Rev. David Holwick
First Baptist Church
West Lafayette, Ohio
June 19, 1983
Why I Believe in Missions
Matthew 28:18-20 (NIV)
The last words of dying people have special meaning. They are usually long remembered by those who loved them. The last paragraph in Matthew is similar to this. It's not as though Jesus was going to die, for at this point he has already been raised from the dead but they are his last words in the sense that he was about to ascend into heaven. These words are known as the Great Commission and they give the main reason the church exists. The Church does not exist so that you have something to do Sunday morning. It does not exist to entertain children or to put up beautiful buildings. Jesus says here that the Church exists to tell people how they can have salvation in him and how they should live to please him.
There are many different aspects to Christian mission. The first word Jesus uses is "Go." To tell about Jesus you have to go out and find them. This seems very obvious but most churches wait for interested people to come to them. It is easy to become self-centered and hide behind these four walls. After all, we have enough activities and meetings to keep you busy most of the week. As a result, we often lose our vision for people outside.
The same thing happened in the early church. Turn with me to Acts 1:8, a passage that occurs just after Jesus gives the Great Commission. He says:
"But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth."
Here Jesus gives a very clear agenda for mission - start in Jerusalem, expand to your fellow countrymen in Judea; reach out to those you are only half-related to, the Samaritans; and then spread out to hit everyone else.
What did these early Christians do? They did an excellent job of evangelizing Jerusalem. Thousands were saved but then they settled into the city of wouldn't budge from it. God solved the problem by persecuting the church. In Acts 8 it says the city turned against them and kicked them out. As they looked for a place to stay, some ended up in Judea and others in Samaria. They preached the gospel, people were saved and Jesus' plan began to be fulfilled, whether the Christians were willing or not.
Today, more than ever, there is a need for the Church to reach out to new areas. Out of the four billion people on this planet, 2.7 billion do not live in a culture that has a strong Christian witness. Missionaries call these the "Hidden People." Because of their language or culture, these hidden people may be cut off from Christians who live nearby. Celeste and I actually experienced this in Cleveland. As we walked down the street we noticed people from many different countries. They were having an All-Nations festival. Cleveland has people from Romania, Hong Kong and Africa. These people probably won't walk into a church. The church will have to learn their language and reach out to them. Fortunately, God raises up special Christians to handle this task. Usually they face opposition that would cause weaker people to give up.
In the early 1800's the Church was not very concerned about missions. Christians even thought it was sinful to want to evangelize foreign lands. It took two young men to turn things around in the United States: Luther Rice and Adoniram Judson. Adoniram's father was a strict pastor and he wanted his son to follow in his steps. Instead, Adoniram went to school and lost the faith. He told his father the Bible was a bunch of fairy tales and religion was a racket. In his heart, though, he was in great turmoil and finally he achieved peace by accepting Christ as his Savior. What is more, he was determined to share it with those who had never heard the gospel.
Adoniram Judson and Mr. Rice raised money and sailed for Burma in 1813. Judson began the voyage as a Congregationalist and arrived as a Baptist. When they got off the boat in Burma, they built a church and preached the gospel but nothing happened. Adoniram translated the Bible into Burmese; still no one was saved. It took five years before he baptized a single convert. After a lifetime of preaching and two years in jail, Adoniram Judson had no more than a dozen coverts.
The last one hundred and fifty years has been a very significant time. Before this, Christianity was pretty much limited to Europe and America. Now it can be found on every continent. Baptists first arrived in Russia around 1860. They pushed carts full of Bibles from town to town and were arrested every time they preached. Today, Russia has close to one million Evangelicals, as well as forty million Eastern Orthodox Christians. Africa was penetrated around the same time. In fifteen years it is estimated this continent alone will have three hundred million Christians. Many of our missionaries work in Zaire, where the church has grown tremendously. The church in China is also around one hundred years old. At one time four thousand missionaries served there, some staying in mission stations where they started hospitals and schools, while others wandered from town to town. By 1950 China had two million believers.
