Stephen Neill

“But in the case of the Indian mass movements there was also the simple external fact that in no case were the forces supplied by the Western Churches adequate to secure the necessary continuity in the work and the after-care that is so urgently needed by simple and illiterate Christians. Experience shows that intensive pastoral care must be supplied during a period of thirty years before a Christian community of this kind can be regarded as stable. In hardly any case was this possible. As a result, far too much came to be taken for granted; it was assumed, mistakenly, that the sons and grandsons, who had not shared the experiences of the first converts and the persecutions that almost invariably followed upon their decision to become Christians, would follow loyally in the same steps. In many cases failure in pastoral care resulted in the existence of masses of baptized heathens, and, when once a movement has run down in this way, it is very difficult to get it started again.”
― Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions