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In some ways, the decade following 1910 seemed more alive and exciting than the previous ten years. The 1910s were a period of ferment, unrest, and new ideas during which the Laos Mission attempted to make up for the "lost decade" of 1900-1909 by founding the Theological Training School, by resuming the ordaining of northern Thai clergy, and by opening a new drive for self-support among the churches. Robert Irwin made a reappearance as the dynamic agent of the American Bible Society. The years 1911-1914 showed a remarkable surge in church growth statistics while the mission also established closer ties with the Siam Mission and developed a program for women.

Meanwhile, the older leadership of the mission started to die away. Both church and mission experienced a deep sense of loss in 1911 as first Wilson and then McGilvary died. Leading figures of the "second generation" soon followed these two great first generation men. Collins died in 1917. Briggs and Dodd, the great advocates of expansion, died in 1919. Sarah Campbell and Dr. Peoples died the following year.

In truth, however, even in this decade of ferment the swelling river of continuity out of the past flowed more strongly than ever. If anything, the northern Thai church received less attention from a Laos Mission distracted by other matters. The grandiose plans of this decade had to do mostly with expansion and institutions. The age-old limitations on mission effectiveness did not change in the least while the trend after 1903 whereby institutional missionaries spent weekends and vacations with churches reversed itself.

The record of the 1910s, then, was one of rampant stagnation...the economists call it "stagflation."

The Kengtung Question spilled over past 1910 until the Board decision in June 1913 brought the overt Kengtung territorial dispute between the Baptists and Presbyterians to an end. Yet, even as the Kengtung Question came to a weary close, the Laos Mission looked around for other possible areas of expansion beyond the boundaries of Siam. The siren call of expansion lost none of it potency, and the mission had options aplenty: it still planned to open at least one station in Yunnan Province, China, where a large population of Thai Lu, ethnic cousins of the northern Thai, lived. It also entered into discussions with the Siam Mission over the possibility of opening Presbyterian work in northeast Siam, which both missions understood to be the responsibility of the Siam Mission. However, when the Laos Mission agreed in 1915 to assign the Freemans to the Siam Mission for the purpose of opening a station in the Northeast, the Board promptly rejected the whole notion as financially impossible. (1)

Another arena of expansionist interest was French Indochina. Ever since local French authorities refused Laos Mission members permission to work with the Khamu (see Chapter 3), the mission had searched for a way to reverse that decision. But by 1912, "feelers" put out by the Board through international ecumenical circles and through diplomatic channels in Washington failed to resolve the situation. Brown advised the mission that the French might not object to a "quiet" entry, and so having failed to get into Indochina across the Mekong, the mission decided to go through the "front door", Hanoi. In the first half of 1913, Dodd and Vincent made a Board-sanctioned tour of "Tonkin" to ascertain the prospects of Presbyterian mission work with the Tai peoples of Indochina. The prospects seemed good although it was clear that such a mission could not be officially or obviously related to a mission in Siam. The French would not likely tolerate that. Whatever hope the Laos Mission might have had for starting something in Indochina was quickly dashed, however, after the Board received Dodd and Vincent's report. Brown, Board Secretary, wrote that while the Board would have sanctioned Laos Mission-based expansion into French Laos, it could not agree to starting a whole new mission in Indochina. Soon thereafter, word came back to the Board through diplomatic channels that the French government absolutely opposed any proselytizing in Laos. (2)

Northeast Siam? Beyond reach. French Indochina? Closed. That left Yunnan. Even here the prospects for a new station seemed slight. In 1913,