In each of these fields American Baptists have played a significant role. Many people believe we have had one of the most successful missionary outreaches of any denomination. One of the key reasons is found in Matthew 28:19. After Jesus says "Go", he says "make disciples of all nations." It is not enough to lead someone to Christ - we must also train them in his ways. This involves teaching them about the Bible, Christian ethics and how to be pastors and missionaries themselves. This last point has often been missed. Wherever missionaries have tried to run everything and stay in charge, their efforts have ended up failing. It's the same way in a church - if the pastor runs everything that should be done by the deacons, trustees and other boards, the church will be weak.
American Baptists have two hundred missionaries which is not a large number but these missionaries are supported by over twenty thousand local Christian workers. We have trained people to be leaders and they have been faithful at it. One of the twenty-thousand national workers is Andre' Jean, who is the missionary we support in Haiti. He is also president of the Baptist Association in Haiti.
Creating disciples in these nations is vitally important, as history has shown. In the 1960's Burma was one of the countries that tried to get rid of foreign influences. A usual, the foreign missionaries, mostly Baptist, were kicked out, leaving the local churches to themselves. As first they stumbled, then the Burmese pastors got the hang of things. Today the Baptist in Burma number at least 370,000. Entire villages are saved and they are even sending out their own missionaries (Burma is the 10th poorest nation in the world, by the way).
The most intriguing story has to be that of China. After Mao Tse-Tung and his communists took over China many changes took place overnight. All the missionaries were expelled in 1950 and the churches they left behind were divided by dozens of denominations. Many expected the church to die. In the 1960's this pessimism was reasonable because it was the time of the Red Guards and the Cultural Revolution. The Red Guards were made up of young people and were led by Mao's wife. She told them to make China communist in its purist form from the top to the bottom. These guards formed mobs and terrorized China. They closed the schools and forced professors to work in rice paddies. Anyone associated with the West was persecuted. This was especially true of Christians. Every single church was closed. The Red Guards went home-to-home and confiscated Bibles. For fifteen years nobody heard about the Church. It sounded like the Red Guards had succeeded.
Fortunately, the missionaries had made disciples before they left. These Chinese Christians broke up their churches into groups of three or four and met for prayer. Sometimes they prayed in the middle of a field with their eyes open and smiles on their faces so people would think they were having a picnic. Slowly the groups grew. As the old missionary-trained pastors died, new ones took their place. Some of the house fellowships grew to two hundred and fifty or more people. Their services are simple: perhaps a half an hour in prayer, half an hour of testimonies, a long reading from the Bible and a short message on what it means.
At the convention I just attended, I met a former Baptist missionary to Asia, Cecil Carder. He had just been on a tour of China and saw many indications that the church is alive and strong. In many towns the old church buildings had reopened. The police even returned the Bibles they had confiscated. Cecil said many of the churches have three or more services on Sunday but not everything is rosy. Cecil met one pastor who was discouraged because his Wednesday prayer meeting had dropped to "only" four hundred and fifty people but there are many positive signs of revival. One positive sign to Cecil was the tour director on their bus. He wanted to preach a sermon to the Americans. They wouldn't let him because they thought it might be a trap. One night Cecil was walking back to his hotel when he sensed he was being followed. He got to his room and left to door cracked. Soon the tour director knocked on it and entered. He wanted a Bible. Cecil hesitated because he knew it could be a trap and he could be kicked out as a spy but the young man insisted on a Bible. Cecil told him he only had one English Bible left and he couldn't give it up. But the guy wouldn't leave. He said he knew English well, which was true. Finally Cecil gave in and let him have the Bible. The next day on the bus the tour director again asked if he could preach a sermon. He began to speak from a Psalm, about how God protects those who trust in him. By the end, all the retired missionaries and pastors on the bus were crying. Cecil said it was one of the best sermons he's ever heard.
The Spirit of God cannot be shackled. He is alive and well in China. Many scholars believe the church there has doubled in numbers since the communists took over in the late 1940's. God still needs missionaries. They need to be supported by us. At the convention we commissioned twelve but many more are needed.
Jesus says that until the whole world hears the gospel, he cannot return. Perhaps someone here is being called by God to serve.
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Typed on May 9, 2006, by Sharon Lesko of Ledgewood Baptist Church, New Jersey
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
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