discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

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ministers that they discuss fulfilling Christ’s Great Commission, one said,
“Young man, sit down. When God chooses to convert the heathen, He will do
it without your help or ours.” 13 Carey did sit down that day, but he continued
to lift up God’s imperative to mission. On May 30, 1792, he preached a mission
sermon to the Baptist Ministers’ Association using Isaiah 54:2-3: “Enlarge
the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back;
lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the
right and to the left.” The passage is very similar to the prayer of Jabez in 1
Chronicles 4:10, which has been seen in recent years as concerned with personal
advancement. Carey saw the similar words in Isaiah as an encouragement
for the church to launch into global mission. In that 1792 sermon Carey used
a phrase that had become a famous mission slogan: “Expect great things from
God; attempt great things for God.”
Five months after preaching that sermon, Carey was still trying to persuade
his colleagues to mobilize themselves for world evangelism. Finally, at
one meeting, he pulled out a booklet titled Periodical Accounts Relating to
Moravian Missions. Holding it up, Carey said, “See what the Moravians have
done! Can we not follow their example, and in obedience to our heavenly Master,
go out into the world and preach the Gospel to the heathen?” 14 That day,
Carey’s zeal and the accomplishments of the Pietist Moravians aroused his listeners
to action. They formed the Particular Baptist Society for Propagation of
the Gospel Among the Heathen and set things in motion to send out Carey as
their first missionary.
Other mission societies soon sprang up, in many cases through the direct
influence of Carey’s letters and booklets. Carey’s most famous writing was his
87-page Enquiry into the Obligation of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion
of the Heathen. Kenneth Mulholland, former missionary to Honduras and
Costa Rica, said that Carey’s Enquiry was “the Magna Carta of the Protestant
missionary movement, and it is probably as significant in the history of the
church as Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses.” 15
1800 to 1914
Christian Mission 47
After Carey set sail for India, the number of missionaries going out from
Britain increased from what had been a trickle to a torrent. Indeed, the 120
years following William Carey’s 1793 arrival in India saw such intense Protestant
mission activity that Kenneth Scott Latourette and others have called it
the great century of Christian missions. One of the British missionaries following
Carey’s example was Robert Morrison, who in 1807 went to China as that
country’s first Protestant missionary. When an owner of the ship on which