One of the most pressing questions in the mission field today is the question of the relationship of Law and Gospel, or rather, Gospel versus Law. This is a real missionary problem in parts of Africa: we need to see it in historical perspective, because the problem has existed in the Christian Church since its inception.

The great battle which Paul fought against Judaic tendencies within early Christianity was part and parcel of a controversy which has continued through the Middle Ages to our own day. So violently did some early Christians react against those who expected pagans to become Jews, and to accept the laws of Judaism before they could be admitted into Christianity, that they discarded the Old Testament and everything that reminded them of Judaism or the Law. Marcion was but one among many. Groups within the church have always tended to convert the Gospel into a new law. This tendency may in some respects point to temperamental differences in individuals, but that does not explain the whole complex phenomenon of legalistic tendencies within the church in certain ages and in certain of its sections.

It is disquieting to read the Christian literature of the second and third centuries, because it soon evidences to what degree the liberty of the Gospel had been forsaken for legalism in all forms. In later centuries legalism at times reached such dimensions that the church shifted the Gospel far into the background. Man had to fulfill the detailed prescriptions of a new law in order to be saved.

The Apostle Paul was well aware of the danger of legalism and in some of his letters condemned it in strong language. On the other hand, he sternly censured those who would compromise with legalism and use the liberty of the Gospel to serve the flesh. The great apostle pointed to Christ. Everything belongs to us, but we belong to him. In him we are free. Our liberty is grounded in our loyalty to him.

The tendency towards compromise with legalism was also ever with the church. In every age and generation some have argued over Christian liberty to condone license in their own lives or that of fellow Christians, and this has resulted in an almost complete lack of discipline in many churches. The struggle between legalism, compromise, and the Gospel has gone on for 19 centuries. In ever new forms this age-old struggle has continued and is still being fought on many fronts in the church universal.

Some Problems in Africa

Any one conversant with the missionary activities in different countries is struck by this very struggle in our own day. Perhaps this is nowhere more evident than among African Christians. How often the Gospel is overspread by a burden of new prescriptions and legalistic rules and regulations of so-called Christian “do’s and don’ts.”

I grew up in a section of Africa where Christian converts are taught to tithe. Sometimes they are expected to contribute one shilling per month to the funds of the church. Often one would see an African Christian, perhaps well-to-do, put a two-and-sixpenny piece in the plate and then re-collect one shilling and sixpence! He religiously honors the expectation that he give one shilling even if he is able to contribute much more. But to him it has become a law of the church. He has lost Christ in the act of giving. The Gospel has been superseded by a new law.

Churches sometimes even refuse Communion to people who do not contribute a fixed amount before partaking of Communion. And though the amount may be small, the African Christian somehow feels that he pays for the privilege of partaking of Communion. Missionaries sometimes try to defend this sort of thing on the ground that people have to be taught that they have financial responsibilities towards the church. They must be taught to give and not only to receive. No one disagrees that Christians have to be taught that we owe everything to Christ, but to do it in this way leads surely on the highway to legalism. It so easily becomes one more prescription of a new law one has to fulfill. If a man’s relationship to Christ is what it should be, he will contribute more to the church, but through the inward compulsion of love.

The question has often been asked: why are Africans so prone to convert Christianity into a new law? The answer is not easy to give. Missionary practices are to blame in at least some cases. But there is a deeper reason for this tendency.

Most African societies have been very static for many generations. Tribal customs have meticulously prescribed the whole life of the individual member of many tribes. The individual hardly makes any personal decisions. The tribe or community decides on all his matters by way of age-old traditions, and this system covers every aspect of his life from childhood to death. Even the choice of a life partner is not wholly a personal decision, but is governed by innumerable tribal customs and traditions.

Within this system the individual is rigidly bound even if he finds a great sense of security. By acting within or according to these prescribed customs and traditions he doubtless experiences a great sense of harmony and belonging. The moment he breaks away and makes decisions on his own or acts in an individualistic way, something snaps. He becomes an outcast or a stranger. Loneliness follows, and perhaps alongside this a sense of shame or guilt.

Now Christianity comes into the life of such a closely-knit traditional tribe. Individuals react to the Gospel. They have to act as individuals to accept Christ and in almost every instance those who do have to take a stand opposed by the tribe. It means a break with tradition, with most or all those “do’s and don’ts” under which they were reared since childhood. Traditional bonds are cut. Many tribal ties may linger on in the life and experience of such an individual but a great change has come—a loosening of old securities and of definite rules of behavior. The resultant loneliness in many cases involves also a vacuum of uncertainty.

Must we be surprised if such a convert seeks a new law, a new code of behavior with set rules and regulations whereby he may recover a sense of security and of belonging within his newfound faith and within the community of the church? At this very point legalism enters. If the church is not careful a pagan is soon converted into a Pharisee. I think this is the problem in many African fields. The supremacy and the wonder of grace are so easily lost!

Troublesome Marriage Practices

I want to illustrate this whole problem from another angle. The lobola or marriage practices, whereby a man may take more than one legal wife, are part and parcel of African tribal life in many parts of that continent. Every missionary is aware of the intricacies of the lobola problem when a polygamist accepts the Gospel. Different churches and missions follow many different policies, ranging from full acceptance in rare cases to exclusion from Communion, and so forth, until the convert sends his other wives away and clings only to his first wife.

I often ask myself whether this procedure is Law or Gospel. There can be no question that if a Christian, a member of the church, decides to take a second wife, he should be censured. But—and this is where the Gospel comes in—if a man as a pagan, without the knowledge of the Gospel or a Christian experience, as part of his tribal system takes more than one legal wife and builds a family, and subsequently comes to Christ, must we and may we refuse him admission to the full life of the church until such time as he has cast off all his wives save one? Does the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ not cover such a man with all the relationships he had contracted and the family he had built while without the Gospel? Without being dogmatic, it seems to me that if the Gospel is to prevail, such a man must be fully accepted.

BEN MARAIS

Professor of History of Christianity

University of Pretoria

South Africa

Whenever the word mystical is mentioned in Christian discourse, some people at once become apprehensive. Have not reputable theologians like B. B. Warfield or Karl Barth seriously warned against using this word in our Christian speech? Yet men like John Calvin, C. H. Spurgeon, and G. A. Barrois, all of them in the Reformed tradition, have unblushingly spoken of the mystical union of the believer with the risen Lord. Where, keeping all of this in view, shall we take our stand?