Just as in the case of Kengtung so now in the case of Chiang Rung, mission expansion exacted from the northern Thai church a price. Expansion proved itself to be a decade long distraction. From 1910 to 1913, the mission fought for its dream of returning to Kengtung, only to lose. From 1914 to 1916, the mission directed its energies towards obtaining permission to open a station in Chiang Rung. Then, from 1917 to the end of the decade, it had to staff and fund its new and very distant station. Expansion began costing the churches in 1913 when Dodd and Vincent made their Indochina tour while both the Chiang Rai and Lampang stations went without staff to carry out church work during their months' long absence. After the Chiang Rung Station opened, it depended on the northern Thai church for financial assistance and, more especially, evangelists. In 1919, three mission stations sent a total of nine evangelists for varying periods of time. In 1920, the already weak Phrae Station came to a virtual halt when the mission sent two families from there to Chiang Rung (see Chapter 6). (6) As in previous decades, the northern Thai church continued to depend for its leadership, its program, and even its income on a mission, which devoted inordinate amounts of time and resources to a "plan" of expansion that ignored the life of the churches already established.

In 1911, an exasperated Arthur J. Brown sent out a circular letter to all Presbyterian missions deploring their constant demands for and reliance on money. In their letters, the missions demanded more money. On their furlough visits to New York, Presbyterian missionaries called for more money. Brown went on at length about the "perils of an undue reliance upon money and re-enforcements." (7) In the years after 1911, Brown must have sighed and shaken his head over letters from northern Siam as the Laos Mission hatched one grandiose and expensive plan after another. In expansion, the mission sought to do everything everywhere all at once...the Northeast... Indochina... Yunnan, and we have already seen that in 1912 it concocted a fabulous master plan to occupy the Asian interior with 25 stations in 25 years (see Chapter 7). The silence from New York on that one was deafening.

But there were other plans. Take, for example, the proposal for a "Laos Christian University": this scheme appeared during the visit of the Bradt delegation in 1912. The mission wanted a university with three faculties (Arts & Sciences, Theology, and Medicine) at an initial cost of about $475,000. Brown replied, "...we are a little dazed by the proposal of one Mission that the Board commit itself to a definite program of over a million and a quarter ticals for the educational and medical equipment of a single mission." He called it an "impracticable program," which violated previous policy decisions about the development of the church in the North. (8)

At the time the mission sought its Christian University, it also undertook to convince the Board to support, if not the whole scheme, at least the founding of a medical college. Once again, the Board lacked funds, and Brown questioned the mission's ability to manage such an institution. Nevertheless, the mission went right ahead with its plan and actually inducted a class of seven medical students under Dr. Cort in 1915. The mission tried to run the school out of its available funds, but by 1920 this scheme too had to be abandoned. (9)

The significance for the church of most of the great proposals of the decade was that they had nothing to do with the churches. Nearly all of the plans and the creative thinking of the decade centered on the institutions. In a conference held in New York in 1910 at which the Laos Committee and the Executive Committee of the Board met with Dr. McKean and Mabel Gilson, the Board worked out a program of development specifically for the northern Thai church. The conference found that the churches lacked adequate leader-

The decade closed with yet another example of the potency of the Laos Mission's institutional orientation, an orientation shared by the Board of Foreign Missions in New York. In 1916, the Board approved a special funding drive for the two Siam missions, the "Siam Extension Fund". The fund totaled $50,000 and took some time to collect, but in 1920 the Board in consultation with the missions prepared a budget for the extension fund. Just at 70% of the allotted funds went for institutional expansion and development. Another 21% was designated for "evangelism" which may have included church work as well. The remaining 9% fell under the categories of new stations and church buildings. (11)

The churches could not compete with the institutions for mission attention. In October 1916, for example, Julia Hatch returned to the field to do full-time village women's work with the rural churches, a task she had proven herself adept at in Phrae two decades earlier (see Chapter 3). Hardly had she begun her work, however, when the Chiang Mai Girls' School lost its principal. The mission immediately moved Hatch from Chiang Rai to that position, a move that she herself made reluctantly. (12) By 1920, then, the central focus of the Laos Mission was solidly on its mission educational and medical institutions. Institutional thinking became a habit that could hardly be questioned, let alone broken.

The impression one has from the records of the day, however, is that the Laos Mission after 1910 did not quite appreciate how dominated by institutional needs it had become. There seemed to be a great deal going on in the churches. A number of new initiatives for developing the church appeared during the last decade of the mission. Never did church work seem so hopeful, particularly in the earlier years of the decade when the church experienced a great burst of growth.

