03.16. XVI. The Pastor And The Mission Problem
XVI THE PASTOR AND THE MISSION PROBLEM
“Go YE therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:19-20) No volume of pastoral problems would be complete without a chapter upon this subject. In our volume The Perennial Revival we discussed “The Perennial Revival and World Evangelization,” but in this chapter we approach the subject from another point of view, namely that of the pastor. THE MISSION PROBLEM That there are many problems now connected with the work of missions at home and abroad will be readily conceded. Perhaps never since William Carey set sail for India have those problems been greater in number or more serious in character. In this brief chapter we shall attempt no more than a flashlight illumination of a few of the more important ones.
There is the problem of inspiration.—No church official has an opportunity, even approaching the pastor’s position in this matter. Several times a week he has the ear of his congregation. They look to him for leadership and listen to him for inspiration. His opportunity of exciting interest in the Cause of Christ at home and abroad, and of kindling the fires of enthusiasm, is immeasurable! Of all the themes that belong naturally to the pulpit, no one of them should thrill the saved, excite in them the enthusiasm of an endeavor, and create in them a willingness to send or go,—as the Lord might demand, —as the challenge of missions—the challenge of setting free immortal souls, held by the iron chains of sin; and of civilizing and bringing into a state of moral and intellectual culture, converts from heathenism. The problem of information.—It is the pastor’s responsibility to know world conditions; to sound, by study, the sunken estate of those who have never heard the Gospel.
We admit that these are times when the educators of the world, and even the general public, make most unreasonable demands upon the preacher of the Gospel. They expect him to be an expert in every direction. The modern standardizing scheme is an effort to make of him a man as well acquainted with the law as any practitioner at the Bar; as familiar with medicine as any allopath; as widely read as any Doctor of letters; as intimately in touch with the affairs of State as any politicians; as deeply involved in civic interest as any devoted reformer; and so on, to the end of conceivable human accomplishments.
Such expectations are, upon their face, absurd; such standardizing schemes are, by nature, insane. But this exaction will be conceded by all thoughtful men, that the minister should surpass at the point of his own profession; and, since he is commissioned to labor with and for a world of dying souls, he should be so far familiar with their spiritual estate as to intelligently diagnose their needs, and, by imparting this acquired information to his people, he should rouse them to saving endeavor. No source of information quite equals the direct one. Seeing is not only believing; it is understanding. If every pastor were so situated, financially and with leisure time, as to visit the greater missions of the round world, and learn the degraded condition of men and the consequent need of our saving Gospel, it would indeed be well worth his while. But, books on missions, missionary magazines, addresses of returned missionaries, mission reports in even the daily secular press, and other sources of information multiply, so that no pastor has a right either to ignore or neglect them. If his people are to be instructed and inspired, the pastor must be informed. The problem of continuation.—“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations” is a command of wide sweep. It is all right to commence at home; to witness in Jerusalem; to be interested in getting the Gospel to Judaea; but it is just as essentially Christ’s command to carry it “to Samaria and to the uttermost parts of the earth” The only local limitations laid upon missions is “the end of the earth”; and the only time limitation is “the end of the age” The current of the times is square against the spirit of the great commission. Materialism, the philosophy of the present, little concerns itself with soul-interest. The love of pleasure, now so dominant in the world, repudiates the thought of self-sacrifice for the sake of others. Intellectualism often finds the realization of its self-ambitions so unsatisfactory, as to leave its questioning whether the ignorance of the heathen were not better undisturbed. The churches in the world too often are tempted to become of the world. To buck world philosophies and break them down, to bring the saved to be searchers after the lost, and to stimulate them to effectiveness in that endeavor,—these are lines along which lie— THE PASTOR’S OBLIGATIONS But how shall he discharge them? In answer to this question, there are a few suggestions.
First, he should lead in interest and gifts.—If the pastor is not concerned about the deadly danger of the unsaved at home and abroad, neither will his people be. Hosea said, “And there shall be, like people, like priest”; (Hosea 4:9) Perhaps our better rendition of it is, “Like priest, like people.”
There are pastors who imagine that they have no obligation to give to the current expense of the church they serve. I have yet to know any church, served by such a pastor, that became famed for its generosity in support of its own work; and I have yet to know any church that would give largely to missions, unless the pastor set the example.
He should utilize intelligent organizations.—It is a fact that the New Testament church is not an institution of multiplied offices, committees and intricate organizations; but it is not a fact that it is wholly destitute of the same.
When, in the church at Jerusalem, there arose occasion to have daily ministration funds apportioned to the widows of the congregation, the twelve advised the creation of the diaconate; and when Jesus Christ delivered the Great Commission, He converted the eleven disciples into “a committee of the whole” for its execution. The average church holds in its membership certain individuals who have a natural zeal for missions at home and abroad; such should be brought together and, in a Board or Committee, set to the task of teaching and inspiring others. Reason demands, and revelation approves!
There are pastors who pride themselves on the abolition of all committees and who have little or no sympathy with organization. They imagine, vainly we think, that the pulpit should direct and determine all that is undertaken. Church history hardly justifies such egotism.
