Our Roots, Pt. 22

In 1891 a missionary named A. T. Robinson arrived in South Africa to take charge of the work there. The time was right for the work in that area to be given some formal organization. However, what Robinson had to deal with was not just the creation of a conference, but how to address the functions of the many auxiliaries. The organizational model from the US called for a separate local chapter of each auxiliary to be organized at the conference level and for each to have its own governing board. In a new territory such as South Africa this posed a problem because it would require the rather limited number of church workers to spend considerable amounts of time populating these boards rather than evangelizing. To resolve this issue Robinson proposed a different way of organizing the auxiliaries.

Robinson wanted to bring all of the auxiliaries under the control of the conference. Each auxiliary would have a single “secretary” to oversee the functions of that auxiliary within the conference. The auxiliaries’ secretaries would report to the conference executive committee. There is some evidence that variations on this idea had previously been suggested in different contexts, but this was the first time anyone had seriously tried to implement it. Robinson wrote to the General Conference President O. A. Olsen to get approval for the plan.

When Olsen received this request he wrote to W. C. White, who was then living in Australia, to get his opinion of the plan. The time it took for mail to travel in those days created some confusion about the nature of White’s response. Before receiving the letter about Robinson’s proposal White had written a letter to Olsen which spoke generally about the need to maintain the auxiliaries within the existing conferences. After receiving Olsen’s letter about Robinson’s proposal he wrote again. In this letter he expressed concern about some of the details of the constitution Robinson proposed for the new conference, but otherwise thought the idea for consolidating the auxiliaries made a lot of sense in Robinson’s situation. About two weeks later White wrote directly to Robinson with the same message.

In the meantime Olsen had received the earlier letter from White and assumed that it was meant to apply to Robinson’s proposal. This, combined with opinions from the Foreign Mission Board that Robinson’s proposal would constitute undesirable centralization, lead him to reply to Robinson on November 13, 1892 that he should not proceed with his proposed method of organizing the South African Conference. The message didn’t arrive in time. Whether he had gotten tired of waiting for a response or was sufficiently reassured by White’s approval or was motivated by some other reason, Robinson went ahead with organization according to his plan on December 4, 1892. Olsen’s letter of disapproval was still in the mail.

Since the deed was then done it was allowed to stand. Olsen was wary of the development but later acknowledged that things seemed to be running smoothly in the South African Conference. This successful experiment would later serve as a model for further innovations in Church organizational structure.

Next: Auxiliary Confusion