The epidemic continued into 1912, and Dr. McKean tagged it the worst epidemic of malaria in the North since 1880. Small pox also appeared. The mission sent out its own teams of medical evangelists under the direction of Collins and Campbell and also supplied vaccine for the government's relief work. Conversions to Christianity mushroomed. A jubilant mission opened its 1912 report saying, "The Station reports of the North Laos Mission for 1912 are cheery, hopeful, aggressive in an unwonted degree. The Lord of the Harvest has granted us a larger share of His ingathering than ever before." The church grew by 1,044 members in 1912 so that at the end of that year one of every four Christians in the church joined it in 1912. (14) The mission's Epidemic Committee (Collins, McKean, and Campbell) confidently predicted future conversion rates several times as high if only the Board could get them money for more medicine and more medical evangelists. (15)

The Board found it difficult to respond. The Siamese government hampered the Board's efforts to collect humanitarian aid from sources such as the Red Cross by denying it needed assistance in the North. (16) In a rather curious letter dated 5 September 1912, Briggs reprimanded Brown for seeking humanitarian aid especially through cooperation with the Siamese government. Briggs wrote that the government knew the mission used this epidemic as an opportunity for converting people; and, therefore, it would rather allow hundreds die than permit assistance to be channeled through the mission. The mission very consciously used its funds where it expected the most converts, and therefore it should not, concluded Briggs, use philanthropic moneys. (17)

The Board also attempted to collect funds in American church circles, but very little money came in because church people there deplored the way in which the Laos Mission seemed to be buying converts among the ill. The Board received protest letters about a circular written from the Laos Mission

Although the epidemic affected many areas in the North including Lampang and Phrae, the highest rates of conversion because of the epidemic took place in the Chiang Mai Station, notably at Bethlehem, Mae Pu Kha, and in sections of the Chiang Mai Church itself, especially at Ban Tho and San Pong. The San Pong community grew large enough to form its own church in May 1914. Most of the converts were impoverished by the epidemics. (19)

By 1913, the epidemic began to abate in some areas, and each of the next two years found it dying away. From 1915 on, even in those areas where epidemic conditions still existed, such as in Chom Thong to the south of Chiang Mai, people did not convert even when they accepted mission medical assistance. The epidemic ended by 1916, and in that year the churches showed little growth. Indeed, various missionaries began to grumble once again about the lack of evangelistic zeal among the average church members. Harris wrote, "But one cannot but note the fact that our Christian people have not advanced as far as we could wish in assuming personal responsibility for the spread of the Kingdom. (20)

The missionaries in some cases attributed their evangelistic success in the years from 1911 to 1914 to the fact that the epidemic and famine conditions of the country shattered many peoples' confidence in spirit propitiation. In those areas served by the mission's medical services, it must have been evident that those who took the medicine recovered while many of those who did not died. (21) It is likely that missionary medicine resulted in a large number of conversions for other reasons as well: in the first place, it was much more widely available than previously; secondly, after 1910 the Christian community experienced more social acceptance than previously thus making people more willing to take Christian medicine; and, finally, the "forces" of change were much stronger in the North by 1910 so that people would likely have been more receptive to its use in any event.

The contrast between 1914 and 1916 in terms of numerical growth is quite striking, (see Appendix II). Although some mission members argued that the converts from the epidemic period did not drop away when it ended, what evidence we have does not agree. First of all, one has the impression that some of the figures given for conversion were a bit inflated. For example, Collins claimed that the Bethlehem Church grew by over 300 members in

Thus, the great numerical expansion of 1911-1914 came to a crash with a resounding whimper. Hughes has concluded that in the years after 1914 the reasons why people converted to Christianity prior to that time lost potency even as Siamese nationalism began to assert that in order to be "truly Thai" one must also be a Buddhist. (24) After this brief period of explosive growth, the church in northern Thailand entered a long period in which it hardly grew at all.

