Timing and the Call, part 1
Chapter from The Missionary Callby M. David Sills
part 1, 2
TIMING IS EVERYTHING
This rule applies to everything
from comedy to trapeze acts. It also applies to the missionary
call in two primary areas. The first concerns the need to
understand the essential difference between the missionary call and
God’s guidance. There is no doubt that God calls His people to
join Him in missions, but how is that distinct from the specific
ways He leads them to do so over time? The second aspect of
timing and the missionary call concerns those who are eager to get
started in missions, yet find themselves delayed for one reason or
another. Why could God be delaying your missions service and
what should you do while waiting?
In one sense, the missionary call is a lifetime call. However, the ways in which you may fulfill that call will vary throughout your life.The burden for the nations, the desire to share the gospel with lost people, and the yearning to see God glorified throughout the world will continue all your life, no matter where you live. Paul writes in Romans 11:29, “For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable.”
Although Paul is specifically referencing salvation in this passage, this teaches that God’s plan and intentions are unchangeable. His wisdom is perfect, He does not need to change His mind or have a backup “plan B.”Therefore, it should not be surprising that you can find a missionary heartbeat alive and well in the lives of Christians in virtually every walk of life. I meet them in missions conferences, local churches, classrooms, and on mission fields. Sometimes, they share how God called them to missions as a young person, and they served for a summer or a couple of years before marrying and starting a family. Although they are no longer in an international setting, they still love missions and serve their local churches as missions committee chairpersons, by organizing Perspectives classes, leading mission trips, and staying involved in international ministry in other ways. They are not strangers to the struggle to understand the missionary call and wonder whether God is still leading them to the mission field.
The fact that the expression of God’s calling on our lives changes throughout our lifetime should not be surprising. We see an illustration of this dynamic development of a call in the career of a youth pastor who later in his life becomes a senior pastor. This young man started ministry by accepting a call to be a youth pastor, and later on God led him to an expression of his call in another role. Some pastors announce to their churches that God is leading them to accept a “call” to another church.
Actually, it is the same call but God is leading them to exercise their call in a new ministry setting. Just as a pastor may follow God’s leading to exercise his call to ministry in a new ministry setting, it is perfectly legitimate for a missionary to sense His leadership to move to a new setting. God’s timing is everything. Churches tend to understand and accept the varying expressions of a pastor’s call much more easily than they do with missionaries and their international ministries.
How should we view the role of God’s leadership and
timing in the expression of a missionary call?
CHANGES IN THE CALL OVER TIME
I remember a godly college professor whom everyone held in
great reverence and awe when I was in school. Since I attended a
school outside of my denomination, in addition to the normal
learning curve, I had to learn their accepted norms and values. I remember
feeling a little confused the day someone introduced me
to this professor. They spoke in hushed tones as they said, “He
and his wife served on the mission field for five years.” I remember
waiting for the other shoe to drop. Surely, there would be one.
After all, that was wonderful, but my aunt and uncle had served on
the mission field for decades longer than that. In fact, almost
everyone who went to the mission field through our denomination
went for career-long service.When anyone came back before retirement,
people whispered, pitied him or her, and speculated about
what must have happened for them to return.
In my understanding at that time, we should admire and respect this professor, but he had done nothing exceptionally praiseworthy in missions, and was short of the mark according to my denomination’s understanding. Yet, my own denomination’s commitment to missions might be considered to be lacking by other missionaries in missions history.
Throughout missions history, some missionaries went out never intending to return home. They became citizens of the new country, educated their children in national schools and universities, married their children to nationals, and never entertained the thought that they were simply on the field in three- to four-year cycles, punctuated with a year back “home” in between. Given these differing views of the duration and extent of the missionary call, what is the biblical perspective? Does God call people to missions for career service never to return or in short-term cycles? How might one’s missionary call change over time?
