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The Making of a Missionary

CONNIE: What does it really take to turn a person into a missionary for Jesus? Join us today as we continue our study of the life of Paul and consider how God groomed him for the service he would do.

Giving God’s trumpet a Certain Sound for 75 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.

CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,

LONNIE: and I’m Lonnie Melashenko. You know, Connie, the apostle Paul was one of the most effective missionaries of all time—because he reached out to people of many different backgrounds.

CONNIE: Do you think Paul was just a natural-born missionary, or did he have to learn as he went along.

LONNIE: Well, that’s a good question. The program series we’re working on right now focuses on Paul’s spiritual journey, and I happen to think that he, like any other human being, had some growing to do along the way. The Lord continued to teach him new things every day. And that’s the focus of my message today, “The Making of a Missionary.” We’ll look at how God taught Paul the lessons he needed in the years before his first great missionary journey.

CONNIE: Before we hear that message, though, we’ve invited _Carol Roeburg____ to join us; she’s what you might call a home-town missionary. With a very important ministry right in our area.

LONNIE: Connie, I believe you spoke with her recently, so let’s listen in.

CONNIE: Hi Carol, welcome to the Voice of Prophecy today!

CAROL: Thank you for having me, Connie.

CONNIE: Carol you are the director of the Ventura County Rescue Mission right here in Ventura County where we are located, tell us a little bit about how you and your husband came along and took over an existing mission that was very small and how you’ve built into what it is today. Tell us a little bit about what the Ventura County Mission does.

CAROL: We feed, clothe, and shelter the poor and homeless, but the real heart of our program is helping those afflicted with drug and alcohol problems, where people’s lives are changed through the Lord Jesus Christ. We offer a Christian 12setp program and we have seen many miracles here, men completely delivered from drugs and alcohol.

CONNIE: That’s wonderful! You know, I got an opportunity Carol, to meet a few of the people whose lives have been transformed through the mission. When I did a radio-thon to help raise funds for the Ventura County Rescue Mission, I was so impressed. But you know, today we’re talking about how a person even becomes a missionary, and I know that you and your husband have a wonderful testimony about how you feel the Lord called you, which at first you thought is was overseas didn’t you?

CAROL: We thought that in our own wisdom of course, we thought that because God was preparing us by sending us to bible school that we thought we would be overseas missionaries. And at that time actually, a position opened up here in our area and we considered ourselves urban missionaries.

CONNIE: And what year was that?

CAROL: That was in 1985.

CONNIE: And you’ve been there ever since?

CAROL: Yes.

CONNIE: What does it mean to you to fulfill your mission in life? How does a person know?

CAROL: I think that we knew that we were not just pew sitting Christians, not that there’s anything wrong with that, but we knew that we wanted to go deeper with the Lord and what I tell people going into ministry is that it’s just more of what you were already doing. We were involved in our church in discipleship training, we ran a 12 step group out of our home, and we just felt led to do those things and it was just more of the same. The Lord was just taking us deeper into the recovery ministry.

CONNIE: So even though you thought that you wanted to go overseas, because people think of missionary and they think of the far off lands, but you found it in your own backyard. How did the Lord lead you there?

CAROL: We were on our missions committee at church and we knew the former directors…my husband was a Gideon and through that connection we knew Matt and Mary and we were told at that particular missions conference meeting that Matt and Mary were leaving on to another mission, and we didn’t know at that time, but we made a trip down to the mission that night, and from there we knew that the Lord was leading us to the ministry of rescue.

CONNIE: That’s wonderful! DO you have a couple brief stories of some people whose lives have absolutely been changed and transformed through the mission? I know that I met one, a man named Jose, and his story was so inspiring about how he ended up at the rescue mission one night after he had tried to kill himself and now he’s been there a year…you provide training, job skills for these people but the most important thing is that you led them into a relationship with Jesus Christ. Give us an example of a couple of people.

CAROL: One was a man who was… we had never seen this before, but he walked through the doors and entered into our program, his name was Phil Weary, graduated from our program our Bible school and Actually stayed here and became a Chaplin, he stayed here for 7 years, and just recently went home to be with the Lord. Another is example is Steve Emminga, who came trough our mission doors 11 years ago after being on the streets and went trough our program and graduated from the Bible school, went on to LIFE Bible Collage and is now back here as our head Chaplin, and we have many, many stories like that here at the mission of people who now actually out in the community. We had one young man come through our doors that’s an associate pastor at a local church.

CONNIE: Well Carol, we could go on and on but unfortunately we have run out of time, but thanks you for joining us today and sharing with us how people can become missionaries.

CAROL: Thank you.