Let us from the outset be clear on this: mystical union with Christ does not describe the total absorption of the believer in Christ or Deity. No identity philosophy as expressed in Neo-Platonism or classical Hinduism is either possible or permissible in an evangelical Christian experience. Nevertheless we do affirm the possibility and reality of a highly personal and intimate union of the believer with the crucified, risen, and exalted Lord.

The word mystical in this context is used to suggest the wonder of our communion with Jesus Christ. For this union of a redeemed sinner with a pardoning Saviour transcends all human apprehension. It is created of God, a gift of his supreme love, not for selfish contemplation, but for the energizing, through the Holy Spirit, of the whole of man for fruitful service to God and man.

The Scriptural Teaching on this Union. The Bible testifies on every page to God’s longing for fellowship with his creatures. God created man for fellowship with himself and his neighbor. Man’s fall shattered his relationship with the Lord, but God unceasingly agonized in order to restore man to blessed fellowship with himself. Abraham like Enoch of old walked and talked with God, as friend with friend. God called Israel out of Egypt’s bondage to be his chosen people, a nation of kings and priests, to be the herald of his will. Moses communed with God face to face, and prophets like Isaiah and Hosea, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, knew something of this close and holy fellowship with Jehovah God. And yet it is finally in Jesus Christ, the incarnate Word, that God’s passionate longing for an enduring fellowship with his lost creatures comes to its highest expression.

The Four Gospels and this Union. The informed reader of the New Testament realizes at once that Jesus through concrete acts and explicit teachings aimed at the most intimate union of his followers with himself and God the Father. It is Jesus who calls, commissions and sanctifies his disciples. Linder various metaphors and pictures Christ illustrates the depth and scope of his relationship to his own. In Luke 12 and 14 as in Matthew 10 and numerous other passages, Jesus describes the strong bond between his disciples and himself in terms of the cost of discipleship. For his sake men are to forsake all—father, mother, brother, sister, house and home! For his sake they must be willing to endure the crucifixion of self to the point of martyrdom. And the apostles and early disciples forsook all and followed the divine Master. In fact, Jesus so completely identified himself with his disciples that he could say, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will the Father give unto you.” When Christ’s followers herald the gospel of grace and judgment, they do so with the assurance that “he that heareth you heareth me, and he that despiseth you, despiseth me and him that sent me” (Luke 10:1–16). Whether Jesus speaks of Nachfolge or following in his steps, endurance in affliction, of speaking in his name, of suffering for his sake, of sharing in his glory, or of always abiding in him, this intimate, personal, indestructible union of the believer with Christ is in evidence. Jesus is the light of the world: his disciples, in turn, are to be the light shining in darkness. Jesus is the vine, we are the branches. He is the shepherd, we are his sheep. He is the Master, we are his servants. As our elder brother he is not ashamed to call us his brethren. As Christ is in the Father so are we in him (John 17). His glorification through cross and death involves our own glorification and ultimate salvation. What could be more holy than Jesus through his bloody passion purchasing our redemption and through his glorious resurrection making us eternally his own? In the explicit teachings of our Lord there is the joy of salvation, the gift of eternal life, fortitude in trial, and the promise of ultimate, culminating fellowship with God through the grace and power of his Son and our Saviour Jesus Christ.

The Mystical Union in Paul’s Letters. Critical scholarship has established the fact of the priority of the epistolary literature of the New Testament over the four gospels. Paul’s letters are no doubt older than either the Synoptic Gospels or that of John. Yet, there is a remarkable harmony between these two parts of the New Testament. While the imagery differs, the substance is basically the same. It is one gospel that is proclaimed, whether we study the Synoptics or the doctrinal or hortatory letters of the apostles. With regard to mystical union of the believer with Christ, Paul is explicit.

It was Adolf Deissmann, eminent New Testament scholar, who in 1892 pointed out the extreme importance of the Pauline formula “in Christ Jesus.” By this formula, which occurs 164 times in Paul’s writings, Paul sought to express the intimate, mystical union between Christ and himself and every true believer.

In Christ, thus Paul teaches, we were chosen (Rom. 16:13), called (1 Cor. 7:22), foreordained (Eph. 1:11), created unto good works (Eph. 2:10), have obtained an inheritance (Eph. 1:11), “being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, that we should be to the praise of his glory …” (Eph. 1:11, 12).

In Christ each believer is justified (Gal. 2:17), sanctified (1 Cor. 1:2), but also crucified as attested through the symbolism of our baptism into Christ’s death (Rom. 6:1–11), and enriched in all utterance and knowledge (1 Cor. 1:5). We are declared to be one in our relationship with men of all races and tongues (Gal. 3:28, 29). If American Christians, North and South, and Christians everywhere could realize the impact of this word of the apostle, racial pride and arrogance, antisemitism, and all non-Christian attitudes towards those of a different color from ours would be radically changed.

The apostle is deeply convinced that in Christ and in him alone we have redemption (Rom. 3:24), eternal life (Rom. 6:23), righteousness (1 Cor. 1:30), wisdom for our folly (1 Cor. 4:10), liberty from the law (Gal. 2:4), and in Christ God, the Father, “has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3). Paul is sure that God causes us to triumph in Christ and that always, without failing (2 Cor. 2:14).

The intimacy of our union with Christ is also suggested in the Pauline writings through various suggestive metaphors. What could be more tender and personal than the relationship between bride and bridegroom, between husband and wife? Paul uses this picture both in Ephesians and II Corinthians. “For I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you a pure virgin to Christ” (2 Cor. 11:2). God’s family, the Church, has its existence in Christ, hence it must live a Christ-like life.

Still another figure in Paul’s writings which bears on our subject is that of the body and its members. Both in 1 Corinthians 11 and 12 and in his Ephesian letter Paul speaks of Christ as the head of the Church and of the believers as members of the body, i.e., the Church. Theologians have spoken of the body of Christ, the Church, as the mystical bride of Christ. And well they might. Ubi Christus ibi ecclesia! Where Christ is, there is the Church! Even though, as Luther intimated, only two or three simple folk are gathered in his Name! Moreover, believers individually and collectively are called in Paul’s letters to the Corinthians “the temple of God.” Here again our high calling and the holiness of Christ’s Church is set forth.

But the highest expression of the believer’s union with Christ is found in Paul’s passion mysticism. No one can read those moving verses in Colossians 1:23–28 without realizing how deeply Paul had understood the Master whom he had never known in the flesh. Paul rejoices in his sufferings for the Colossians. Daringly he speaks of filling “up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church” (Col. 1:24). All with the end in view that “Christ be formed in them” and that his readers might fathom the depth of the mystery hid from past generations, but now made manifest to the saints: Christ in you, the hope of glory.

