Dr. William C. Newbern, Alliance Witness, 1960.01.13, p.6-8.

In China the year 1949 was equally as dark and foreboding as was 1834, the year Robert Morrison died. In both those years the status of the Western powers in the Far East was extremely uncertain. In 1949 missionary work in China came to a full stop, serious trouble was just ahead in Korea and the world appeared to be on the brink of war.

Missionaries coming to Hong Kong that year had difficulty finding living accommodations. Just before the evacuation about 2,100 missionaries from North America were in China. Mission boards were confronted with this major emergency problem: How to deploy the China missionaries to new fields of service. Eventually about one thousand younger missionaries were sent to mission fields in practically every part of the world of the remainder many returned to the United States or Canada for ministries in the homeland. Most of the eighty-eight Alliance missionaries in China went to other fields, but a small holding force remained in Hong Kong. At present there are thirty Alliance· missionaries working among the Chinese in Hong Kong, Formosa, Thailand, Cambodia, Viet Nam and the Philippines, most of them gray-haired veterans. The need today is for highly trained replacements for specialized ministries.

How urgent is that need? Let me answer by quoting from a Roman Catholic Jesuit publication which I read in 1953. Relative to that organization’s position and future program the article makes this declaration: “Concerning China (Hong Kong) we must continue sending out young priests. This is of utmost importance. To express just how important this is we must break a rule of grammar and use a double negative: we cannot afford not to be ready.”

In 1949 God gave the Alliance holding force wisdom to meet the need of the hour. At first their course appeared to be only an attempt to salvage what they could of the press, the Bible school and the churches. These incidentally are the three great phases of all missionary ministry.