Obeying the missionary call—becoming a missionary—is what happens when someone intentionally leaves their comfort zone and crosses boundaries to obey the Great Commission and the Great Commandments motivated by the Great Compassion. God’s call to missions includes so many elements that it defies a succinct definition that can be applied to every missionary through history. A burden for the nations, a desire to obey Christ, a yearning to share the gospel and bring God glory captures our hearts and stays with us forever. This heartbeat becomes a part of who you are. It does not revert to something else when a two-year missions stint is completed; rather, it morphs into another expression of the call.
God gives the missionary call and guides in understanding the how, when, and where of expressing it over time. Just as a young pastor does not know where he will be serving when he retires at the moment he accepts his first church, so a missionary’s heart may beat in numerous cities or countries before it stops. God alone knows the ways and “wheres” of the paths you should walk. He guides one step at a time and does not reveal the entire road map when you start walking.
Scott Moreau writes, “For most of us, God does not lay out the entire life plan in a single call. Rather, he leads step-by-step along the way. Many missionaries accept their assignments from God one term at a time, whether that term is a few weeks or several years." Because of this, missionaries may serve in a country for a few months, years, or their entire career and each of them can be completely in God’s will. Missionaries believe that God leads them to their fields of service. However, they must keep in mind that He can, and often does, lead them to subsequent fields of service during their career.
A. T. Houghton said, “If we are to remain in the will of God, then we must be under the constant guidance and control of His Holy Spirit. In that position, and willing for His will at whatever cost, we can be assured that, as we went to the mission field in response to God’s call, so it requires a call of God to make us withdraw or to send us elsewhere. Otherwise, unless He intervenes, we are to stay in the place of His choice.”
A friend of ours is a missionary whose family moved from the mission field to accept an administrative position in her mission agency’s home office. She struggled greatly with the change in role and status, since the way many viewed the change, it seemed that she was leaving missions. After struggling and praying through it, she found peace and believed it to be just as much God’s will for her expression of the missionary call as her years of service on the field. She said of many who did not agree, “Many missionaries cannot sing the old hymn, ‘Wherever He Leads I’ll Go,’ but only ‘Wherever He Led I Went.’” She had come to see that some missionaries arrive on the field and, whether because of personal convictions or denominational expectations, never ask God again what He wants to do with their lives. They get there and turn off that part of their devotional life.
God calls some to go to a particular village and spend the rest of their lives there—however long or short that may be. He calls others to go on repeated short-term assignments to the same village or to many villages around the world. In the same way, He calls some pastors to serve a church for their entire career, while others may serve in many churches. Missionaries who move from mission field to mission office or from the field to the classroom or from the field to the pulpit should not feel like failures if God is leading in these steps. Sadly, many missionaries are riddled with false guilt even when they move from mission field to mission field—for example, when they move from one city in Nigeria to another in Nigeria, or from Kenya to Tanzania. But the key is God’s calling and guidance. His call is for life, but the ways and places where we fulfill it and live it out will change throughout our lives as He guides.
BIBLICAL GUIDELINES
The argument that the missionary call is for life and anything
short of lifetime career service on the mission field is a failure does
not find warrant in the Bible. In fact, Scripture seems to illustrate
the opposite. However, remember that we have seen that the Bible
does not define the missionary call or treat this issue in detail.
Therefore, keep in mind that the missions term-lengths in the
Bible are descriptive and not prescriptive.
The point here is that
there is no biblical instruction prescribing that you must fulfill
your missionary calling in one place for the rest of your life in
order to be obedient.
The apostle Paul was the greatest missionary that the world has ever known.The Holy Spirit called him out and set him apart. Acts 13:1–3 records the special calling of Paul:
Now there were in the church at Antioch prophets and teachers, Barnabas, Simeon who was called Niger, Lucius of Cyrene, Manaen a member of the court of Herod the tetrarch, and Saul.While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off.