Some one else has said that in every age some part of the Church of Jesus Christ must endure suffering in fulfillment of God’s one increasing purpose. William Carey, pioneer missionary in India, had to sail on a Danish boat because the East India Company denied him passage on its ships. On arrival in Calcutta he was harassed for years. Later his own brethren in Britain severed their connection with Carey. Robert Morrison’s Chinese tutors carried poison on their bodies fearing torture if they were discovered by the authorities as teaching a foreigner the Chinese language. Robert Moffat in Africa, Nommensen in Indonesia, evangelical missionaries in Latin America in most recent times, Russian believers under Stalin, and Christians in Nazi Germany and now in East Germany—these and many others mark “the trail of blood” of the Christian witness through the centuries. The servant is not above his Master. If they have blasphemed him, so they will his followers. Yet where in our country is there a serious grappling with this side of the Church’s mission? There is instead far too much status seeking, compromise with the world’s standards and values, and often open betrayal of the Lord. Paul, Peter, John, and the early Church unite in this testimony: Unless we suffer with him, we may not be glorified together (Rom. 8:17b).

Was Paul a mystic? Galatians 2:20 comes to mind, for there the apostle writes: “I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me!” Let us remember that Paul is also the apostle of faith and of the infinite grace of God in Jesus Christ. His mysticism, to cite Deissmann, is a reacting mysticism. In it God ever has the initiative. And though Paul experienced such exaltation as being transported into the third heaven, he did not boast of visions or high revelations, but rather of the grace of God, whose strength is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. 12:1–10). Not in ecstactic elevations is the Christian’s glory, but in the cross of Christ, and his own self-crucifixion, and his anticipation of God’s glory amidst the flux of time. Neither is the Church now a Church of glory, but a Church which through many tribulations must enter the Kingdom of heaven.

Conclusion. From the foregoing it becomes clear that the mystical union between Christ and the believer, Christ and the Church, is a unique relationship, incomparably wonderful, and bound up with the deepest intentions of God’s grace and purpose. It is also an inward, not merely external, union which under the influence of God’s Spirit and the Christian’s self-discipline may organically grow in scope and meaning. It is, moreover, a spiritual union since our being strongly and enduringly wedded and joined to Christ is the work of the Holy Spirit by whom we have been sealed unto the day of our final redemption. It is finally an indissoluble union which the believer sustains to Jesus Christ his head. For we have the promise that we shall never perish, provided we endure to the end. Nothing is ever to separate the believing soul from God’s love which is in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:38, 39).

This doctrine of the mystical union of the believer with Christ ought to be a perennial source of strength in temptation, a clarion call to holy living in season and out, and a summons to realize an ever closer fellowship with our Lord. This doctrine also ought to make us realize our rich heritage of faith and love, of liturgy and praise, of missions and evangelism, of theology and Christian ethos, that we share with all those who in churches of Jesus Christ around the world are united with us in the one body of Christ, the Church. Moreover, as A. J. Gordon has well put it, “to be in Christ is not only to be in union with his divine nature, but also because He is the son of man as well as the Son of God, it is to be in truest union with human nature. We never get so near the heart of our sorrowing humanity as when we are in communion with the heart of the man of sorrows.” May our awareness of being joined with Jesus the Christ impell us to pray with John Woolman, “Lord, baptize me this day afresh into every condition and circumstance of men!” Let us cast aside all lethargy, put on the whole armor of God, and as those who have their very existence in Christ act, pray, live, witness, die, and triumph in his name until faith shall be sight, and the kingdoms of this earth shall have become the Kingdom of our Lord. Sursum corda! Lift up your hearts! Regem habemus! We have a King, even the King of kings, and Lord of lords. He will banish all our fears, conquer all sin and evil, for he has conquered it already on Calvary and on Easter morning. His purpose will yet be realized when a redeemed, united, and glorified humanity shall dwell, by his grace, on a redeemed and new earth.

Bibliography: J. Calvin, Institutes, II. iii. 2; B. B. Warfield, Biblical and Theological Studies; A. J. Gordon, In Christ; J. S. Stewart, A Man in Christ; G. A. Barrois, “Mysticism,” Theology Today (July, 1947); A. Wickenhauser, Pauline Mysticism; K. Barth, Die Kirchliche Dogmatik, iv, pp. 620 ff.

Professor of Church History

New Orleans Baptist Seminary

New Orleans, Louisiana

Because the heart of Christian missions, whether at home or abroad, has to do with the message it is inevitable that Satan will do everything possible to divert, distort, dilute or deny that message, and in its place substitute anything which omits the Cross and the Resurrection.

Christian missions have ever been in a state of crisis because of opposition, ignorance and indifference. There is always the wall of opposing forces, different and yet the same, forces which are totally opposed to the claims of Christ. The Apostle Paul confronted these forces on every hand. Many times there must have been those who looked on him and his efforts as having failed. Judging by worldly standards it must have seemed that his efforts were weak and pitiful in the face of established religions, cultures and national alignments.

The things of God, eternal in their implications, are not seen except with insight given by him. When the church ignores the power and work of the Holy Spirit it has always been possible for the world to belittle the missionary efforts of individuals and churches.

We may also err in looking for outward permanence as a token of evangelizing success. Dare we say that because today there probably are no more than 200 professing Christians in one area of Paul’s endeavors—the part of present-day Turkey where the “Seven Churches” of Revelation were located—that his work was a failure?

Or dare we say that Christianity has failed because the simplicity of the early Church has been followed by accretions of ecclesiastical pretensions, shifting of emphasis from the message to organization, and failures in every generation faithfully to follow the Great Commission?

Today world missions are in crisis while at the same time emerging churches in many lands bear active testimony to the power of the Gospel.

But the major crisis of today, as has always been the case, does not center in missionary methods and policies, as important as these always are, but in the nature of the message being preached, taught and lived. It is this vital point that must be guarded at all costs.

Methods become meaningless without the basic message. Policies but add to the confusion unless based on a clear understanding and faithful proclaiming of the message itself.

It is always necessary to distinguish between corollaries to and developments proceeding from the Gospel message and the content of that message; between the fruits inherent in Christianity, and those which have their roots in Christian doctrine itself. To confuse the fruits of Christianity (and this is frequently done) with the root from which these fruits proceed is a fatal error. Nor is it possible to produce fruit where there is no root.

It is for this reason that the essential Christian message must at all times be kept in view as we face changing conditions, meet new diversions, and appropriate new methods of proclaiming the message itself.

For missionary endeavor to remain static in a changing world would be tragic. For changes in method, policies and approach to be coupled with a change in the message itself would be more than tragic; it would be fatal.

