more confused a

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A third weakness in using mission schools to prepare church leaders was that the whole idea grew out of a vague concept about the value of education rather than on a carefully thought out strategy for leadership training. It grew out of mission attitudes about "heathen" northern Thai society rather than perceptions about the actual situation and needs of the churches it established in that society. Therefore, when mission educational activities quietly shifted away from Christian education and church leadership training, those functions were lost in the shuffle. (12) Mission thinking proved itself too nebulous and undirected about the role of the schools in church leadership training to seriously provide coherent training for the churches.

A fourth drawback in relying on mission schools to provide the first step in church leadership training was that large numbers of Christian children never or seldom attended these schools. The Suan Dok community of the Muang Phrao Church had only twenty of its 135 children in school (15%), and that for only a very brief time. That was in 1916, and this was reported to be "typical" of the situation of nearly all Christian communities under the Chiang Mai Station. This was long after the growth of the mission school system began and in the most educationally advanced station of the mission. The situation in the cities appeared to be better. For example, in 1916 Lampang Church reported all but two of its boys were in school. Yet, even here the situation was less rosy than it appeared since average attendance figures for mission schools were frequently considerably lower than enrollment figures. Even where the children were "in" school, they often did not go very regularly. For many years, Christian parents saw little reason to send their children to school, and still another problem that faced many Christians was that they lived

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The "strategy" of training church leadership through the mission's schools had precisely the opposite effect of that intended. It did not put the church at the center. It deprived the church of badly needed attention and resources. It took the place of church-oriented Christian education without providing a good replacement at the local level. And the result? The Speer Deputation Team report of 1915 stated that church life was being generally ignored in the work of the Laos Mission. The congregations were poorly organized. They had very few activities. Many of the churches had little or no Christian education. There was almost no Bible study. The churches lost many young people because of this inattention. The report concluded: "If we were to be asked what is the greatest need in Siam, I think we should have to answer that it was the training and use of the church." (14) Dr. Charles Crooks, writing in 1919, confirmed that the schools failed to serve the church. He observed that the mission education system had no method for directing students towards theological education, church vocations, or even for assuring their continued membership in a church. Freeman suggested that Christian education through the schools actually caused "nominalism", that is, indifference among Christians. The schools simply accustomed children to Christian teaching without "...awakening a real heart religion." The schools only made nominal Christians all the more nominal and hard to reach. (15)

Up until its last year, then, the Laos Mission failed to train and use the church. It fixed so much of its hope upon the schools as the training ground for the church that when the schools failed to be such there was nothing left. In fact, the Laos Mission violated the integrity of its churches when it established a separate set of institutions to train church leadership. And, in sum, the first level of church leadership training, the mission schools, actually hindered the emergence of a competent church leadership.

The Laos Mission did not intend that the mission school system carry the burden for training church leadership. As we have already seen, McGilvary committed himself to creating a more formal program specifically for the evangelistic training of church leaders. Even though his proposed program did not work out in 1883, the idea of a training school for elders did not die.

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Kru Nan Ta

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The purpose of the Training School as defined by Dodd was to train evangelistic assistants for the missionaries. Dodd felt that it would take a long time before the school could train enough evangelists to meet the needs of the mission. He also believed that it would be even longer before the mission could trust those evangelists on their own without mission supervision. He did admit that the students could make good evangelists as long as they remained under missionary supervision. (19)

After an auspicious beginning with large classes, the Training School suffered its first setback in 1891 when the Dodds moved to Lamphun to open a new station there. The school "moved" with them, but when it reopened it had only a handful of students. By July 1892, there were still only eighteen students, half the number that attended in Chiang Mai. Further problems developed as the Dodds began to prepare for their September 1893 furlough. To cover for Dodd, the mission appointed the Rev. Robert Irwin, a relatively new missionary stationed in Lampang, to the Training School. Irwin joined the Dodds in Lamphun in 1893 and took charge of the school when they left. (20)

Irwin had very different ideas about teaching. Although the purpose of the school remained evangelism training, Irwin used alternative methods for attaining that purpose: he put the advanced class of five students to teaching the less advanced class under the theory that these five men would make better evangelists if they had leadership training and experience. Unlike virtually any other member of the mission, Irwin believed that both the church and the society already had individuals capable of good leadership. In 1894, he introduced another new educational device: he set up a "mock presbytery" with the students playing all of the roles. His mock presbytery established three

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The Training School reached something of a pinnacle in 1894 under Irwin, but new problems came up when the mission transferred the school back to Chiang Mai in 1895. Even as the move disrupted the school, it also became embroiled in a controversy between the churches, graduates of the school, and the mission. The "Pastors' Revolt of 1895" will be dealt with in Chapter 6. It is sufficient to say that several ordained graduates of the Training School entered into a dispute with the missionaries at the North Laos Presbytery meeting of December 1895 regarding salaries. Out of the resentment and confusion of that event, the number of students at the Training School in 1896 dropped drastically.