S. D. Gordon brings this out in a striking illustration. Christ had expected His Cause to conquer the world and He had committed it to Peter, John and James—faithful men. When He was asked, “If they fail, then what?” His answer was, “I have no other plan.” This example is worthy of a pastor’s imitation. The pastor must counsel about fields and men.— These are difficult days in the whole matter of methods and message. The so-called “Inclusive Policy,” adopted by many of the Denominational Boards, and paraded as a method of having brethren, who do not and cannot see eye to eye, affect a close fellowship by working together, has proven a fallacy. The prophet’s question “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3) is still pertinent. The honest pastor believes that the Bible is God’s inspired revelation to men; that Christ, the Virgin born Son of Mary, is also God manifest in the flesh. He cannot possibly approve Unitarian representation upon the foreign field, or ask his people to support a gospel that he believes to be “another gospel” and consequently “no gospel.” The mists that have been generated by Darwin— modernists are so deep that the militant church is in grave danger of false steps and strokes, and the pastor is under obligation to so rise above that mist that he may direct both the course and conduct of his membership, in order that they may not be fighting with the foes of Christ or against His friends.
Nearly 2,000 years ago John said: “For many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. . . . If there come any unto you, and bring not this doctrine, receive him not into your house, neither bid him God speed”: (2 John 1:7; 2 John 1:10) In our day that company of deceivers has been immensely increased, and the pastor’s task is complicated accordingly. But this much, at least, may be accepted as certain, that the pastor is set to save his people from following such, or giving any support whatever to men or fields that repudiate the saving power of the shed Blood of the Son of God.
However, to make such demands upon one who is only human would be practically unreasonable were it not for— THE LORD’S PROMISES
“Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world” (or age). (Matthew 28:20) These eleven faithful servants of the Saviour, while named in this connection “disciples,” are known to us as “apostles,”—the sent ones. To such this text seems peculiarly applied. The missionary is assured of Christ’s presence.— What that means in the way of encouragement in inciting daring and in undertaking what seems to be impossible, only the missionary himself fully understands. The endurance of Carey for years with such meager visible results, the patient waiting of a Morrison for the Lord to manifest Himself in power, the endurance of Clark in Africa as he faced a hostile climate, beasts, serpents and cannibals—“these all endured as seeing Him who is invisible.” Had you taken away from any one of them the deep-seated conviction that Christ was with him, his courage would have failed and the unpromising task would have been voluntarily surrendered long before the first fruits of his endeavor appeared.
Beyond all question the inspiration of the early apostles, in their post-pentecostal endeavor, was in the conviction that Peter expressed, when that day in Jerusalem he declared the faith of his fellow-disciples: “This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received of the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed forth this, which we now see and hear. . . . Therefore let all the house of Israel know assuredly, that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.” (Acts 2:32; Acts 2:36)
It is a significant fact that the Great Commission is preceded by the great declaration, “All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth!” To believe that is the first equipment of missionary endeavor. Robert Speer, easily one of the most noted of missionary enthusiasts on the American continent, said some years ago, “One great weakness of our Christian life today, in our colleges and outside of the colleges, is that we have thinned it out. We have crowded out the miracle and the magic and the supernatural. We have made it just a veneer, a moral purpose or an admiration; and we have lost those great dynamic energies by which alone the thing can ever really be. ‘I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me!” Who doubts that this is the dynamic of missionary endeavor. It is great to have Christ with us; it is even greater to have Christ in us. “All things are possible to them that believe,” because God is in them, and all things are possible to God. The Age done limits this promise—
“Alway, unto the end of the age” The Bible recognizes the Church period. The ordinances are given for the same. At the institution of the Lord’s Supper, He said: “As oft as ye eat this bread and drinks this cup, ye do show the Lord’s death till He come!” That is the consummation of the Age and the only limit in time to the Christian’s responsibility to proclaim the Gospel.
Friday, May 29th, 1935, this great audience-room overflowed into these galleries beyond the curtain, and scores stood through the entire service. Sixty-six young men and women were graduated from the Northwestern Bible School. Eighteen of them had declared their willingness to devote their lives to the foreign fields, to live among, and try to lift up, by making known Christ to the peoples that have sat in great darkness. The rest of the company would undertake a kindred work in the home land. Who can measure, or even imagine the final result? A hundred years ago, William Carey caught the vision of attempting a world for Christ. The result of that dream is given in The Annals of Light for Heathen Lands.
One day Count Zinzendorf offered room on his great estate to a company of emigrants who came out of the Moravian mountains in northern Bohemia, under the leadership of one Christian David; under the inspiration of John Huss’ doctrines, on those estates a town was built, industries established, and a Missionary Training School was born; and, today, the Moravians, though comparatively small in number, have carried the message of life and light to the uttermost parts of the earth.
Add to the efforts of all the heroes of the faith, including Francis Xavier and his company of Catholics, and every Protestant endeavor from Carey’s day until now, and yet we face the sad fact that two-thirds of the world still wait the knowledge of Christ. It amounts to a Macedonian cry that arises from every benighted land of the earth, a cry more anguished than those who make it understand; but a cry which has entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, “Come over and help us!”
How many are there who will answer in the language of Isaiah, “Here am I, send me!”
OUTLINE OF CHAPTER SIXTEEN THE PASTOR AND THE MISSION PROBLEM I. THE MISSION PROBLEM a.There is the problem of inspiration. b.The problem of information. c.The problem of continuation.
II. THE PASTOR’S OBLIGATIONS a.First he should lead in interest and gifts. b.He should utilize intelligent organizations. c.The pastor must counsel about fields and men.
III. THE LORD’S PROMISES a.The missionary is assured of Christ’s presence. b.The age alone limits this promise.