The Apostle Paul was certainly the greatest missionary of the first Christian century. Fortunately for each succeeding generation not only are the accounts of his missionary journeys preserved but through his letters to the young churches we know the message which he preached, a message on which there rested the power and blessing of the Holy Spirit.

In his letter to the Corinthian church Paul gives a thumbnail sketch of the heart of that message: “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand; by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.” (1 Cor. 15:1–4).

In this short space Paul affirms man’s need of salvation; Christ’s death for sinners; the fact of his burial and resurrection—all in accord with the Old Testament plan and prediction.

A study of Paul’s message reveals his abiding conviction as to the uniqueness and exclusiveness of Christ and his claims. He did not doubt that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, and that man’s only access to God is through his Son. He did not question Peter’s assertion that there is no other way of salvation other than in the name of Jesus Christ.

In every generation there have been “other gospels” which deny the unique Person and Work of Christ and this generation is no exception.

Probably outstanding among the various types of divergence from the Christian message today is the siren voice of universalism, so appealing and at the same time so deadening.

If it is not true that those who believe on the Son have everlasting life while those who reject him shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on them, then the heart of the Christian message has been removed and in its place a wishful, speculative philosophy substituted which cuts the nerve of evangelistic zeal and missionary endeavor.

Wherever the lost condition of the sinner is reduced to a mere ignorance of the fact that he is saved, the whole thrust of preaching is changed. Paul never made that mistake; salvation was on a “whosoever” basis but it was attained by faith and in no other way. To the Philippian jailer Paul used neither nondirective counseling, nor a warning to take care because he was confronted with an emotional crisis. To the question as to the means of salvation the answer was equally direct, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved …” (Acts 16:31).

Furthermore, both the integrity of the Old Testament record and its authority were held up to the early Christian Church. The Berean Christians were “more honourable” because by the Scriptures they evaluated the preaching they heard to see whether its message was true.

Humanitarianism, social progress, physical healing, educational advance and multiplied techniques have their definite place in Christian missions, but whether these shall serve the body and mind alone depends on the message behind such work.

The preaching of the Cross is still foolishness to the world in general, but the Cross and its implications are central to the missionary message.

It is a message of an occupied Cross and of an empty Tomb and they must come first.

L. NELSON BELL

FRANK E. KEAY¹Frank E. Keay was ordained a clergyman of the Church of England in 1908. He went to India that same year under the Church Missionary Society and was stationed at Jubbulpore as Principal of the Mission High School until 1922. He served in India intermittently until 1957. He holds the B.A., M.A., and D. Litt. degrees from London University.

The history of Christianity’s great expansion in early days and of the subsequent disappearance of the Church in Asia and in other areas has much to teach us in these days. But to most Christians it is not known. Few Christian people pay much attention to Church history.

Tradition has it that some of the apostles carried the Gospel to Eastern lands. In the Acts of the Apostles we read that Christians who left their homes because of persecution “went everywhere preaching the Word.” It is probable that persecution drove many of them out of the Roman Empire and into the East.

Just when Christianity first came to Persia (Iran) is uncertain; but what was called the Church of the East centered there and spread all over Asia. Later it was called (by nonmembers) the Nestorian Church, for it accepted the views of Nestorius, who was condemned by the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431. The Church of the East was certainly very active in spreading the Gospel.

Edessa, with its theological school, in northern Mesopotamia was the center of Christianity in the early days. During the Decian and Diocletian persecutions Christians left the Roman Empire, and a century and a half later the Nestorians fled into Persia. Here, under Sapor II (A.D. 339 to 379) there was fierce persecution and Christians suffered martyrdom rather than deny Christ. The price that was paid was heavy, but it purged the Church and deepened its spirituality, and led also to the spread of the Gospel to other lands.

Missionaries at this time had to support themselves by trade, as artisans or clerks, with some offering their services as skilled physicians.

By the end of the fifth century the area which the Nestorians had evangelized included Egypt, Syria, Arabia, the Island of Soqotra, Mesopotamia, Persia, Media, Bactria, Hyrcania, Turkestan, India, and Ceylon. Thus, by the seventh century the Church had spread far and wide in Asia, but its internal divisions greatly hindered an effective witness for Christ.

Christianity probably came to China about the early part of the seventh century or before, and spread throughout the land during the period of the T’ang dynasty (A.D. 618 to 906). At first the rulers favored it. However, in 845 persecution began, and the Church greatly diminished by the end of the tenth century. At the beginning of the eleventh century there was a remarkable mass movement towards Christianity among the Kerait Turks north of Mongolia. In the thirteenth century European friars, traveling in Asia, found Christian communities in existence all over East Turkestan and China, and the Mongol ruler of China, Kublai Khan, though not a Christian, was favorable towards them. Under the Ming dynasty Christianity was extirpated from China.

The advent of Islam in the seventh century was a setback to the Christian church. Much of the survival of the church depended on the rulers, and some of them were guilty of persecution. The church went on spreading, however, and became established in places as far away as Mongolia and Siberia, even Burma.

By the end of the thirteenth century Nestorian Christianity was so widely spread over Asia that one writer gives a list of 27 metropolitan sees with 200 bishops that extended over the whole of Asia from the River Tigris to China and from Lake Baikal to Cape Comorin. Today many of these areas are closed to Christian missionaries.

Tradition says it was the Apostle Bartholomew who first brought the Gospel to South Arabia. Churches were built and bishoprics established. In A.D. 523 a fierce persecution broke out. Under this trial the Christians showed great constancy and steadfastness. The Christian king of Ethiopia came to their rescue and a Christian dynasty came into power. The church emerged from the crisis too ready to take revenge on enemies—an indication of spiritual deterioration. In 570 Muhammad was born, and after his advent to power Christianity rapidly declined in Arabia. For 1,300 years the greater part of Arabia has been a land closed to the Christian Gospel.

We may mention here two other areas where there had been a Christian church that later vanished. In the Island of Soqotra the people were once Christians. But at some time Islam came in and today Soqotra is solidly Muslim.

In the north of Eritrea the Ethiopian church became decadent, ignorant of the truths of the Gospel, and superstitious. Then Muslim missionaries came in, and the Christians in that area all became Muslims. Today Christian missionaries are facing the uphill task of winning them back to the true Christian faith.

In North Africa there was a flourishing church in the early centuries of the Christian era, with great church leaders like Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine. Within 10 years after Muhammad died (A.D. 632), the Muslims had mastered Egypt, Palestine, and Syria, and then swept through North Africa. The church in North Africa, which had survived the previous shock of the Vandal invasions, was obliterated. Today North Africa also is a land of the vanished Church.