In the meantime, Dodd returned in late 1895 and took over the school again. Although mission records are not entirely clear on the matter, it is more than likely that Irwin and his unorthodox methods came under fire in the mission for stirring up feelings in 1895. In any event, he was sent to Nan. And the school fell on hard times as the Dodds moved off to Chiang Rai in 1897 to open that station. (22) In its brief eight-year existence, the school moved twice, had to cope with two heads that had very different goals and methods, and suffered through the fires of divisive controversy. For most of its existence, it was located at Lamphun on the periphery of the mission. Thus, after 1896 the school ceased to exist in any meaningful sense. Whether it closed because there was no one to take Dodd's place or because the mission decided it wanted no more Training School for a while is not clear.

Nowhere is the effect of missionary ecclesiology on the life of the church more clearly seen than in the history of the Training School. The mission defined the church as an evangelistic agency, which meant that leadership training proposed to equip church leaders with evangelistic skills more useful outside of the church than in it. It taught its subjects with an eye to how those subjects might be used to win converts, as, for example, when the school taught geography because of its usefulness in "disproving" traditional cosmology. (23) The confusion of roles in which the apostle-evangelist took precedence over the presbyter-pastor meant that training for a competent church leadership did not take place.

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And, indeed, as we have already seen, the Training School did not even intend to train leaders at all except in the period when Irwin took over from Dodd. Dodd, the permanent head of the school, did not believe that his students would ever make more than acceptable missionary assistants for many years to come. His belief was a result of the view that the northern Thai church was child-like and would have to depend on the mission for a long time. All of this represented a species of circular thinking: the church is childlike—it cannot lead itself—therefore, we cannot teach people to lead—therefore, we will train them to be assistants—see, they cannot lead—they are like children. Only Irwin questioned the premise of this circular thinking. In the Training School, at least, the students received his more trusting and positive approach with considerable enthusiasm, doing more than even he expected.

Although mission records continue to refer for some years to the "Training School", the permanent institution with regular teaching and a resident student body went out of existence in 1896. In 1897, the Rev. Howard Campbell, pastor of Chiang Mai Church, took over responsibility for conducting training classes. He held two short sessions with seven students the first session and 21 the second. In the years 1899 and 1900, he ran itinerating training classes with short sessions in a number of Christian villages. This program greatly increased the number of students attending while turning the "school" into more of a lay training institute. (24)

In the meantime, the Laos Mission reacted negatively to the whole idea of ordaining northern Thai pastors. The crisis years of 1895-1896 and their aftermath, left a sour taste as the mission observed what it thought to be the results of the work of those ordained. (see Chapter 6) An attitude of caution developed: Go Slow. Do not train northern Thai to be pastors as such training and status only goes to their heads, ruins them. This go slow attitude effectively suspended any thoughts of setting up a permanent training program. (25) Consequently, during the years following 1900 the "school" generally held sessions of only a few weeks under Chiang Mai Station and only for the Chiang Mai churches. In 1903, the numbers attending increased to sixty because a large number of men employed by the mission hospital as vaccinators were sent to the training classes. But as the years went on, the sessions tended to become shorter and shorter. This was largely because so many of the men who might attend the training classes were vaccinators who had to attend monthly

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After a decade without any serious training program either for evangelism or church work, members of the Laos Mission changed their minds and more-and-more felt the need for a better training program for church leaders. After 1906, changes in their thinking increased, and by 1910 pressure grew in the mission to start up a theological training school for training pastors. In 1912, the Rev. Henry White took up responsibility for developing such a school, and he held the last classes of the "old style" during which he and others taught a total of two hundred students for anywhere from ten days to two months. (27)

The Theological Training School grew out of two basic factors. One was the growing sense of urgency in the Laos Mission for theological training for northern Thai church leaders. The second was a gift in 1912 from Mr. H.L. Severance of the Presbyterian Church for $15,000 to the Board for aiding the development of theological education in northern Siam. (28)

Although officially begun when White took over responsibility for theological education in 1912, the newly established school really took shape in 1913. In a significant shift in mission thinking, the purpose of the new school differed considerably from that of the old Training School. Unlike the first school, this one had a dual purpose: to provide trained leadership, especially pastoral leadership, for the churches and to promote evangelism. White wrote in his school report for 1913 that the chief function of the school was to train an educated ministry. Evangelism was a secondary concern. (29) Thus, this school centered its attention on the church.