CONNIE: Thank you Danny and Linda Shelton, for that song, “People Touching People. That’s really what Christian missions is all about, isn’t it, Lonnie?

LONNIE: It really is—you know it’s been my privilege to travel around the world as an evangelist, and to speak on radio and television to literally millions of people. But there’s really nothing quite like personal interaction where you get to minister to people one at a time.

CONNIE: That’s where the real changes are made, isn’t it? Where people are really helped.

LONNIE: And even when we hold a large series of meetings, without fail, the majority of people who are converted are those who have been touched by the kindness of some dear Christian who took the time to share their faith on a one-to-one basis through giving Bible studies, or reaching out in a ministry like the one you and Carol were talking about a few minutes ago.

CONNIE: When it comes to sharing our faith though, it’s important to have easy ways to do it, and that’s why we recommend the Discover Bible Guides. They’re easy and convenient to study, and once you’ve been through them yourself, it’s even easier to share them with a friend.

LONNIE: You’ve noticed that we frequently mention these free Bible Guides that you can access on our web page at VOP.COM, or receive via the mail, and we want to encourage you again, to make Bible study a regular part of your life.

CONNIE: To enroll in the Discover Bible School—for free—just give us a call at 1-800-872-0055, or enroll online at VOP.COM. And we’ll also give our mailing address a bit later, but right now, let’s listen to Lonnie’s message for today, “The Making of a Missionary.”


The Making of a Missionary

As Hudson Taylor walked through the dark streets of London, he reached his hand into his pocket and fingered a small silver coin. It was the middle of the 19th century, and his thumb could trace the features of Queen Victoria on the half-crown’s face.

He deeply regretted having the coin.

He didn’t regret having money—in fact he needed more money, not less. He had only enough food at home for his supper and then for breakfast in the morning, and no more money to go shopping with.

Gloomy thoughts filled his mind as he walked through the darkness. He’d have felt much happier if he’d had smaller coins in his pocket. Two shillings and six pence would have made a nice jingle as he walked, but more than that, he would have felt like he had something to give to the poor man who was leading him through some of the dankest and most dangerous neighborhoods of the city. The man had appealed to him to come and pray for his sick wife. Detecting an Irish accent, Hudson had asked, “Why don’t you call the priest?”

“He wants a shilling-and-a-half to come and pray,” the man replied. “And I don’t have any money at all.”

Hudson Taylor felt the Spirit of God moving on his heart, encouraging him to give the half-crown to help the destitute family, but how could he give away his very last coin, with no assurance of lunch or supper for the morrow?

And why was this man of God so near bankruptcy himself?

The answer is, he was in training to be a missionary. And part of the training regimen he had given himself was to learn to trust fully in God to provide for his every need. Even though his employer owed him back wages, Hudson Taylor would not ask for the money—he wanted to rely fully on God to remind his employer to pay up!

But now, as he saw the pitiable state of the poor Irishman’s family, his heart was torn. Yes, if he had smaller change, he could easily give a shilling, and keep a shilling-and-a-half for himself. But to give everything he had—how could he do that? (Now, to put this in perspective, average wages in those days would amount to about 8 shillings per week for a working man. So even giving a shilling would be like giving away nearly a day’s wages.)

Later he wrote that the half-crown test had been one of the hardest trials of faith he ever went through. But he passed with flying colors. When he left the poor man’s house, his heart was, he said “as light as his pocket,” which was empty. But the next day he received four times that amount in the mail—an anonymous gift.

Hudson Taylor is still known today as one of the greatest Christian missionaries of all time. When he went to China a few years later, he learned to live just like the Chinese, even adopting their style of dress and living in humble dwellings right among them. He credited his success to the thorough preparations he had made—mainly in learning to trust fully in his God to supply all his needs, and in learning to live simply, down among the people he wanted to minister to.

It was a lesson he had learned from the example of the Apostle Paul.

We’ve been studying the great apostle’s life in recent weeks, and we know that his mission endeavors began almost immediately after his vision of Jesus on the Damascus Road. From then on he wanted to be like Jesus and to represent Jesus properly. And for Paul, that meant getting right down off his high horse and living with the people he wanted to reach. This is the way Paul described his ministry in his letter to the Thessalonians. “You know what kind of men we were among you, for your sake,” he wrote. “We were gentle among you, just as a nursing mother cherishes her own children. So, affectionately longing for you, we were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you had become dear to us. For you remember, brethren, our labor and toil; for laboring night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, we preached to you the gospel of God” (1 Thessalonians 1:6; 2:7-9, NKJV).

How did Paul learn to minister in that kind, caring, and compassionate way? How did he turn from being a proud, angry Pharisee, out to kill anyone who disagreed with him, to a gentle, caring Christian missionary?