The Causes Of Decline

What led to such eclipse of the Christian church in Asia and North Africa?

One reason was the advance of Islam. In many Muslim areas Christians were given religious freedom on the promise that they would not openly propagate their faith and would agree to pay heavy taxes. However, this often resulted in wholesale secession to Islam or emigration.

Most of the ruin to the Christian church was due to the wars of conquest conducted by Mongol rulers. Genghis Khan, who first began his exploits in 1203, and died in 1227, was not a Muslim. In the dominions under his rule he was a good administrator and often favored Christians. But there was ruthless slaughter and destruction in his wars.

Still a greater blow to the Christian church in central and northern Asia was the devastation wrought by Amir Timur (Tamerlane). While still under 30 years of age he became ruler of Transoxiana with his capital at Samarkand. When he started his career of conquest, whole provinces were turned into deserts by the ravages of his troops. In 1390 he invaded Persia and brought about massacres and ruin. This destruction was spread over large areas. Churches and temples were destroyed wherever he went and the Christian church almost vanished from the greater part of Asia.

It was not, however, only the shock of ruthless invasions that brought an end to the church in such vast areas. Whatever may have been its pristine purity and zeal in early days, the church became sadly decadent. Again and again it had survived severe persecution, but in large areas it failed to arise after the heavy blows. Even in some of the areas not affected the church ceased to be, or fell away from the high ideals of earlier days and became ignorant and full of error and superstition. Many factors, including lack of real spiritual life and formal ecclesiasticism, resulted in its inability to stand up to the assaults made upon it.

In many areas of our world, missionaries do not seem to have given to the people the Scriptures in their own language. Services have often been held in a foreign language. Existing remnants of the Nestorian and Jacobite churches still use liturgies in Syriac.

Then in many cases churches relied too heavily on foreign missionaries. For example, of the 75 names of presbyters mentioned on the Nestorian monument in China, there are hardly any Chinese names.

In countries where Christians, with no sound biblical knowledge, came in contact with Buddhism, they let their doctrines become infiltrated with Buddhist ideas. Similar disintegrating influence occurred with Islam. For instance, Muslims do not believe that Christ was crucified because God would not have allowed his prophet to be so treated. Its rapid spread seems proof to Islam of its divine origin, for the Muslim accepts success as a main criterion of truth. There was also the tendency among Christians to rely on the favor of rulers.

Serious divisions within the Christian church also caused its weakness; often there were squabbles in the same church over the election of leaders.

We may observe then that where spiritual life has been weakened there has been a lowering of scriptural standards, and the church has become a prey to corrupting influence and therefore cannot stand up to persecution. Where people are not grounded in the teaching of the Bible, and where their Christianity becomes only a nominal adherence to a creed, they are easily overcome by carnal motives and become open to influences that draw them away from loyalty to Christ.

What lessons can Christians learn from all this? First, it must be said that we need to beware of a shallow optimism about the church. In many lands it is passing through a time of severe testing. Persecution in Communist countries is ruthless and subtle. It is well known that Communism is out to destroy faith in God. Young people are being indoctrinated in atheism, and there is an unending pressure on Christians to put loyalty to a Communist state above loyalty to Jesus Christ. Islam also is advancing in many areas, and even Hinduism is seeking to win back to its fold weak and uninstructed Christians.

Do we realize our responsibility to pray for these Christian brothers and sisters in lands where they are subject to pressure? The church in vast areas was obliterated in years gone by. We must face this as a real danger today.

There is urgent need in all lands for the Christian church to be established in God’s Word. Christian communities must be built up to meet the onslaughts of Communism and other ideologies. A mere nominal Christianity can never withstand the attacks that are being made against it.

Many professing Christians treat the matter of missions like an elective in the school of Christ—like something they may either support or ignore according to personal inclination.

Interestingly enough, missionary societies in local churches unwittingly may have encouraged this attitude. Although designed to foster missionary interest within the entire congregation, the existence and nature of these groups may have suggested, at least to some people, that missions are a kind of extra curricular activity for certain but not all believers.

We thank God for those who have worked to promote missions through such societies. We dare not relegate the church’s missionary responsibility wholly to them, however. All believers must awaken to the fact that missions are not optional, that missionary interest both nourishes and reveals the pulse and heartbeat of the church. Apart from a consuming sense of mission the church has no reason to exist. Although needed and invaluable, the work of missionary organizations ought only augment and not replace or substitute for the obligations of the entire congregation.

The Missionary Imperative

It is significant that the Scriptures propound no specific argument for missions. Nowhere does the Bible suggest merely the advisability of sharing the Christian mission. Instead we find precise commands: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations …” (Matt. 28:19); “… that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be preached in his name to all nations …” (Luke 24:47); “… you shall be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Each instance employs an imperative mood. In Matthew 28:19 it is obvious. In Luke the imperative comes to light only by studying the Greek root of the word translated “should.” It connotes the meaning of concern strengthened by expectation, a concept that involves purpose, duty, or necessity. In Acts the grammatical construction implies even the command’s certainty: “You shall be my witnesses.…”

God has so united Christian experience and Christian mission that true discipleship manifests itself in missionary zeal. As we read the Acts of the Apostles we are impressed how Christ’s followers fulfilled this mission. They had one consuming passion—to present Christ to an unknowing, unbelieving world. “They did not cease teaching and preaching Jesus as the Christ” (Acts 5:42). Whether witnessing to individuals or to multitudes, the Apostles were men of mission. Philip enjoyed considerable success in proclaiming Christ to many in Samaria (Acts 8:1–25), but he was equally sensitive and responsive to the need of one Ethiopian on a lonely desert road (Acts 8:26–40). God’s Spirit mightily used Peter on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:1–47), but Peter’s mission, like that of all faithful disciples, was not fulfilled with one day’s service. Paul, from the day of his conversion, became “a chosen instrument … to carry … [Christ’s] … name before the Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel” (Acts 9:15). A deep urgency that underlies all Christian fruitfulness led Paul to exclaim, “… necessity is laid upon me. Woe to me if I do not preach the gospel!” (1 Cor. 9:16).

While for the disciples this mission no doubt represented an integral part of their call to preach, it implies for all believers an awareness of man’s need and the imperative nature of the Christian message. All believers have different gifts, but as members of the church, the body of Christ, they have but one ministry and one mission.

