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245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 134 134 Developing Tomorrow’s Missionaries In the 400s, Patrick felt God telling him to go to Ireland. In the 1800s, C. T. Studd sensed God wanted him to walk away from his family fortune and fame as a top British athlete and go overseas as a missionary. In the 1890s, Ida Scudder “met God face to face” and knew that He was calling her to India as a medical missionary. 1 In 1904, William Borden heard God’s call to give up his inheritance in the family dairy business and go as a missionary to a Muslim people group in China. In the 1950s Wanda and Sydney Knox obeyed a call to go to Papua New Guinea. Patrick, C. T. Studd, Ida Scudder, William Borden, and the Knoxes all did what they did because they decided that was God’s will for them personally. They were all convinced that God had tapped them on the shoulder and asked them to become cross-cultural messengers of the gospel. For each of them, being called to be a missionary was different from the excitement that wells up inside people getting ready to do “something significant” during a short-term mission trip. The testimonies of these missionaries point to a personalized call in which God asks specific individuals to give a major portion of their lives to cross-cultural gospel proclamation. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. 2 —Jim Elliot, missionary martyred in Ecuador General Call Scripture uses the words call and called in more than one way. In Romans 1:6-7, Paul speaks of being “called to belong to Jesus Christ” and being “called to be his holy people.” In 1 Corinthians 1:2, 9 he uses very similar phrases: “called to be holy” (NIV) and “called . . . into fellowship with [God’s] Son, Jesus Christ.” These calls seem addressed to all believers as is the one in which God asks the Church as a whole to make disciples in every people group on earth. Such calls, none of which are addressed to specific individuals, are examples of the general call of God. Because congregations must respond to the general call to world evangelism, pastors normally are ecstatic when a parishioner testifies to being specifically called by God to go across cultural boundaries as a missionary. It is in response to that general call to evangelize the world that believers become mobilizers of mission prayer and financial support in their own local church. Indeed, obedience to that general call demands that every Christian get involved somehow in reaching the unreached. It was to a sense of general call that Francis Xavier tried to appeal in the
245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 135 1540s when he pleaded for young people to join him as missionaries to Asia. From India while on his way to Japan, Xavier wrote back to his alma mater, the <strong>University</strong> of Paris, “Tell the students to give up their small ambitions and come eastward to preach the gospel of Christ.” 3 Some, like George Verwer of Operation Mobilisation, have sounded a similar note. Verwer, a proponent of radical discipleship, has said, “If you’re not called to stay, then go!” 4 In the early 1980s, Keith Green had a song with the words, “Jesus commands us to go; it should be the exception if we stay.” Verwer, Green, and others like them see the general call to be so urgent that they have said all believers should expect to enter missionary service unless they feel a specific call not to go. The Missionary Call Developing Tomorrow’s Missionaries 135 Sentiments like George Verwer’s “if you’re not called to stay, go” underscore the pressing nature of the mission task. They reflect how heavily world evangelism weighs on the heart of God. However, using the general call to motivate individuals to become expatriate missionaries is not in line with the way God called individuals in Bible times. It does not fit either with the testimonies of missionaries throughout Church history. Paul, for example, wrote about the clear sense he had that God had asked him to go to the Gentiles. Paul did not go to the Gentiles simply because he saw the Abrahamic covenant saying that God wanted His people to reach out to all peoples. Rather, Paul went to the Gentiles because He became convinced that the Lord was telling him personally to go. Because missionaries have testified to being called in different ways, what constitutes a missionary call can seem hard to define precisely. Indeed, God’s call to special service may come in a variety of ways. God startled Moses with His unexpected call through a burning bush (Exodus 3:1—4:17). God’s call may come during a dramatic vision, as it did to Isaiah (Isaiah 6:1-13). God’s call may come as a voice in the night as it did to a little boy named Samuel (1 Samuel 3:1-11). The call may give rise to some uncertainties that need to be cleared away, as was the case with Gideon (Judges 6:36-40). The realization of a divine call may arrive like the gradual dawning of a new day, beginning in a dim way and then increasing in intensity and clarity. The call can be a simple “Come, follow me,” as it was for several of the Twelve (Matthew 4:19; 9:9). In their situation, as it has been for many today, the Lord’s clear leading was through a series of small steps with missionary service not being envisioned at first. When John left his father’s fishing business on the Sea of Galilee, for example, he had no idea he would eventually become the leader of the church in the Gentile city of Ephesus.
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