[p. 177]

While the General Association was contending with the Home Mission Society over cooperation, it was struggling with the other side of the problem in its task of adaptation with the local Associations. That which they refused on the one hand the same brethren seemed to demand on the other. With some denominations it would have been no problem at all. It would have been settled by the resolutions passed at Springfield in 1850. The General Association resolved:

"That the several Baptist Associations of this state be requested to form themselves into missionary societies auxiliary to the General Association."

"That the pastors of the resp'ective churches be request.ed to act as volunteer agents for the collecting of funds for the General Association."

If this could be successfully accomplished it would be ideal, from the Organization point of view. But it was not accomplished. Perhaps the committee that brought in the report did not expect it would be, but remembered that a committee may help along the cause a little by an ideal report when there is nothing better in sight. The Association however set to work to reduce the ideal to practice, and the resolutions were republished the following year for the information of the churches. In the report of the Board for 1855 they declared:

"In order to have the most effeaive working of our State Missions it is indispensable that the whole state be under one system. . . . We are advocating no favorite plan for a concentration of control in the hands of a few. The Board would favor only that measure of centralized power which is essential to efficiency."

Every year the subject was discussed and pressed, but it refused to be settled. Some of the local Associations were indifferent. Others preferred to look after their own mission work, applying to themselves the language used by the state Board concerning the proposition to give the Home Mission Society full missionary control over the state:

"We who know the field must provide for it; why should we commit it to others?" Jacksonville, 1859.

Yet the Board were consistent, though apparently inconsistent, and they were obliged to "proceed with caution." A special committee at

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[p. 178]
Bloomington, in 1858, on the Relation of the Local Associations to the General Association, reported softly that,

"All the relation that any Association could be asked to sustain to the General Association is that of well wishers to the cause."

But some of the Associations in the judgment of the Board were hardly entitled to be counted well wishers in a practical sense. The Board said:

"The question of employing an agent in this state is still further embarrassed by the fact that so large a number of local Associations have missionary Boards which absorb the funds of the churches and thus divert them from our treasury."

This practice of local Associations looking after their own mission work was sometimes done to save expense. This point the Board felt keenly, and would have removed all ground'for the objection if. they had been able. At Alton in 1862 they said:

"When the Board employs an agent the contributors complain that so large a percentage of their contributions is required to pay for collecting. When the Board does not send an agent but few churches contribute promptly; the great majority neglecting the duty altogether. The Board last year matured, and at considerable expense introduced to the churches of the state a plan for weekly collections for religious purposes (without agents) . So far as can be ascertained out of more than sixty churches said to have adopted it but very few have persevered in the work."

The whole issue was well stated in the report of the Board at Aurora in 1869:

"Many of our brethren and churches greatly prefer to do their own Domestic Mission work through their local Associations. In doing it in this way they generally do more liberally, and at the same time the benefactors and beneficiaries are brought into closer sympathy. Some Associations however have much destitution and little means, and others have much means and little destitution. If then the work be left wholly to the local Associations the result will be that in some places there will be expenditures on barren soil, and in otller places promising soil lie waste."

But the difficulty continued just the same. In 1885 the twenty percent plan was adopted, whereby twenty percent of all collections for local mission work was sent to the state treasury. But even where the plan was adopted in many cases Associational treasurers were careless about remitting, or kept it all at home. So the plan was modified, and

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[p. 179]
it was requested that all funds be sent to the state treasurer, who would return eighty percent to the local Associations. But the modified plan was no more observed than the other. To make the matter more complex the system of life memberships so successfully pushed by Rev. E. S. Graham became involved in the struggle. The membership were state funds, raised by a state official, yet churches often collected on them and used the proceeds in Associational mission work or in city missions; so that the General Association not only lost them but was minus the cost of procuring them. This led to the abrogation of the twenty percent plan.
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[Edward P. Brand, Illinois Baptists -- A History, 1930, pp. 177-179. -- jrd]

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