Someone is reported to have said to James Denny, the Scottish theologian, “Some people do not believe in missions. They have no right to believe in missions: they do not believe in Christ.” Harsh as this observation may be, it is nonetheless true to the spirit of New Testament Christianity. On the other hand, to believe in Christ is to believe and to accept a mission, for he “came to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). An awareness of mission was crucial to Christ’s ministry, for it is indeed at the very heart of the Gospel. This same awareness is no less essential for the contemporary church.

Where sensitivity to the missionary imperative is absent the church becomes ingrown, complacent, and self-satisfied. It lives and thrives only so long as it spends itself in ministering to the spiritual and material needs of men. What Christ said of discipleship is just as true for the church at large, “He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matt. 10:29).

The Missionary Responsibility

The missionary imperative makes plain also the missionary responsibility. “Go ye …” (Matt. 28:19, KJV). “You shall be my witnesses …” (Acts 1:8). The pronoun is absolutely inescapable. The responsibility for extending the Christian mission falls on all believers. It involves you!3 John 5–7 speaks of missionaries who went about preaching the unsearchable riches of Christ. The account adds: “So we ought to support such men, that we may be fellow workers in the truth” (3 John 8). In 2 Corinthians 8:3–4 Paul records the desire—even the longing—of the Macedonians to share in the Christian mission of compassion, “For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own free will, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part.…” Paul’s challenge and admonition to the Corinthians is, “Now as you excell in everything—in faith, in utterance, in knowledge, in all earnestness, and in your love for us—see that you excell in this gracious work also” (2 Cor. 8:7). The Scriptures reveal beyond any reasonable doubt that each of us as a believer literally possesses a missionary responsibility to witness, to work, and to give, that Christ may be known “to the end of the earth.”

Occasionally we meet people who cling to the principles of evangelical faith but are totally oblivious to any missionary responsibility. While they claim Christ as Lord, they either do not or will not understand that his Lordship calls for and merits the utmost sacrifical service. He expects us to work that all men may acknowledge and experience his Saviourhood and Lord ship for his glory. The unique message of the Gospel demands constant repetition: “… for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Christ alone is the way. He himself said “… no one comes to the Father but by me” (John 14:6). Our missionary responsibility, then, involves more than obedience to Christ’s command to go; for those who have not yet come to Christ in saving faith our measure of missionary response is a matter of life or death. Concern over the utter lostness of those outside of Christ kindles a real urgency to share the Gospel. Necessity is laid upon us because we know that without Christ men live in the wrath of God (John 3:36). Christ reveals himself as the bread of life; the light of the world; the door of salvation; the good shepherd; the resurrection and the life. He speaks of himself as the true vine through whom, if we abide, we may bear fruit. In him “we live and move, and have our being.” His Incarnation to provide salvation has changed the course of history; his person and work have immeasurably affected all mankind, Christian or not. He is Lord, and men must be brought to know him!

Paul pointedly summarizes the matter: “But how are men to call upon him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without a preacher? And how can men preach unless they are sent?” (Romans 10:14, 15). Not everyone can go afar to preach or minister in Christ’s name, but all believers can support the church’s mission of redemption and reconciliation and thus become “… fellow workers in the truth” (3 John 8).

The Missionary Scope

No Christian can escape the missionary imperative or evade the missionary responsibility set forth in the Scriptures. But what of the scope of this mission? Christ answers: “… make disciples of all nations” (Matt. 28: 19); “… you shall be my witnesses … to the end of the earth” (Acts 1:8). The Christian mission is ecumenical. It embraces the whole inhabited earth, all classes and cultures, all tribes and nations. The apostles preached the Gospel in synagogues, in pagan courts, in the open fields, on highways, in prison, before religious leaders, before government officials, to their own nation, to neighboring and to distant lands. We must do no less.

It is imperative that American Christians bear testimony for Christ in their own country and address the problems peculiar to their community and culture. Through mission boards and agencies they must witness for Christ in both metropolitan and rural areas, to both cosmopolitan and provincial people of all classes. Every American outside of Christ is a mission field. Christians must support the missionary enterprise abroad as well as to the uttermost parts of the world. So long as there are people who do not accept and follow Christ, whether they be rich or poor, learned or unlearned, the church cannot relinquish its missionary dedication. The field is the world, and it is white unto harvest.

In geographic scope the Christian mission includes all the inhabited earth. In range of method, it includes preaching, teaching, and healing. In fact, the breadth of the church’s mission is declared by Christ at the beginning of his ministry: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has appointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18, 19). The church therefore ministers in Christ’s name through schools and colleges, hospitals and clinics, homes for orphans and the aged. Remembering Jesus’ words: “… whoever gives … even a cup of cold water because he is a disciple … shall not lose his reward” (Matt. 10:42) the church provides clothing for the naked, food for the hungry and shelter for the homeless. The field is the world; entering every door of opportunity whether by preaching, teaching, or healing is the method of missions that Christ and his salvation may be known among all men.

Missions are not optional. Scripture unequivocally states the imperative, the responsibility, and the scope of this task. The question for every believer is not “shall I take part in this mission?” but rather “what part shall I take?” In our own communities and to the whole world we must witness for Christ.

How can we fulfill this command? First of all we must yield ourselves to the Lord and to the guidance of his Spirit. Sons and daughters of succeeding generations must be challenged with church related vocations, must be encouraged to share the missionary responsibility of Christ’s church. Overwhelming concern for lost men and women, some of them our immediate neighbors, must engage us in intercessory prayer and in witness. Those who have accepted Christ’s call to circle the globe with the Gospel we must support with our substance.

The day is far spent. Go!

Are missionaries unbalanced? Of course they are. I’m one. I ought to know.

A missionary probably began as an ordinary person. He dressed like other people, he liked to play tennis and listen to music.

But even before leaving for the field he became “different.’ Admired by some, pitied by others, he was known as one who was leaving parents, prospects and home for—a vision. So he seemed to be a visionary.

Now that he’s come home again he’s even more different. To him some things—big things—just don’t seem important. Even the World Series or the Davis Cup matches don’t interest him especially. And apparently he doesn’t see things as other people see them. The chance of a lifetime—to meet Toscanini personally—seems to leave him cold. It makes you want to ask where he’s been.

Well, where has he been?

Where the conflict with evil is open and intense, a fight not a fashion—where clothes don’t matter, because there’s little time to take care of them—where people are dying for help he might give, most of them not even knowing he has the help—where the sun means 120 in the shade, and he can’t spend his time in the shade.

But not only space; time too seems to have passed him by. When you talk about beatniks he looks puzzled. When you mention Harry Belafonte he asks who he is. You wonder how long he’s been away.