The rapid growth of the churches in the early years of the decade resulted in a significant number of new churches. In all, the North Laos Presbytery established seventeen churches between March 1912 when the Ban Tho Church was organized and February 1916 when it established the Fang Church (see Appendix I). Although the manner in which these churches were pastored and otherwise led did not change, what was reported of the Suan Dok Church (Chiang Rai Station) may have been more generally true. The church's missionary "pastor" reported that the people of the church showed more interest in its affairs and felt that it was more theirs after it became an independent congregation. Whether such feelings were widespread or more than just a passing fancy is impossible to judge, but the observation itself does suggest how distant and unreal the prior regional church might have seemed to local Christian communities. (25)

Symbolic of the permanency and growing age of the churches was the way in which they found more acceptance in society. In 1911, King Vajuravudh, only recently crowned, distributed large standing clocks to the churches and institutions in the North in memory of his father, King Chulalongkorn. Churches invited their non-Christian neighbors to special dedicatory services, which helped to impress upon those neighbors the fact that the King himself held Christians in favor. Throughout the decade repression of Christians dropped,

Otherwise, the churches after 1910 engaged in much the same activities as they had in the previous decade. The chapel building movement continued as before and gained new impetus in 1915 when so many new churches were organized. The city churches in both Lampang and Chiang Rai built large new chapels partly with overseas funds, and just as before chapel building remained a major activity at the local church level. In like fashion, the village school movement also grew and remained the other primary activity of most churches. However, even after the village church school system expanded in 1912 (see Chapter 7), these little schools still had problems maintaining the quality of education the mission desired. Teachers were extremely difficult to obtain, and when the government raised teacher qualifications the problem only became worse. (27)

Schools and buildings... these formed the foundation of an active congregation. Thus, for example, in 1911 Chiang Rai Station reported that the Christian community at Muang Phan showed the marks of a strong Christian life and concluded that God was transforming lives in that church. The evidence provided for that conclusion included: one, a new church building; two, an interest in education; and, three, respect in the larger community. (28)

Another activity that churches engaged in during the decade was the distribution of Scripture portions. Scripture distribution by the churches came into its own when Robert Irwin returned to Siam as an Agent of the American Bible Society Agency for Siam and Laos and assumed full control of the agency in October 1912. Irwin placed a large number of "colporteurs" in the stations of the Laos Mission where they were under missionary supervision. They distributed tens of thousands of tracts and Scriptures throughout the North. Irwin himself made frequent trips to the North visiting stations, teaching the Bible, and conducting training programs in local churches. As far as the churches were concerned, Irwin not only involved them in literature distribution to a greater extent than ever before but also gave considerable time to working in them. He even went so far as to fill in from time to time in areas, Lamphun for example, temporarily without missionary supervision. (29)

Overall, one might summarize the decade of the 1910s for the churches as one of stability that generally continued the patterns of the previous decade. The great period of conversions in 1911-1914 increased the bulk of the Christian community even as that community settled somewhat more com-

The Karens. Laos Mission awareness of the Karen went all the way back to McGilvary whose interest in them clashed with Kawilorot's fear that a missionary-Karen axis might cause him political problems. He blocked contact with the Karen. Thereafter, the Laos Mission showed little interest in the Karens whom they assumed to "belong" to the Baptists in Burma. In fact, the mission readily accepted a small cluster of Baptist Karen churches near Lampang and even made occasional visits to them. Prior to 1910, the only known Karens belonging to churches of the mission were one small group of four or five families living in Thung Tom, south of Chiang Mai. (30)

Things might have continued in this manner had not the Freemans in Lamphun discovered a number of Karen villages in the Wang Mun Church area that showed some previous contact with Christianity. They reported two villages seeking instruction, and during 1914 seven Karens came down to Lamphun for two weeks to study with them. In 1915, six young Karens spent half of the year with the Freemans. In the meantime, Freeman convinced Kru Enny (or Annie), an ordained Karen Baptist minister residing in Chiang Mat, to visit these Karen villages (in 1914). Kru Enny showed little enthusiasm or interest, thus justifying, in Freeman's mind, Presbyterian involvement with them. Freeman felt that the Presbyterians could better help them find a place in northern Thai society. Eventually, the Freemans baptized one village and placed it under the care of Wang Mun Church, which sent evangelists to visit it and other Karen villages. (31)

