Itinerant Ministry Challenges

Shanghai in the 1850s

On March 1 1854, after six months at sea, Hudson Taylor arrived in China.

Six months!

I had the benefit of remembering this fact as I was shooting lightning speed BlackBerry messages to a colleague who was appalled that the SAA plane I was sitting on didn’t have any personal inflight entertainment.

We had been hoping for the oft-promised replacement plane from SAA and he had begun to call this particular plane (which I’ve flown on innumerable times) ‘The Dog’!

I do, of course, understand the difference – I was taking a long-haul flight for a three day ministry trip; missionaries of the 18^th and 19^th centuries were going for years, and possibly for life. I also know that a modern plane, even one that is about to be replaced, isn’t really worthy of the name ‘The Dog’.

But if the six months of sea travel was expected, what wasn’t was the fact that there was no provision waiting for him by the missionary society with which he was associated.

No welcome, no provision, no money
The Chinese Evangelisation Society, destined to be surpassed by Taylor’s own China Inland Mission, were good on vision but not so good on provision!

Roger Steer writes that there was ‘Nothing from the CES: no money, no credit notes, no guidance, no instructions.’[i]

Nevertheless the missionaries that Hudson met were friendly and helpful, offering both advice (to learn Mandarin rather than the dialect only spoken around Shangai) and accommodation until the CES got organised.

Out on a limb
‘The other missionaries,’ writes Steer, in Shanghai were all highly educated and connected with either the Anglican church or large and well established missionary societies.

Taylor was connected with no particular denomination and had been sent out hurriedly by the CES before his medical course was finished…

The CES had adopted a strategy which the practical men already working in China regarded as absurd. Some of them openly ridiculed the CES and its journal, The Gleaner.’[ii]

This is not the kind of information you want to learn once you’ve arrived…miles and miles away from home.

To read the next post in the Hudson Taylor Story click here

To read the first post in the Hudson Taylor Story click here

© 2011 Church History / Lex Loizides

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[i] Roger Steer, J Hudson Taylor, A Man in Christ (1990, OMF, Singapore), p.61

[ii] ibid, p.63-64

Don’t Become Weary of Doing Good

The Market Cross in old Epworth

God gives us encouragements in the midst of difficulties. And each encouragement is deeply appreciated. Your leadership challenge may be tough for reasons that are entirely outside yourself.

It’s great to hear news of numerical breakthroughs and blessing in other places. We’re often helpfully stirred to pray and believe for greater breakthrough in our own towns.

But faithfulness to God’s call, with a heart toward God and a helping hand toward man, can sow spiritual seed that will produce fruit not only in our generation but also in the one to come.

After preaching each day for a week in his home-town of Epworth (Lincolnshire, England), John Wesley describes the huge crowd who heard him and reflects on the faithful labours of his father, Samuel Wesley, who was a minister in that town.

Wesley preaches to ‘a vast multitude’
He writes, ‘At six I preached for the last time in Epworth church-yard [he had been preaching on his father’s grave stone, after being denied the use of the church pulpit] to a vast multitude gathered together from all parts…

‘I continued among them for near three hours; and yet we scarce knew how to part.

‘O let none think his labour of love is lost because the fruit does not immediately appear!

‘Near forty years did my father labour here; but he saw little fruit of all his labour…but now the fruit appeared.

‘There were scarce any in the town on whom either my father or I had taken any pains formerly, but the seed, sown so long since, now sprung up, bringing forth repentance and remission of sins.’
(John Wesley’s Journals, Vol 1, Baker edition, p.379-380)

Galatians 6:9 says, ‘Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.’

1 Corinthians 15:58 says, ‘Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.’

Be encouraged as you seek to share the gospel of grace in your community – and remember Epworth and how years of sowing did eventually produce a massive harvest!

More next time…

© 2010 Lex Loizides