The Theological Training School faced some initial problems because it lacked facilities during the construction of the Severance Building. Nonetheless, it opened in 1913 with over fifty students in three grades (including six preparing for ordination) and a teaching staff of four—White, Roderick Gillies, Kru Semo, and Elder (soon to be Rev.) Kham Ai. In contrast to the original Training School, the new theological school drew its student body from across the whole church even from as far away as Nan. The school encountered further difficulties of a sort in the next two years. In 1914, White left for furlough and Gillies became ill. Nearly all of the teaching fell to the two northern Thai "assistants", and mission records indicate mild surprise that these two men

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Actually, the most serious problem facing the school by 1917 was funding. In spite of assistance from the churches, the school found itself so short of funds that in 1917 it had to cut back the number of students attending to a mere eighteen. It tried to reach others through a "Christian Workers' Conference", something of a throwback to the old days before 1913, which had 25 church leaders in attendance and focused its attention on practical issues of local church life and organization. The school continued in this limited fashion for the next three years. It did attempt to expand its curriculum by involving other missionaries in the teaching of music, hygiene, and special courses from time to time. A new development that began about 1918 took place when a few students began to enter the theological school straight after their graduation from Prince Royal's College, the mission's most important boy's school. The Training School's three grade levels, advanced, middle, and junior, all emphasized biblical studies very heavily but their curriculum also included courses in theology and Christian education (mostly related to Sunday School). On weekends, the students worked with rural churches. Classes were in session in Chiang Mai for nine months of the year. (31)

In the period 1913 to 1920, then, the Laos Mission finally began to establish a church-oriented program of church leadership training. As of 1920, the prospects of that program appeared to be quite good: it had its own facilities; it had a growing staff that included capable northern Thai; it had students from every station; and it had a core of students preparing for the pastoral ministry. As the Theological Training School entered the 1920s, it began to grow in numbers again, and it provided a desirable institution for theological study for young men interested in becoming pastors of which there seemed to be a growing number. (32)

Even so, Gillies evaluated the school in this way in 1928: the school was still in evolution, the implications of which were uncertain. It had yet to become a Siamese institution. It had yet to solve its financial problems. Gillies concluded that, "At the end of one hundred years since the Gospel first reached Siam, what confronts us with regard to theological training is not an achieve­ment but rather a complicated problem. "(33)

The reason theological education remained a "complicated problem"

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Leadership training consists of more than developing institutional structures for education. It also includes content. It includes the "message" that those doing the training want to communicate to their students in order to prepare them for leadership. More specifically, it includes the opportunities the mission gave its churches for developing self-reliance in theology. In this section, I assume that the training of church leadership requires a solid, intelligible, and biblical theological base as the locus of instruction. If that base/locus does not exist, the church must fail to be the church.

The Case of Phra Intra. Unfortunately, the historical record is largely silent regarding the beliefs of northern Thai Christians excepting only notable instances where the converts expressed themselves in a manner pleasing to the missionaries. (34) Therefore, it is difficult to recover the actual theological concerns of the first generations of Christian converts. Existing studies and evidence suggests that their theological orientation and values differed from those of the mission. They remained concerned about the world of phi and winyan (spirits) and how to cope with these unseen but powerful beings. (35) In most cases, then, the missionaries did not refer to theological positions differing from their own, and it is difficult to measure closely mission impact on northern Thai theological development.

One intriguing exception to the general silence in mission records regarding indigenous theological ideas in the early northern Thai church is found in Wilson's annual mission report to the Board for 1880. There he mentions one recent convert who had many "fanciful" interpretations of the Bible. In one instance, this convert reportedly claimed that the Hindu god Phra Intra was actually the Angel Gabriel. Somewhat disturbed with this man's unusual ideas about Christian beliefs, Wilson wrote, "...they hardly seem right for him to be saying." Yet, Wilson also noted that the convert's heart was in the right place and that he was an apt learner. Wilson concluded with the thought that the new Christians still had so much to learn and that the