Even as the Freemans started their modest Karen Presbyterian community, another missionary found his visits to the Karen Baptists north of Lampang somewhat disquieting. Hartzell visited the three Karen churches in 1916. He found that no missionary had visited them since 1908 and that, while one of the original four villages had fallen back into "heathenism," the other three displayed a very active Christian life - without any outside support.

The Chinese. Reports of Chinese converts in northern Siam go as far back as 1893 when the Lampang Church received a single Chinese member. Sometime later when the church accepted another Chinese member the family of this convert became so agitated that they murdered him. Lamphun in 1907 and Nan in 1908 both saw some interest among the Chinese in Christianity, but nothing seems to have come of it in either city, although one man did convert in Nan. (33)

The first movement toward Christianity among the Chinese in the North began in Lampang with the conversion of seven young men in 1913 through contacts with the station's schools and hospital. The station developed further contacts with the Chinese community in that same year when Vincent received an invitation from Chinese residents in Lampang to join in forming a "Republican Club." However, the event that actually gave impetus to the movement towards Christianity in Lampang and other northern cities was the visit of Dr. Tien Sueh, a member of Third Church in Bangkok, sent under the auspices of the American Bible Society. He presented the Christian message in Chinese for the first time in the North, and his visit resulted in a considerable number of conversions. (34)

From 1914, the churches in Lampang, Chiang Mat, Nan, and Phrae received numbers of Chinese converts. By July 1914, a total of thirty had been received throughout the mission, and at the end of 1914 Lampang alone had 43 Chinese members, all merchants or shopkeepers. The Chiang Mat Market Chapel provided a center for the Chiang Mai Church Chinese, as did the market dispensary in Lampang for Chinese Christians there. Although the total number of converts was not large, the mission saw in them a hopeful pattern for future growth. (35)

Within a short time, however, some missionaries began to refer to the "Chinese Question" as troublesome cultural differences between the urban,

In the aftermath of the Speer Delegation visit in 1915, mission women's work headed the list of "departments" that came in for more attention and organization. Prior to this decade, women's work, such as it was, meant mostly women's education, a concern that went all the way back to the 1870s when Sophia McGilvary started her little class of girls. Women did not have separate organizations of their own for the most part although they usually did not study with men in Sunday school or other educational programs. Only Julia Hatch appears to have worked with women in a context wider than the classroom.

One of the most enthusiastic of those engaged in women's education was Emma Freeman at Lamphun. She conducted classes in biblical education and in literacy in all three of the Lamphun churches with a considerable degree of success. In the years after 1900, a few other mission women began to receive specific assignments to "women's work". Dora Belle Taylor, for example, had that assignment in 1907 in Lampang and set up a group called the "Women's Aid and Missionary Society." At the same time, other missionary women came to the North to engage themselves specifically in women's work, one of the first after Julia Hatch being Elizabeth Carothers who took over from Taylor in Lampang in 1908. She enrolled a total of 81 women (Christian and non-Christian) in literacy and Bible classes taught by "Bible" women under her direction. (37)

Women's work remained a fitful, uneven matter in the mission, depen-

The various stations took immediate steps to carry out these recommendations. They formed groups of "King's Daughters" (usually school girls), circles, and literacy and Bible classes. In the Phrae Church, for example, women's work included regular meetings of the women with programs that included Bible study, instruction in prayer, overseas-missions studies, or instruction in hygiene. The Chiang Mai Church branch of the Women's Guild organized itself in June 1916 with the women of the mission giving talks to explain the purpose of the new organization. Sixty women and children attended. (38)

