Words from John G. (Part 2) – “A Word to Members of the Church”
We all mistakes, and we don’t always say the right thing at the right time. A number of our mistaken decisions, or perhaps the faulty counsel offered to others, can often be chalked up to not knowing then what we know now. Sometimes, we are spared the negative effects of our advice, because someone else knew better than to follow it. Even so, who would want to be known to history as the guy who told John G. Paton, “Don’t go to the mission field”? According to Paton’s autobiography, William Symington was once such a guy – but only one among many. “When it became known that I was preparing to go abroad as a Missionary,” writes Paton, “nearly all were dead against the proposal.”[i]
As mentioned in my previous blog post, my aim in this series is to be reminded and to remind others of what can be rightly said of John Gibson Paton -- though dead, he still speaks. I am convinced that in Paton’s autobiography, he has many words fitly spoken to many of us in considering the call to support and pursue global missions as part of Jesus’s Great Commission. This second word is to the members of the church, particularly those members who may not necessarily serve on the mission field themselves, but who can still be a strong source of encouragement – or discouragement – to those who do sense the Lord’s leading to missions.
There were repeated attempts to discourage Paton from one Mr. Dickson, a “dear old Christian gentleman, whose crowning argument always was, ‘The cannibals! You will be eaten by cannibals!’”[ii] In all fairness to Mr. Dickson, the violent, cannibalistic ways of the natives who inhabited the New Hebrides did present a real danger to any would-be missionaries to the islands. In the mission fields open today there are also real dangers – unstable political climates, poisonous snakes, official persecution of Christians, and any other number of potential sources of physical or spiritual evils. In this light, should we then discourage others from following the Lord into a potentially dangerous field, or rather encourage them to be wise and equipped for the road ahead?
Paton’s response to Mr. Dickson not only flipped the question back upon the dear old Christian gentleman but might also shift our own perspective on the end to which our mortal lives are lived:
At last I replied, ‘Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms. I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or worms; and in the Great Day my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.’[iii]
Paton also recalls two sets of objections to his going, which were both based upon the value of his staying – one carrying more weight than the other. The argument more easily dismissed came from those who reasoned there was no need to go across the world to find heathens to convert when there were so many lost heathens right there in Scotland! Paton did not dismiss this argument because it was not true or did not already weigh heavily on his heart. Rather, the source of his dismissal was based upon reflections such as, “I unfailingly observed that those who made this retort neglected these Home Heathen themselves; and so the objection, as from them, lost all its power.”[iv] It may be an uncomfortable question to ask of ourselves, whether our own evangelistic zeal and efforts are serving as a means of encouraging or discouraging that zeal to see the lost hear of and believe in Jesus, whether it is the lost who are across the globe or the lost who are across the street from our homes.
Someone else who believed that John Paton would be of better service to the Kingdom if he were to keep serving in Scotland had more genuine interests in mind than those previously mentioned. “Even Dr. [William] Symington, one of my professors in divinity, and the beloved Minister in connection with whose congregation I had wrought so long as a City Missionary, and in whose Kirk Session I had for years sat as an Elder, repeatedly urged me to remain at home” (emphasis added).[v] Symington expressed his belief to Paton that he was most well-suited for evangelistic and shepherding work in the city of Glasgow, and that, should he leave for the New Hebrides, much of his fruitful work in Scotland could disappear, only to be replaced by a potentially fruitless work as a foreign missionary.
Much like the matter of danger noted above, the issues of usefulness, gifting, and best-fit service are all valid concerns, too. We should all desire to encourage our brothers and sisters in the best possible use of the gifts and resources the Lord has given them. However, there are probably more instances and individuals than we realize, where they ought to have been discouraged from going somewhere or doing something in the Lord’s name, which they really had no business undertaking. For this very reason, we all need to think more highly of the calling into full-time ministry, at home or abroad, and not think more highly of ourselves than we ought to.
Sadly, some of us think too highly of ourselves, and so we are likely to jump headlong into missions and ministry, thinking that we are the ones who are going to save the world and end up not. Others think too highly of ourselves, and thus, in the interest of our own comfort and pursuits, do not enter full-time ministry (even though God has gifted, equipped, and called them to do so), which leaves the mission field wide open for the first kind of too-highly-thinking people to rush in.
The irony of Dr. Symington wanting John Paton to stay and labor in Glasgow is that he probably would have gladly stayed and done so if only someone else – anyone else – had risen to the call of the New Hebrides mission. At a previous meeting of Synod, however, no one would rise to the occasion and even an unusual, casting-of-lots/popular-vote method of identifying a minister to go produced no names at all. In the midst of this missionary void, Paton wrote, “the Lord kept saying within me, ‘since none better qualified can be got, rise and offer yourself!’”[vi] So, it wasn’t that Paton thought he was the best for the job, but that no one better seemed to be taking it instead. In similar humble fashion, when his pastor, William Symington, urged Paton to stay and continue shepherding those in Glasgow under his charge, he would reply, “though I loved my work and my people, yet I felt that I could leave them to the care of Jesus, who would soon provide them with a better pastor than I.”[vii]
I would say the final lesson here, then, is to broadly encourage the saints in our congregations to be willing to go, and when qualified, to go. At that point, however, we also need to encourage the congregation to let them go. For if we pray earnestly to the Lord of the Harvest to send out laborers into His harvest (Matthew 9:38), we should expect that He will answer our prayer and, in doing so, He will send His laborers out from us. Beloved, let us encourage rather than discourage those whom God will send into His field.
[i] John G. Paton, John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides (New York, Fleming H. Revell, 1898), 89.
[ii] Ibid., 91.
[iii] Ibid.
[iv] Ibid., 92.
[v] Ibid. 89.
[vi] Ibid., 86-87.
[vii] Ibid., 90.