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The Case of Evander McGilvary. The matter of developing a "correct" theological expression for the northern Thai church became more complicated when a missionary also showed a certain receptivity to traditional religion. The Rev. Evander B. McGilvary, son of the McGilvarys, returned to Chiang Mai with his own family in late 1891 to join the mission in order to translate the Bible into northern Thai. He was well received in the mission not only because of his parents but also for his own abilities. He soon became a useful member of the mission contributing capably as mission treasurer, sometimes pastor of Chiang Mai Church, and as the mission's Bible translator. (38)

Evander's understanding of the Bible, however, led to a crisis over his theological views. Just at the time he came to the field, the Presbyterian Church U.S.A. found itself embroiled in a deep controversy over the nature of Scriptures. On the one hand stood those who held to the inerrancy of the Bible while on the other were those who used higher criticism (historical methods) for studying the Bible. Matters came to a head in the General Assembly of 1893 where the Presbyterian Church again affirmed a previous declaration that the inerrancy of Scriptures was a necessary article of belief for Presbyterians. Evander McGilvary strongly disagreed with that position and submitted his resignation to the Board of Foreign Missions.

He believed that the Bible was not inerrant, not without textual error, and that higher criticism was a proper tool for the interpretation of the Bible. Furthermore, he believed that one did not have to be a Christian in order to be saved. In fact, Evander stated that his language teacher, a deeply committed follower of the Buddha, was saved. He resigned because he could no longer remain, to his own way of thinking, an ordained Presbyterian minister while holding views so opposed to those of the General Assembly.

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The Laos Mission and its individual members felt torn about Evander's resignation. No one wanted him to resign. The mission wanted the Bible translated as rapidly as possible, and it needed his help in other tasks as well. Yet, the mission's members worried because Evander's views had become known in the U.S. Although about half of them stated their willingness to back him against any action by General Assembly to remove him from the field, a number feared that his presence might weaken support for the mission in the home churches. Others in the mission worried considerably about his influence over the northern Thai church. The churches supported him and even showed some inclination towards his viewpoint. Wilson feared Evander's influence most strongly and wrote that the churches could not decide such issues as Evander raised for them. It was, he wrote, "wicked" to push such issues on the "unsophisticated Laos." (39) After considerable correspondence, maneuvering, pleading, and confusion, Evander McGilvary and his family left the field in June 1894. (40)

Before the entire affair died down, five members of the Laos Mission signed a joint letter to the Board requesting that it send no more "liberals" to the field for the sake of mission unity. (41) Mission letters related to this case show that while most of the mission professed to respect Evander for his stand and sympathized with his concerns, no one agreed with his theological position. In the entire history of the mission, the only other member known to have held similar views also experienced theological difficulties in the mission. Dr. C. C. Hansen of the Lampang Station had a very positive regard for northern Thai culture and religion. Popular with the Christians in Lampang, his views were disapproved of in the mission, and it is likely that he was not reappointed in 1909 because of those views. (42) In effect, the Laos Mission sought to limit the theological perspectives available to the church to only those that fit under the general rubric of "conservative" and specifically discouraged theological positions that denied the sinfulness of northern Thai society and its traditional religion.

There are certain indications that the church itself felt less uncomfortable with Evander's theology than the missionaries. The correspondence cited above states that the churches supported him and all the Christians wanted him to stay. Nan Ta supported his continued presence on the field. Indeed, Wilson and others worried about the church's susceptibility to such views as Evander held. (43) We have already noted that the Lampang Christian community respected Hansen, for all of his "unacceptable" views. At the very least,

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Nowhere is the mission's "theory" of indigenization of theology more clearly seen than in its development of church music. Many of the missionaries had musical talents that they shared with the church. For them, "indigenization" meant taking Western forms, in this case Western church hymns, and translating them into northern Thai. Otherwise, they assumed without question that Western instruments, musical notation, tunes, and content met the church's needs for its own music. (44) Indigenization meant simple-minded translation.

By now, we should not be surprised that these specific mission attitudes fit in with its larger ideological and ecclesiological positions. It was all very logical: if northern Thai society was "heathen," filled with darkness and under the control of Satan, no ideas taken from it could possibly be of use. Since northern Thai Christians were child-like, they could not possibly contribute anything to theology. The result also fits into the historical processes at work in the northern Thai church. The church became fully dependent upon the mission for formal, systematic theological understanding, but since the mission had so little time for the churches they left the churches mostly in ignorance, without a coherent theological voice.