All right, how long has he been away? Long enough for thirty million people to go into eternity without Christ, with no chance to hear the Gospel—and some of them went right before his eyes: when that flimsy riverboat overturned; when that cholera epidemic struck; when that Hindu-Moslem riot broke out.

How long has he been gone? Long enough to have had two sieges of amoebic dysentery, to nurse his wife through repeated attacks of malaria, to get the news of his mother’s death before he knew she was sick.

How long? Long enough to see a few outcaste men and women turn to Christ, to see them drink in the Bible teaching he gave them, to struggle and suffer with them through the persecution that developed from non-Christian relatives, to see them grow into a steady band of believers conducting their own worship, to see this group develop an indigenous church that is reaching out to the community.

Yes, he’s been away a long time.

So he’s different. But unnecessarily so. At least, since he’s in this country, he could pay more attention to his clothes, to what’s going on around the country, to recreation, to social life.

Of course he could.

But he can’t forget—at least most of the time—that the price of a new suit would buy 3,200 Gospels; that while an American spends one day in business, 5,000 Indians or Chinese go into eternity without Christ.

So when a missionary comes to your church or your Christian group, remember that he will probably be different. If he stumbles for a word now and then, he may have been speaking a foreign tongue almost exclusively for seven years, and possibly is fluent in it. If he isn’t in the orator class, he may not have had a chance to speak English from a pulpit for awhile. He may be eloquent on the street of an Indian bazaar.

If he doesn’t seem to warm up as quickly as you want, if he seems less approachable than a youth evangelist or college professor, remember he’s been under a radically different social system since before you started high school, and maybe is unfamiliar with casual conversation.

Sure the missionary is unbalanced.

But by whose scales? Yours or God’s?—An article by T. NORTON STERRETT, reprinted by permission from His, student magazine of Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship.

For the past generation pioneer thinking about missionary methods has focused in the deepening conviction that the goal of missions everywhere should be the development of mature, responsible, and self-governing local churches. Continuing debate has not questioned this consensus, yet radically different conclusions have emerged therefrom.

Out of respect for the “indigenous” church’s responsibility should the missionary or should he not be insofar as possible a “normal member” of the emergent fellowship? Examination of this question continues in the current issue of CHRISTIANITY TODAY. Seldom does such discussion reveal, however, that this problem is not the deepest nor the most urgent in planning for tomorrow’s witnessing outreach. The same vulnerable definition of “missionary” is presupposed by both sides as they debate the missionary’s relationship to the indigenous church, or even his selection and training. A “missionary” is presumed to be a Christian from North America or Western Europe, someone sent and financially supported by churches in the “homeland” while he is “on the field,” and until he returns “home.”

By-Product Of A Modern Era

This universally accepted definition of the “missionary” has its obvious place in the foreign missionary movement of the last two centuries. But we do not seem to recognize to what extent this great movement, including its concept of missionary “sending,” was the product of an era of Western cultural and political expansion—an age whose passing we may welcome or deplore, but cannot prevent.

We are not discounting nor discrediting the immeasurable achievements of this epochal work of God in the recent past when we ask how the old mission approach is to be carried out in a new day. Nor do we imply any concession to anti-Christian misinterpretation of missionaries’ motives when we recognize the cultural context of their work and the particular congruence of their methods with the political and economic expansion of their nations.

Normal Expansion Of The Church

If we study historical precedents for Christianity’s response to shifting cultural tides and to the closing of many younger nations to professional missionaries, we soon discover that the Church’s growth down through the ages was not usually the result of sending “foreign missionaries” to untouched pagan peoples. Rather, it was the migration of groups of self-supporting Christians to found local self-governing, self-propagating, self-supporting churches that started the evangelization of any given region. Christian migrants went first; ministers and teachers followed. This pattern has been the case in every age of church expansion from apostolic times to the settling of the American frontier.

Even the Apostle Paul was no “missionary” in the modern sense of the term; he received no regular financial support from either Jerusalem or Antioch. When he arrived in a new city, he did not preach to the pagan multitudes; rather, he sought out the synagogue, that is, God-fearing migrants from Palestine who had rooted themselves in every major city of the Roman world. The migration of numbers of God’s people preceded his outreach with the Gospel into new ethnic and cultural groups.

So today, while doors and hearts around the world are closing to religious professionals who maintain their cultural and financial base in North America, what could be more normal than a return to the classic means of church growth? Why cannot we help plan and guide what in other ages issued spontaneously from Christians’ search for greater freedom and opportunity? In architecture, food processing, medicine, education, science, engineering, agriculture—professionals are needed and wanted around the world in every category but “religion”! Let these experts migrate, taking with them their faith and their future. Let them earn their bread by serving the real needs of the people and of the land that will henceforth be their home. Let them go in sufficient numbers to form a sturdy Christian fellowship from the start and to help one another in making the necessary adjustments to a different way of life. Let them be neither so numerous nor so unadventurous, however, that they form a culturally self-sufficient island. From the outset they are to serve and not to rule. For themselves and for their neighbors let them provide schools, hospitals, churches, and preachers only as they themselves can support them. Let them be prepared to surrender their mother tongue, their racial distinctives, their denominational attachments, even their political preferences; “sowing” these precious particularities that they may die as a grain of wheat to bring forth fruit for the household of God in the land of their choice.

“Mission” literally means “sending.” But the Great Commission nowhere talks about sending. Its subject, rather, is going. The Lord expects not just a few specialists, chosen for their deeper spirituality to be sent abroad at others’ expense, but the whole church to go and to make disciples as it goes. Perhaps the worst shortcoming of the modern idea of “missionary” is not its effect on the pagans who hear the preaching or the young churches under foreign guidance, but what it does to the “nonmissionary” in the homeland. Missionaries and preachers would certainly never deny that bearing the Gospel witness is every person’s duty; but the title, the training, the furlough privileges, and the financial situation of the special few deny this implicitly. Only by rediscovering that the entire phrasing of the Great Commission is in the plural, is an imperative to the whole Church, can we sever the fetters of professionalization in missions that has immobilized our evangelistic imagination and commitment. God sends not a heroic minority but the whole Church. Linguistic, pastoral, institutional, or other special assignments do not therefore cease to exist. Rather, their particular place and function must no longer divert or excuse the rest of us from choosing that profession and that homeland in which to exercise our joint missionary responsibility to the world.

Missionary-minded believers everywhere are interested in establishing indigenous churches among people who once knew nothing of the grace of God in Christ. Recent years have witnessed a great impetus toward this end. National Christian leaders in what were formerly called mission lands are increasingly and rapidly taking over responsibilities for the support, nurture, government, and extension of churches that originally were established under the blessing of God by Christians from overseas.