In acknowledgment of her great influence over the rest of the mission in women's work, Freeman followed Collins as president of the Guild. More than ever, it promoted literacy and Bible study as the core of women's work. There is some indication that the actual purpose behind much of this educational activity was the preparation of women for their own leadership in women's work and also to "broaden" their understanding of the world. The Guild also promoted the more extensive use of women as evangelists and colporteurs. (39)

As was so often the case in this decade, the apparently innovative development of women's work provided little change from the past. Rather, the Women's Guild, entirely organized and run by missionaries, simply extended work already being done in some areas to others. Even then, excepting only Freeman's work at Wang Mun and Bethel, the Guild limited itself to the city churches. It did not touch rural women, and overall the Guild displayed all of the attitudes and weaknesses common to the whole mission.

After 1895, the Laos Mission failed to take the steps needed to develop a viable ordained ministry for the churches. Indeed, the mission stopped ordaining men into the ministry entirely while it transformed those already

Of the eight men ordained by the North Laos Presbytery in the nineteenth century, only three remained active in 1910 and one of those three, Kru Pook, died shortly thereafter, in 1912. (41) Kru Chai Ma, in his 70s, continued his effective but limited pastoral work with the Muang Phrao and Chiang Dao Churches, where he also engaged in evangelistic work from time to time. (42) Kru Pannya played a much more active role in church affairs. Aside from his duties as assistant pastor for rural groups of Chiang Mat Church, he also

In 1911 the presbytery ordained its first clergymen since December 1894 when it ordained Kru Noi Wong of the Muang Yao community, Kru Semo, and Kru Nan Ti, who died shortly thereafter. Interestingly enough, of these three only Kru Semo entered into pastoral work as Kru Noi Wong and Nan Ti both worked as station assistants in evangelism although each did work with local churches on occasion. Semo served as the assistant pastor of the Chiang Mai Church's city congregation. He preached regularly and had quite a reputation as an outstanding preacher. He was considered competent enough by the mission to be left in charge of the congregation (under Harris' nominal supervision) when Campbell went on furlough in 1916. (44)

Prior to 1920, the presbytery ordained only two other men, both in 1915. After ordination, Nan Luang continued to carry out his duties as the evangelist and director of the Market Chapel in Chiang Mai until his death just two years later in 1917. Kru Kham Ai joined the pastoral team at Chiang Mai Church where he shared in the itinerating duties as well as in assisting teaching in the seminary. (45)

The Chiang Mai triumvirate of Pannya, Semo, and Kham Ai often received praise from the mission for their abilities and their development as church leaders. They gained respect when they filled in capably at the seminary in its early days (see Chapter 5), and Campbell credited them along with Kru Chai Ma for much of the development of the Chiang Mai Station's work during 1917. (46) By-and-large, the five clergymen (including Kru Noi Wong) seemed to satisfy the wants and standards of the mission more than had the group ordained earlier. Yet, none of these five served as full-time pastors of churches in their own right. With the lone exception of the aging Chai Ma, the mission assigned all of its ordained men to positions that included duties other than pastoral work and usually included heavy doses of itineration.

Since the ordained clergy did not serve as pastors living with and serving in just one congregation, the mission had to find a way to fill the breach. Among other things, it now pressed elders into service in a new office usually referred to as the "pastoral assistant". The first mention of pastoral assistants appeared in 1911 when the Nan Church hired a "native assistant" to conduct home visitation and visit out-villages on Sundays. Most likely it was Nan No, an elder, who received this assignment—at least, it was he who was recorded in 1914

Mission records show that the missionaries spent less and less time visiting the churches as the decade progressed. The causes for this change included the passing away of some older missionaries, individuals more committed to church visitation, the increasingly heavy burden of institutional work, and a willingness to turn more direct church work over to northern Thai church leaders. In Chiang Mai Station, the seminary students absorbed much of the responsibility for church work: each student spent his weekends with rural churches performing essentially pastoral tasks in those churches. In addition to sending out evangelists, itinerating assistants, and students, the various stations maintained contact with the churches through special conferences attended by church leaders and station employees. The purpose of these "church workers' conferences" was to make plans, give instructions, and introduce new ideas to the churches. (51)

