Editorial: Missionary Mountain Peaks and Glaciers

by Jim Reapsome

I was really in the catbird’s seat last summer, cruising through the majestic Canadian Rockies in a tour bus, admiring the scenery and thanking God for it. Suddenly around the bend we confronted a mountain peak named for the first missionary to Alberta, Robert Rundle.

I was really in the catbird’s seat last summer, cruising through the majestic Canadian Rockies in a tour bus, admiring the scenery and thanking God for it. Suddenly around the bend we confronted a mountain peak named for the first missionary to Alberta, Robert Rundle.

The end of the second millennium has inspired me to cruise through some of the missionary mountain peaks and glaciers of the last 1,000 years. We should survey these peaks with the same sense of awe, appreciation, and praise to God that we feel as sightseers of the glories of God’s creation.

The catbird’s tour bus leans to the right, toward conservative theology. Another bus leans to the left, toward liberal theology. What you see in the 1,000-year panorama of mission history depends on which bus you take.

Glaciers crunch irrevocably down the mountains, scouring the landscape. That’s what happened when the Protestant Reformation shook the religious and political landscape of Europe in the 16th century. Great Roman Catholic missionary movements had swept out of Europe prior to the Reformation, but our Protestant missionary glacier had its source in the break from Rome.

From the Protestant perspective, the Moravians made the first substantial commitment to world missions. After receiving a special visitation of the Holy Spirit in 1727, they began to send missionaries in 1732. By 1760, 226 Moravians had entered 10 foreign countries.

Toward the end of the 18th century we glimpse the summit of William Carey (1761-1834) and stand back in wonderment. He stands sublimely as the father of the modern Protestant missionary era. Carey published the first global survey of world missions in 1792. He went to India in 1793 and served 41 years in Bengal without a furlough. Among his many accomplishments, he translated and printed the Bible in 35 languages.

New peaks erupted early in the 19th century in Europe and America, some of them formal, like the London Missionary Society and the British and Foreign Bible Society, some of them impromptu, like the 1806 Haystack Prayer Meeting at Williams College (Mass.), which birthed foreign missions among several denominations. Alexander Duff spearheaded the first interdenominational missions conference in New York in 1854.

Around the next bend we witness the mighty explosion of worldwide missionary outreach toward the end of the 19th century and into the first decade of the 20th. The fuse was lit by the Student Volunteer Movement. Among many luminaries of this period were J. Hudson Taylor (1832-1905), Lottie Moon (1840-1912), Samuel Zwemer (1867-1952), David Livingstone (1813-1873), Mary Slessor (1848-1915), Rowland V. Bingham (1872-1942), C.T. Studd (1862-1931), Adoniram Judson (1788-1850), Robert Jaffray (1873-1945), and Amy Carmichael (1867-1951).

We must also focus our field glasses on other glaciers, beginning with the Reformation and the Anabaptists and extending to Pietism, the Wesleyan revival, the Great Awakenings in the U.S. and elsewhere, and the evangelistic campaigns of D.L. Moody, Billy Graham, Luis Palau, and others. These interventions of the Holy Spirit provided the fertile soil for the church’s missionary advance.

We also recognize the contributions of the Pentecostal, charismatic, and church growth movements. To these we must add InterVarsity’s student missionary conventions at Urbana and the momentous gatherings at Edinburgh (1910), Lausanne (1974), and Singapore (1989), where the AD2000 and Beyond movement was conceived. All profoundly changed the course of world missions.

The tide of missionary obedience swelled just prior to World War I and peaked again after World War II. God gave the church many gifted missionary leaders. Among them were John R. Mott (1865-1955), Robert E. Speer (1867-1947), A.B. Simpson (1843-1919), and Fredrik Franson (1852-1908). After World War II they were followed by, among others, Arthur Glasser, Louis King, Ken Strachan, Frank Laubach, Cameron Townsend, Joy Ridderhof, Clyde Taylor, Francis Steele, John Stott, Phil Armstrong, Robert Evans, Ralph Winter, Bob Pierce, Bill Bright, George Verwer, Brother Andrew, Philip Hogan, Peter Wagner, Bruce Wilkerson, Moishe Rosen, Loren Cunningham, John Kyle, David Howard, David Adeney, Festo Kivengere, Francis Sunderaraj, Tokunboh Adeyemo, Patrick Johnstone, Thomas Wang, Jun Veneer, Warren Webster, Jim Montgomery, and Greg Livingstone.

In the last half century hundreds of new agencies have been organized and thousands of believers have volunteered for missionary service. Courses in missions studies multiplied, graduate studies in missiology prospered, and fellowships among mission executives and mission scholars strengthened God’s work around the world.

More recent glaciers have radically changed the world missions scene: (1) so-called Third World mission agencies, that is, agencies from churches previously established by Western missionaries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; (2) "tentmakers" to reach countries closed to traditional missionaries; and (3) short-term teams composed of everyone from teenagers to senior citizens.

We have witnessed great strides in relief and development work, Jewish evangelism, church planting, identifying the never and least evangelized peoples, and cooperative efforts such as Evangelism-in-Depth, New Life for All, Christ the Only Way, and Discipling A Whole Nation. We acknowledge other breakthroughs, such as literacy campaigns, community-based health care innovations, major pushes for Bible translation, theological education by extension, the "Jesus" film, Evangelism Explosion, the CoMission, the use of ships by Operation Mobilization and Youth With A Mission, prayer warfare, and concerts of prayer.

Some of our peaks must be reserved for scholars who have enriched our missionary enterprise. Among many are Roland Allen, Rufus Anderson, Henry Venn, John Nevius, Stephen Neill, Hendrik Kraemer, Peter Beyerhaus, J.H. Bavinck, George Peters, Harvie Conn, Donald McGavran, J. Herbert Kane, David Hesselgrave, David Bosch, Robertson McQuilkin, Samuel Escobar, Tite Tienou, and Ajith Fernando.

Here our tour pauses to catch a glimpse of a glacier of technological changes that have mightily enhanced the advance the good news of Jesus. We begin with the printing press (c. 1450) and race on to survey photography, radio, television, motion pictures, satellite broadcasting, audio and TV cassettes, telephones, faxes, computers, aircraft, and the Internet. We gasp for breath while we consider the implications of inventions like these, all of which have remarkably changed the face not only of society but also of world missions.

Not all that we see reminds us of glory and conquest. Behind our peaks and glaciers hangs the black crepe of suffering, persecution, and martyrdom. Perhaps the 20th century will go down as the bloodiest of all. Missionaries have been killed on all continents, to say nothing of the millions of Christians who were put to death in China and the U.S.S.R.

Nevertheless, the church more than survived; it grew. Future historians may well note that the most significant trend of all at the close of the 20th century was the dynamic church and missionary growth in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Non-Western believers and missionaries now outnumber those from the West.

On the home front in the last half century we have witnessed unparalleled growth in missions commitment among churches, providing both increased giving and missionary volunteers. As opportunities have blossomed overseas, churches have risen to the challenge, supporting not only younger missionaries but also second-career volunteers.

Readers will want to reflect on their own mountain peaks with praise and thanksgiving to God.

—–

Copyright © 1999 Evangelism and Missions Information Service (EMIS). All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from EMIS.

Comments are closed.