The Case of the Bible. Dependence on an over-worked, under-staffed, paternalistic mission had serious repercussions on the northern Thai church in another area. The Laos Mission found it difficult to get to translating the Bible and making it available to the churches. Before the founding of the Mission Press, the mission relied on the Siamese Bible and a few hand-copied northern Thai Scripture portions. Since few people in the North could read Siamese, the mission long sought to establish its own northern Thai press. (45) (see Chapter 3).

Although the press began in 1892, it did not publish the first two books of the Bible, Matthew and Acts, until the following year. The primary purpose of the two books was evangelistic, but the missionaries were also delighted to have them for use by church members as well. They filled a longtime need. (46) However, the pace of translation and publication remained slow (see Appendix III), and the whole New Testament did not appear until 1914, at which time Coffins wrote,

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At the time of printing this report we are printing 2nd Corinthians which will complete the New Testament in Laos. Perhaps it is not wise to report that it has taken more than twenty years to complete it; due wholly to the fact that our over worked missionaries have had their hands more than full with evangelistic and medical work and the translation of the Scriptures has had to be given a secondary place. (47)

This slow rate of translation meant that churches received the Bible only in fits and snatches, piecemeal as first one book and then another came off the press. Since most of the Scriptures came out printed as single books (or collections of shorter books), converts did not necessarily even obtain all the portions available at any one time.

Consequently, the church remained largely ignorant of the Bible. For example, in 1900 a group of Chiang Rai Christians earnestly searched the seven books of the Bible available to them in northern Thai for a prohibition against drinking alcohol. Finding none, they started drinking, and the church eventually suspended four of them. (48) The dilemma and misadventures of the Chiang Rai group may seem somewhat comic and inconsequential were it not for the fact that Christian groups and churches generally displayed ignorance of the Bible throughout the history of the Laos Mission. Dodd tells of two cases: in the first, a missionary assistant mistakenly used a chapter from the Westminster Confession of Faith thinking it was from the Bible. In the second, one Christian advised another to stop reading storybooks and devote himself to the Bible. The "story book" the first man was reading was the Book of Job. (49)

The mission did not purposefully set out to withhold the Bible from the churches. Considering the circumstances of geography, the problems in establishing the press, and the weight of other commitments, the missionaries did what they could. Yet, because of those circumstances and limitations, the mission could not provide the churches with adequate access to the Bible. Freeman, writing in 1910, admitted that the churches needed more thorough and systematic biblical instruction. However, the pressure of other work on the small Laos mission force prevented it from meeting the need. (50) The crux of this problem (and many others) originated in the mission's insistence that it had to oversee virtually everything. Too busy to translate.. .too busy to teach.. .and, at the last, too busy too busy too busy to show the "natives" how to do for themselves what it could not do for them.

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Although after 1914 the mission did give more attention to Bible distribution within the churches and encouraged more Bible study, there is no evidence that their attention and encouragement had appreciable results. (51) Even then, this emphasis came nearly fifty years after the founding of the mission and in the closing years of its existence.

Summary. The northern Thai church was an ignorant church. It lacked access to the Bible. It lacked regular Bible study. It did not know the Bible. It lacked a theological voice of its own. It lacked training in theology. Consequently, what theological expression it had either came from mission or from pre-Christian traditional beliefs. The Laos Mission purposefully limited the theology that the people did hear to one particular Western expression of theology.

Maen Pongudom summarized the situation well in his discussion of the effects of mission attitudes about Thai and northern Thai culture on the church. He concluded that mission attitudes prevented it from cultivating a substantive and effective proclamation of the Gospel and prevented the converts from developing their own theological voice so they could proclaim the Gospel effectively. He wrote, "Consequently, the missionary has imprisoned and dwarfed the Gospel."(52) While stated somewhat polemically, Maen's observation carries weight in light of the historical evidence available. The locus of instruction for church leadership and the laity in general remained firmly in mission hands with a result precisely the opposite of that intended. The mission intended to protect the "purity" of the Gospel from "heathen" influences by dominating the content and the teaching of the Gospel in the North. What it accomplished, in fact, was to prevent the church from discovering its own understanding of the Gospel, thus, leaving it to try to adapt in some vague fashion as best it could beliefs about phi and winyan to what it understood of Christianity.

The fact that impresses me personally the most about Laos Mission leadership training is this: in general education, in medicine, and in technology, the various members of the mission performed near wonders in institution building. They introduced an impressive array of changes in the North. They persevered against all manner of obstacles to establish schools, hospitals, and even a press. The Collins', the Harris', the Campbells' and others were competent administrators. McKean built up a hospital and then established the first leprosarium

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