Even though the missionaries slowly withdrew from immediate contact with rural churches, the fundamental system for church governance and maintenance remained the same. The churches continued to be run from the top down and the center out, as it were. The only difference from the past decades was that in this last decade of the mission the mission created another layer of functionaries between itself and the churches. It had always sent out itinerating evangelists and station assistants, including ordained men, to visit the churches. It had always relied to a large extent on local elders to keep things running between missionary visits. Now, it relied more heavily on intermediaries than previously without otherwise giving up its control/supervision/authority over the churches. It did not change its fundamental relationship with the churches. While giving a somewhat larger role to church leaders, it maintained the regional church system with its centralization of power.

For well over a decade after the great self-support drive around the turn of the century (see Chapter 6), the Laos Mission did little to push the matter of self-support and stewardship among its churches. Although there were scattered attempts to initiate more faithful financial giving after 1910, the first innovation in stewardship did not come until 1916 when Beebe in Phrae introduced the "envelope system" of using small envelopes for weekly church offerings. Beebe reported that the envelope system resulted in a 23% increase in giving in Phrae. He presented the "Phrae system" at presbytery in April 1916, and other congregations picked up the idea so that by 1919 most of the churches in the North used it. Meanwhile, the mission and presbytery initiated a second important change in stewardship in 1917. They established a "Central Fund" to be collected from the churches for the purpose of supporting theological education and paying pastors of churches. The initial response to the Central Fund by the churches seemed to be good. (52)

Then came a bombshell. In a stern letter dated 8 November 1918, Arthur J. Brown, after reading the reports of both missions in Siam from the perspective of self-support, wrote that, "...I must frankly confess that I am somewhat disturbed." He found that total northern Thai church giving (including missionary personal giving) amounted to only about 15 cents per church member per year. He found that amount "disconcertingly small". He discounted the argument that the northern Thai church was too poor to do more. Much poorer churches in Africa and Asia gave several times the northern Thai church figure. Indeed, the average for all 26 Presbyterian missions ran to 73 cents per member per year. Brown then posed the question, "Is there not grave danger that the Christian Church (sic.) in Siam will not be placed upon a solid foundation and will not be a permanent force unless its members assume larger responsibility for it?" (53)

Brown's letter had the desired effect as it drove the mission and the presbytery to a more serious consideration of the church's stewardship responsibility. In particular, the churches increased their support for the Central Fund, and some even started pledging to the fund. (54)

In its last decade, the Laos Mission initiated a number of new programs and undertakings, which seemed to indicate that the mission had finally achieved some direction and purpose, in spite of the pessimistic attitude of some members

In fact, we have already seen that in many of these matters in which there seemed to be change, those changes were more apparent than real. Yet, at least, there was movement... ideas... activity. And there did seem to be a sense that, perhaps, finally some of the old thinking that had taken root well before 1895 was truly beginning to change.

Symbolic, perhaps, of the change in thinking and direction slowly appearing was the founding of the "Leper Church" in 1913 at the Mission Leprosarium outside of Chiang Mai. Founded by Dr/ McKean in 1908, the Leprosarium had a quite amazing impact on its patients who almost without fail converted to Christianity. Whereas (as we have seen), many converts accepted Christianity out of a sense of need that had little to do with religious concerns the leper converts converted more out of a sense of gratitude and as an expression of the liberation and acceptance they experienced through mission leprosy work. They soon gained a reputation as sacrificial givers, and they became the chief source of consistent growth after 1915. In a very real sense, here was church and mission at its best, accepting unconditionally the ones society deemed the least acceptable. In this simple act of mercy, church and mission questioned a deadening social value while bringing hope to the hopeless. (55)

And...yet...even as some things on the surface changed...those deeper channels of continuity flowed...flowed with a torrential strength...carrying even the unwilling into a future so much like the past.