It’s fascinating to read about the life of Paul and watch him learn and grow. But there are parts of the story that aren’t revealed in great detail. There’s perhaps a decade or more that scholars call the “silent years,” that we know very little about—we have to piece together information from things Paul wrote and said to try to get a picture of what was going on then. But these are crucial years in his development as one of the greatest missionary-evangelists of all time.

These “silent years” begin with Paul’s departure from Jerusalem, three years after his conversion. Paul explains his departure this way: “ ‘Now it happened, when I returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, that I was in a trance and saw Him saying to me, “Make haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly, for they will not receive your testimony concerning Me. . . .” Then He said to me, “Depart, for I will send you far from here to the Gentiles” ’ ” (Acts 22:17, 18, 21, NKJV). Acts 9:30 tells us that when the other Christians heard about this, they quickly took Paul to Caesarea and got him on a ship headed for his home town, Tarsus. The next we know of Paul is found in Acts 11, which says “Then Barnabas departed for Tarsus to seek Saul. And when he had found him, he brought him to Antioch” (Acts 11:25-26, NKJV).

What you may not realize though, if you’re reading quickly through the book of Acts, is that there’s about a ten-year gap here. What kind of clues can we find that might help us understand what Paul was doing during that time? Do you suppose he just headed home to Tarsus and became a couch potato in his parents’ home?

Hardly! That would not be like Paul at all.

But the Bible gives us only a few clues about what he was doing.

For instance, when a council was held in Jerusalem about a dozen years later, the apostles concluded their meeting by writing a letter addressed “to the believers of Gentile origin in Antioch and Syria and Cilicia” (Acts 15:23, NRSV). There’s just a hint here that Paul had been involved in some missionary activity in his home territory of Cilicia. The Gentile believers of Cilicia were probably some of his converts.

We can make another guess about the extent of his evangelizing endeavors during this time by looking at a map of Paul’s later missionary journeys. On his first journey, he skipped past Cilicia and made a long journey that led him back around to the border between Cilicia and Galatia. Then he turned around and headed home via the same route. Perhaps that was because he felt he had already preached in most of Cilicia and didn’t need to include it in his missionary journey.

So, what was Paul’s life like during this ten year span that the book of Acts skips over? Do you remember the passage in 2 Corinthians where Paul enumerates some of the things that have happened to him in the course of his activities spreading the gospel: “From the Jews five times I received forty stripes minus one? Three times I was beaten with rods; once I was stoned; three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I have been in the deep;” (2 Corinthians 11:24-25 NKJV).

Several of these events are not mentioned anywhere in Acts, so they must have happened during the ten “silent years.”

Imagine—five times in the span of a decade receiving the maximum punishment that a local synagogue could dish out: Thirty-nine lashes on the bare flesh with a leather whip. And during the same time period, Paul must have been beaten with rods—a Roman punishment—at least twice. And on top of that, being shipwrecked three times.

Paul’s life of preparation for his great missionary endeavors to the whole known world was not an easy life of leisurely Bible study and isolation.

As soon as he became a believer, he went into action sharing the good news. Yes, there was the time when he went away into Arabia to pray and meditate and study. But he returned from that time all-the-more on fire for the Lord.

And being on fire for what he believed sometimes got Paul into trouble. Because he could not compromise. If the Jews accused him of blaspheming by proclaiming that Jesus is the Son, Paul couldn’t back down. If the Romans accused him of disturbing the peace by proclaiming a message that riled up his audience, he wouldn’t back away and apologize.

The truths he proclaimed were too important for that. And so he often found himself in trouble with the authorities.

It’s interesting to trace his spiritual growth in this area of his life, though. Early in his ministry he seemed to stir up controversy quite quickly wherever he went. Later, by the time he reached Corinth on his second missionary journey, he seems to have found ways to proclaim the gospel without arousing quite so much animosity quite so quickly. He was able to stay in Corinth for eighteen months, and on his next journey he stayed in Ephesus for three years.

But Paul never ceased stirring up controversy. Because what he believed, he believed with all his heart.

The realization of this lays a challenge at my heart’s door—how about yours? Do I take the gospel as seriously as Paul did? Or do I try to tone it down and make it acceptable to people, for fear of raising opposition.

Now, I’m not suggesting that we need to try to stir up trouble. Remember the text we read at the beginning today, about how Paul lived among the Thessalonians as a model citizen. We’re not to go out looking for trouble.

But as we continue our studies in the life of Paul, let’s try to learn from him—to be more like the One he emulated (Jesus), and to have the same fervor and excitement that this great apostle showed as he shared the greatest story ever told. To let the Holy Spirit move through us, to move the world!
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