As I head into the Congo, I am reminded of this old article.
The primary question being asked by would-be missionaries and mobilizers today is not, “Is the field ripe?” but, with increasing frequency, “Is it safe?” If relative freedom and safety cannot be affirmed satisfactorily, the only prudent option is to step back and wait for God to “open doors.”
But what is meant by the term open doors? By popular definition, the concept clearly involves more than mere assurance of personal safety. Opportunity and feasibility are cast as equally important components, demanding in the first case some kind of legitimatizing invitation or welcome to minister, and in the second a realistic resources-to-challenge ratio. With either of these factors absent, the assumption is made that the doors to effective ministry are, for the time being, at least, “closed.”
Despite the prevalence of such notions, a careful re-examination of the New Testament places them in clear conflict with the view and practices of the early Church. The idea, for instance, that God’s servants must be welcomed in their ambassadorial roles is nowhere encountered. The record shows that from Jerusalem and Damascus to Ephesus and Rome, the apostles were beaten, stoned, conspired against and imprisoned for their witness. Invitations were rare, and never the basis for their missions.
There is no instance of an Apostle being driven abroad under the compulsion of a bald command. Each one went as a lover to his betrothed on his appointed errand. It was all instinctive and natural. They were equally controlled by the common vision, but they had severally personal visions which drew them whither they were needed. In the first days of Christianity, there is an absence of the calculating spirit. Most of the Apostles died outside of Palestine, though human logic would have forbidden them to leave the country until it had been Christianized. The calculating instinct is death to faith, and had the Apostles allowed it to control their motives and actions, they would have said: “The need in Jerusalem is so profound, our responsibilities to people of our own blood so obvious, that we must live up to the principle that charity begins at home. After we have won the people of Jerusalem, of Judea and of the Holy Land in general, then it will be time enough to go abroad; but our problems, political, moral and religious, are so unsolved here in this one spot that it is manifestly absurd to bend our shoulders to a new load.†7
It was the bigness of the task and its difficulty that thrilled the early Church. Its apparent impossibility was its glory, its worldwide character its grandeur. The same is true today. “I am happy,†wrote Neesima of Japan, “in a meditation on the marvelous growth of Christianity in the world, and believe that if it finds any obstacles it will advance still faster and swifter even as the stream runs faster when it finds any hindrances on its course.†8
Source Unknown
7. Charles H. Brent, Adventure for God (New York: Longmans, Green, 1905), pp. I 1-12
8. Robert E. Speer, Missionary Principles and Practice: a discussion of Christian missions and of some criticisms upon them (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1902), p. 541.
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