Of course, Paul already knew that the Lord had called him to
go to the nations; he only needed specific guidance about the when
and where in fulfilling the call. Robertson McQuilken notes, “Although
Paul had been ‘called’ and set apart for the apostolic evangelistic
vocation years before, it was through a process of
reported:
And one Ananias, a devout man according to the law, well
spoken of by all the Jews who lived there, came to me, and
standing by me said to me, “Brother Saul, receive your sight.”
And at that very hour I received my sight and saw him. And he
said, “The God of our fathers appointed you to know his will,
to see the Righteous One and to hear a voice from his mouth;
for you will be a witness for him to everyone of what you have
seen and heard. And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized
and wash away your sins, calling on his name.
”When I had returned to Jerusalem and was praying in the temple, I fell out of Jerusalem quickly, because they will not accept your testimony about me.” And I said, “Lord, they themselves know that in one synagogue after another I imprisoned and beat those who believed in you. And when the blood of Stephen your witness was being shed, I myself was standing by and approving and watching over the garments of those who killed him.” And he said to me, “Go, for I will send you far away to the Gentiles.”
With such a clear calling and the affirmation from your church, the calling would not just influence but determine the course of your life. Paul served as a short-term missionary, a pastor, and a writer. If lifetime career service on the mission field were the biblical guideline for the only legitimate missionary service, we would certainly see this on Paul’s biblical résumé and in his teachings. Yet, such is not the case. Paul is actually more of a prototype for missionaries of the twenty-first century than any previous time in Paul followed God’s guidance throughout his ministry career.
Many mistakenly consider the Macedonian Call, recorded in Acts 16:6–10, to be a biblical example of a missionary call. This account is simply one of the ways that God guided Paul in fulfilling His call on Paul’s life. And they went through the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been forbidden by the Holy Spirit to speak the word in Asia. And when they had come up to Mysia, they attempted to go into Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus did not allow them. So, passing by Mysia, they went down toTroas. And a vision appeared to Paul in the night: a man of Macedonia was standing there, urging him and saying, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” And when Paul had seen the vision, immediately we sought to go on into Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
The locations where God led Paul to serve were not the only dynamic aspect of his missions career. God called Paul to concentrate on the Gentiles. Jesus told him more than once that He was sending him to the Gentiles. However, Paul’s ministry among the Gentiles was interspersed with preaching to his own people, the Jews. Paul always went into the synagogues first in the cities where he traveled. After they rejected the gospel, he went to the Gentiles.
Although you will sometimes hear that Paul was sent to the Gentiles and Peter to the Jews, the Bible shows each of them preaching to both groups and neither receives divine rebuke for being out of God’s will. Paul went on missionary journeys and pastored churches (in Corinth and Ephesus, at least). Paul never tried to limit the expression of his missionary call to one people in one village for life.
Remember that Paul followed the Holy Spirit’s guidance, not his own whims. Robert Gallagher states, “Repeatedly we see the Holy Spirit’s guidance in both the Gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. It was the Holy Spirit who led every major movement of mission expansion. Luke even makes it clear that the Spirit is both the Lord of the Church and the Lord of its mission.”4 The Bible also shows God calling Abraham, Moses, David, judges, kings, prophets, and others to serve in diverse ways at various times in their lives.
God is the one who calls; it falls to His children to hear Him calling, discern His will, and obey. Many times the calling is simply to prepare. Paul was prepared years before the calling came. Likewise, Moses was prepared through forty years in Pharaoh’s best education and then forty years of shepherding before God called him to his life’s greatest work. God prepared David with his own sheep for years before He called him to shepherd God’s people. Many missionaries need preparation before they leave for field of service; those are not wasted years.
God’s method of calling His children may begin with an awareness of a need or a mission trip, and continue with a burden to prepare. Those called to medical missions need to prepare for service; those called to preaching, teaching, and evangelizing need preparation for their ministries as well.
Excerpt from The Missionary Call by M. David Sills. Copyright Moody Publishers, 2008.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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