Missions' Wild Olive Branch

If the name Spiros Zodhiates does not roll trippingly off the evangelical tongue, neither does the man nor his ministry fit the classic evangelical mold. This year the Greek immigrant marks his fiftieth year at the helm of amg International, but Zodhiates has yet to become a household name.

Even evangelical insiders who know him well are at a loss to characterize him. "The American Wild West gone missions," one missiologist observes finally.

It is an apt description for this 74-year-old Cyprus-born missions maverick who across five decades built the fledgling American Mission to the Greeks into AMG International, which today undertakes publishing (Pulpit Helps and The Hebrew-Greek Key Study Bible), health services (with hospitals in Greece and India), "newspaper evangelism" (in 20 countries), and church planting (200 congregations in Muslim Indonesia alone).

A study in contrasts
Moments after inviting me into his modestly furnished home in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Zodhiates the scholar delves into the significance of an important Greek word in the New Testament, then, in the same breath, Zodhiates the evangelist declares a desire "to raise enough money to place a gospel message in Playboy."

With an earned doctor of theology degree, Zodhiates has devoted his life to studying the Greek language and the Greek New Testament, authoring about 50 books and reference works. Working off his kitchen table, Zodhiates is focusing on his latest project, a word-by-word commentary on the Greek New Testament. He expects to labor on it for the next ten years. "This will be my biggest contribution to the Christian world," he says, "if the Lord allows me to live that long."

Another of Zodhiates's proud achievements is his collection of 50,000 religious volumes. Each page of each book has been subject indexed, a project that a lone worker took 25 years to accomplish. He hands me a tome with yellowed leaves and proclaims, "Of all those books, I have reduced the two most important down to the Greek New Testament and this one." It is a Greek concordance originally published in 1897 and last reprinted in 1957.

From these two works—and from his native Greek tongue—he is writing his word commentary, using paper and pencil.

Worldwide outreach
AMG's ministry is as varied as Zodhiates's interests. What started as a soul-winning mission to Greeks is now a multifaceted relief and evangelistic organization that beams Christian radio broadcasts into China, runs 18 child-care centers in the Philippines, mails 6,000 Gospel of John booklets a month in Russia, sponsors and educates 7,000 children in Guatemala, and works in five leper colonies in India. It operates orphanages in Bangladesh and Albania, Christian bookstores in Australia and Spain. In addition to its churches in Indonesia, amg runs a Bible school and a newly opened seminary there.

The list of ministries runs through 50 countries and into nearly two dozen distinct ministry areas, including the mission's trademark outreach, in which ads presenting the gospel are placed in national newspapers.

Vision-driven, rather than results-oriented, Zodhiates has never catered to the American preoccupation with meticulously credited successes, cleanly defined lines of responsibility, or, above all, measurable results.

"Why try to measure the immeasurable?" he says. "We can never know the effect of our work. The results are for God."

Instead, this Mediterranean transplant, who after 50 years still speaks with a discernible accent, employed free-ranging methods, which, if sometimes untidy, are reminiscent of early Christian missions.

Accent on creativity
The Zodhiates approach nurtures flexibility, creativity, and ministry balance. It emphasizes reshaping the organization to fit the needs of people as well as using their professional and spiritual gifts.

Whereas other mission organizations "liked to tell where each person belonged, I didn't," Zodhiates says. "If you were to come to AMG someday and say, 'I have this particular ministry in mind, and this is what I believe God is calling me to do,' I'd shake hands with you, see what your needs are, and then try to meet them."

The result is a ministry collaboration that has zigzagged around the globe. After coming to AMG in 1946, Zodhiates began to broadcast Scripture studies over the radio and eventually turned those expositions into books, which became the foundation of amg's publishing arm, which last year grossed $1.6 million.

While delivering 15 tons of the Modern Greek New Testament to the island of Crete in 1949, he was approached by a barefoot girl begging for bread. Moved by the girl's plight, Zodhiates determined that AMG needed to meet not only the spiritual needs but the physical needs of the destitute in Greece. He began raising funds to provide medicine and food for Greek children. Over the years, amg has supported children in 23 orphanages in that country.

In the 1960s, after an Orthodox priest in Greece brought Zodhiates to trial nine times on charges of proselytism, he refused to be stymied. AMG opened a new outreach to Muslims in Egypt. "My Lord was guided by the need that existed," Zodhiates explains.

By not following all the standard ways of operating an overseas ministry, Zodhiates was sometimes ahead of his time. From the start he depended on nationals instead of Americans to do AMG's overseas work. Even today AMG has only 15 North Americans stationed abroad. "His philosophy was that the best way to reach the locals is with the locals," said Tasos Ioannidis, a 31-year-old Greek immigrant and MIT graduate who serves on AMG's executive committee.

This entrepreneurial spirit also shows itself in the ways Zodhiates has found to fund his ministries. In 1966, Zodhiates felt led of the Lord to build a hospital in Thessaloniki, Greece. It took ten years to complete it, but today Saint Luke's admits 1,300 patients a month, with its profits being channeled into AMG's not-for-profit ministries around the world.

Zodhiates has used this approach on a personal scale as well. In the early 1950s, he borrowed money to invest in a rental property of 24 units. The venture worked, and because of its income, Zodhiates has never allowed the amg board to set his salary above $275 a week or to pay him book royalties.

When other parachurch organizations tended to settle neatly into either evangelistic outreach or relief work, amg tenaciously maintained an emphasis on both. From Zodhiates's perspective, hospitals, feeding centers, churches in Muslim countries, and newspaper evangelism naturally grow out of each other.

The ministry to children and lepers in India, for instance, flourished when a billionaire shoe manufacturer in Germany heard Zodhiates speak at his church. He began heavily financing AMG's work in India as well as establishing his own leprosy clinics there.

Overcoming discouragement
Since a stroke two years ago, Zodhiates has frequented his office at amg less and less. The day-to-day administration is now carried on by Ioannidis, his son-in-law Paul Jenks, and two others.

But his presence is felt in every office and in every decision made. It is also present on the walls in Zodhiates's office. One plaque reads, "I will not gratify the devil by being discouraged."

Hanging nearby is a framed photo of Spiros with a smiling Indian boy in his arms. "The boy has leprosy," Ioannidis told me. "The photo means a lot to Dr. Zodhiates because, when he held the boy, the boy told him, 'You are the first person who ever hugged me.' " To that child, a little wildness in missions has made all the difference.

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