This upcoming July will mark twenty years since my wife and I left on a plane in Boston, Massachusetts, to land in Kingstown, St. Vincent. Twenty years! We spent a whole year there, ministering to the people, learning the culture, and serving on staff at Baptist Bible College of the Caribbean. That year was also our first year of marriage. What a crazy and exciting way to have our first year together. We embarked on this adventure between our college and seminary experience, hoping to see if God was calling us to fulltime foreign missions. We still ended up on the mission field, just not a foreign one (although as someone from New England, Western Pennsylvania felt somewhat foreign at first). 

That year was a good year – one in which I learned a lot about missions and missionaries, but also that was a difficult year. We were only 22, but we were forced to grow up quickly. The foreign mission field can be like a pressure cooker for interpersonal relationships! That might be for another blog post, but back to the topic at hand. One of the pressures we felt was the need to communicate with donors and supporting churches. 

We went into the endeavor with the hopes of sharing a monthly newsletter, telling everyone about all that had happened and all that God was doing, but a few months in, we discovered that it was difficult to have something new to say. I remember having my laptop on the desk and Word Perfect (remember that program?) open, trying to think of something new to say. The reality is that in the midst of a normal month at the college, there really wasn’t much to say. I learned that the pressure of sharing new news had found its way into a colleague’s newsletter. They relayed stories to their supporters that were either embellished or clearly fabricated. Churches and donors wanted to see results, and they were going to give it to them.

I bring this up because of what I discovered this past week while preparing my sermon. I was looking for quotes about service and greatness, and stumbled upon a quote by Robert Morrison in J. Oswald Sander’s Spiritual Leadership. The quote was helpful, finding its way into my sermon (If you are curious about what he said, you will just have to listen to the sermon). I didn’t know anything about Robert Morrison, so I spent some time trying to understand who he was. Morrison, a native of the UK, was a presbyterian missionary to China in the early 19th Century. He arrived in the country in 1807 and spent twenty-five years ministering to the people. One of his major accomplishments was translating the whole Bible into the Chinese language; quite an accomplishment.

In learning about Morrison, there was one fact in particular that stood out to me. In the twenty-five years that he was in China, he only led 10 people to the Lord. Only 10. That fact really surprised me. Twenty-five years of service, and only 10 people had been led to Christ. I know – he was busy translating. But still, my initial reaction was one of surprise. After some time, though, I thought about what that would sound like in our modern mission era. His monthly newsletter would have felt empty. He only saw 10 converts in twenty-five years! Most churches and donors today might be tempted to withdraw support, wondering if the resources could be better used elsewhere. Sure, we acknowledge the story of the ninety-nine sheep that Jesus told, reminding us in Luke 15:7, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Still, it is a bit surprising that it was just 10 . . . really? That’s it?

Then, I thought about that number for another minute. Imagine if every Christian in the church where I pastor led just 10 people to the Lord in twenty-five years. Just 10. That would mean that each person would lead a new person to the Lord every two and half years. Now, think about that. If everyone who consistently attended Gospel Life Church led a person to the Lord every 2 ½ years, then by Christmas 2028, we will have led 175 people to the Lord. If that had happened for the past 15 years that I have been here, our church would have been responsible for leading 1,050 people to the Lord. Quite a different picture than we see today (I say to my own shame.). Imagine all that could be done if we just reached 10 people. Just 10 . . . really.

Your servant in the Lord,