discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 199
Suffering and Growth
One of the realties of our world today is that in areas where material
resources are abundant, the church is growing little if at all while in
areas where resources are few, where there is conflict and persecution,
and where trained pastors are in short supply, the church is
growing rapidly. Is there a relationship between affluence and spiritual
vitality? Robert Coleman wonders, “Can it be that in our preoccupation
with the good life, we have missed the church-growth
principle of suffering woven all through the New Testament?” 16
—Terry Read
Future Church 199
In spite of situations like this, the Christian church in that particular
country is growing rapidly—so rapidly that the government of that country
has stopped publishing religious affiliation statistics! Though persecution of
God’s people has intensified in the last century, it is not something new. Elisabeth
Elliot has reminded believers, “Christians who think they should never
suffer forget that God allowed John the Baptist to be beheaded, Stephen to be
stoned, and his son to be hung on a cross as a love gift to the world.” 17 Elijah,
Zechariah, Jeremiah, Daniel, James, Peter, Paul, and John all suffered persecution.
Hebrews 11 talks about the persecution of God’s people in both Old and
New Testament times. All this suffering does, however, bear fruit for the Kingdom.
Terry Read, missionary to Haiti and Rwanda, has joined others in noting
that suffering has often accompanied the expansion of Christianity (see sidebar
“Suffering and Growth”). Indeed, Tertullian, an Early Church leader, said that
“the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.” 18
The rise in the physical persecution of Christians has affected many
churches and mission organizations. One horrific example is what happened to
Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons, ages six and
nine, who were killed while on an evangelistic mission in India. Staines, director
of the Leprosy Mission in the state of Orissa, had served in India for more
than 30 years. Fluent in several languages, he had been influential in getting
the New Testament into the Ho dialect. Just after midnight on January 23,
1999, Staines and his sons were sleeping in their jeep when Hindu extremists
arrived with the intention of burning them alive.
The windows were broken out of Staines’ jeep; gasoline was poured on
and ignited; the jeep was then enveloped in flames. The screams that were
emitted did not incite sufficient help to prevent the horror from continuing.
But they may have awakened the nation. There are at least two obvious things