This change is as it should be.

What Are The Criteria?

Is an indigenous church, however, necessarily one which admits only nationals as members and deliberately excludes missionaries from other lands? Is not the racial criterion for membership too superficial and therefore an unworthy one? Surely the Lord’s standard is more than skin deep!

In considering the transition from mission enterprise to indigenous church one must remember there are different systems of church government. Each presumably is based on Scripture, and each in any adjustment of program faces certain problems. Is it desirable or right, for example, that churches relinquish an established governmental structure for a congregational system? Often this latter method has greater appeal to overseas Christians; to govern one church autonomously and independently may be simpler than submitting to the authority and corporate control of some conference, presbytery, or synod. It is true, also, that current indigenous ideas are usually tailored more closely to the independent pattern of church government than any other.

Through many generations of missionary activity around the world, missionaries have not only admitted and deplored, but have also sincerely tried to correct, various evils and shortcomings in their ministry. Improvements have indeed come. But however conscientious and earnest these men and women of God may be, they are nonetheless still human and fallible.

A word of caution is timely at this point. In our eagerness to lay aside some particular evil we must be sure we do not invite or make room for a more dangerous and subtle form of the very condition we decry. In trying to eliminate paternalism on the local level, for example, it is quite possible to continue this attitude from a distance in a far less obvious but much more insidious way.

Furthermore, in the scramble to use appealing shibboleths and to follow popular trends in today’s religious thought, people may unwittingly succumb to statements and policies which sound wise enough but which, unless qualified, may really be quite the opposite.

Some Basic Principles

To avoid mistakes and heartache in developing and nurturing the indigenous church, two basic principles of Scripture must constantly be observed.

1. The New Testament clearly teaches that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek.

How often as a child on the streets in China I remember hearing the words “foreign devil!” In this epithet, as in similar expressions in almost every land, brooded the ugly prejudice of racial nationalism. In the church, however, I heard a quite different and significant designation: “Brother” expressed the beautiful and truly Christian ideal of family relationship.

National distinctions persist in the secular world and continue to divide society. In the body of Christ, the Church, however, they are done away. While these diversities still obtain outwardly and physically, the unity and spiritual fellowship in Christ transcend these differences by including and uniting all mankind. Is this why the Apostle Paul appointed young Timothy, who to some may have seemed an outsider, to pastor the church at Ephesus? This church, after all, for years had had its own indigenous elders and leaders. Similarly, Paul appointed Titus to serve the church in Crete and gave him specific instructions concerning church affairs in that place. Did not the Cretan church very likely have its own local leaders? If we are to follow Paul’s pattern of missions, dare we ignore this phase?

His Corinthian and Thessalonian epistles reveal still another pertinent fact. Apparently he, a Jew from Asia, never relinquished his responsibilities and authority over the Gentile missionary churches he had established in Europe. This was the case not only because Paul believed Jew and Gentile are one in Christ; he was sure of his divine commission as well.

The second basic principle in a missionary’s relationship to the indigenous church often is overlooked or, if it is not believed, may he ignored.

2. A missionary is first and foremost under divine appointment.

Either he is God-sent or he is not a missionary in the Christian sense of the word. Few if any evangelicals today would deny the definite call and divine appointment of missionaries even in regard to specific fields and ministries. Should not missionaries, then, be received and acknowledged as part of the churches they serve, and be just as eligible as any other member to participate in their counsels? It seems almost absurd to affirm (as do some evangelical missionary organizations who unwittingly may be following the earlier lead of liberals) that missionaries do not belong to indigenous churches. They may serve only as outsiders, as roving evangelists, as peripatetic teachers of the Word. They may be doctors with mobile units who treat the sick and move on. Even in congregational-type, independent churches this situation should not prevail. And in churches established by a parent church in another land, the idea of severance is all the more open to question. To consider missionaries outsiders seems to be a tacit concession to the spirit of nationalism. Neither is such an attitude of any help to a church, nor can it be sustained by Scripture.

God appoints missionaries to other important ministries in the indigenous church besides those mentioned above. The church, of course, must cooperate willingly. Obviously a new missionary just graduated from Bible college or seminary, or even one with a Ph.D. degree, who has far more than an unfamiliar language to learn in his appointed field, should no more expect immediately to direct affairs in churches overseas than he would in a church at home. While the Lord of the harvest appoints his laborers where and as he wills, he never does so indiscriminately, nor without requiring the maturing disciplines of extremely practical Christian service. Such training takes time both at home and abroad. God’s servants are thoroughly proved before he entrusts them with sacred responsibilities. Nonetheless, even the best equipped must always manifest humility. But the fact that a missionary is from another country should not of itself be a disqualifying factor for real membership and, in time, even for service of high responsibility in any overseas church to which the Lord may send him.

When God appoints someone to serve his Church in another land, whatever the skin color may be, he sends his servant as an insider, not an outsider, as an essential member of the living church organism. Except where the unscriptural idea of excluding missionaries from the indigenous church has been fostered, a vast majority of national believers gladly welcome and acknowledge the foreign missionary as an integral part of the church brotherhood.

Since all race distinctions are removed in Christ, any true church organism anywhere may include black, white or yellow. God is not limited to matching people of the same race and skin in his appointments of workers to churches either at home or abroad. Because God raises up and appoints local church leaders, it does not necessarily follow that missionaries therefore cannot expect to, nor should not, belong to the indigenous church brotherhood.

That emphasis on nationalism which would exclude missionaries from any essential relationship to the overseas church, an attitude strangely prevalent if not dominant in current missionary thought, is certainly not a spiritual let alone a scriptural emphasis. Definitely non-Christian and divisive, this kind of nationalism in no way nurtures the Spirit of Christ. Actually, it brings into the churches that very disunity which Christ’s death abolished. Whenever some policy develops a spirit other than that of the Lord Jesus, any so-called advantages of such a policy, as spontaneous numerical increase even, mean absolutely nothing.

In those foreign lands where the alchemy of grace does indeed make outsiders truly indigenous members of the church and its fellowship, the Lord entrusts missionaries with responsible ministries even though they serve people of different nationalities.

Even the Scot who yearned to serve God in China but was led to the United States instead illustrates our thesis. No one who heard him either as a prominent Presbyterian minister or as chaplain of the United States Senate would deny that Peter Marshall was a missionary. Every bit of this six-foot-two Anglo-Saxon was sent by God from Europe to America. Born in Scotland, he nonetheless became a vital member of the indigenous church in our country. Peter Marshall both came and was received as a true and respected missionary of the Lord Jesus Christ.