WHAT PASTORS EXPECT FROM THEIR MISSIONARIES

Tuesday, June 18, 2019

WHAT PASTORS EXPECT

FROM THEIR MISSIONARIES

Acts 15:40-41

40 And Paul chose Silas, and departed, being recommended by the brethren unto the grace of God.

41 And he went through Syria and Cilicia, confirming the churches.

           A young pastor once emailed me a simple but difficult question: “What do you expect from your missionaries. Please list your expectations in a few sentences.” Well, I hadn’t really thought about it, but here is a brief sketch of my answer to him.

I want to see purpose. Convince me that you are called and cut out for missions. Let me know why you think you should be in Hawaii.

I want to see Passion. Somehow convince me that your heart has been broken for your field.

Rom 9:1-3

9 I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Ghost,

2 That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart.

3 For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh:

I want to see a Plan. Tell me what you plan to do when you get there. I’m not interested in how pretty the countryside is or how pleasant it will be to live there.

I want to be a Partner. This means accountability. I want to know when things go well and when things don’t go so well. Don’t lie to me.

I want to see Progress. Let me rejoice at the many or the few. Quantify the progress in some meaningful way.

Hardly likely candidates for the rigors of the early nineteenth-century mission field--Ann Hasseltine Judson, nicknamed Nancy, and her husband, Adoniram Judson, helped open the Far East. Before they met and were married, both Adoniram and Nancy underwent powerful conversion experiences, passing, as Nancy put it, "from death into life." Both had a passion to join the newly forming missionary enterprise that was firing the imaginations of youthful Christians on both sides of the Atlantic. So thirteen days after they wed, in 1812, they set sail for India.

   Aboard ship, Adoniram, an ordained Congregational minister, changed his theology to the Baptist position. Ann did also, and they were thus forced to sever ties with their sending mission. The Judsons were baptized by William Carey's colleague William Ward.

   The Judsons found that the English governors of the subcontinent did not welcome these Western visitors with their Bibles and zeal. Threatened with deportation, they left India and went first to Mauritius and thence to Burma--a closed land, ruled by a tyrannical regime, horribly hot and disease-ridden. The Judsons found the place "dark, cheerless, and unpromising."

   Over time, Ann Judson suffered from smallpox and spinal meningitis, buried one child, and saw her husband shut up in a vermin-infested prison for two years. Yet she also translated the Gospel of Matthew into Burmese and strove to improve the lot of Burmese women, who were considered little more than chattel. She missed her family but could affirm that "I am happy in thinking that I gave up this source of pleasure [and] I am happy [to] labor for the promotion of the kingdom of heaven." She, and a new baby, died soon after Adoniram's release.

   Adoniram fell into a deep depression after Ann's death and even contemplated suicide. But he recovered and went on to translate the entire Bible into Burmese. He also pursued an itinerant ministry that, after many years, began to yield fruit. In 1845 he returned to the U.S. for a visit, to find himself lionized as a living Protestant saint.

   Judson, who was married three times, outlived all his wives and several of his children. Between marriages, he entrusted his children's care to others. Some of his children never saw him after childhood. But when he died in 1850, he left behind 7,000 more "children"--members of the Burmese Christian church he and Ann had begun.

Dear Lord, help our missionaries – some of whom are in grave danger – to persevere through the difficulties of life and the opposition of the devil. Gie them health, joy, and fruit today. AMEN