Preparing to Be a Missionary” © All Rights Reserved
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The Apostle Paul, Servant of Christ Boiling Springs, NC Overview Study Guide 704 966-6845 Unit II, Chapter 4 [email protected] “Preparing to be a Missionary” © All rights reserved by Lorin L Cranford Quick Links to Study Part II: The Missionary (4.0) 4.2.0.1.3 Luke’s Description: Acts 9:19b-25 4.1.0 Missions Overview 4.2.0.1.4 Luke’s Description: Acts 26:19-20 4.1.1 Biblical Terms and Concepts 4.2.0.2 First Trip to Jerusalem 4.1.1.1 Missions Terminology 4.2.0.2.1 Paul’s Description: Gal. 1:18-24 4.1.1.1.1 Modern Terms Defined 4.2.0.2.2 Luke’s Description: Acts 9:26-31 4.1.1.1.2 Biblical Terms Defined 4.2.0.2.3 Luke’s Description: Acts 22:17-22 4.1.1.2 Missions Concepts 4.2.0.3 Paul’s Time in Tarsus: Acts 9:30; 11:25-26; Gal. 1:21 4.2.0 Depiction of Paul’s Beginnings 4.2.0.4 Ministry in Antioch: Acts 11:19-30; 12:25 4.2.0.1 Departure from Damascus 4.3.0 Preparing to Serve in Missions 4.2.0.1.1 Paul’s Description: Gal. 1:16b-17 4.2.0.1.2 Paul’s Description: 2 Cor. 11:32 Introduction In Part I, we explored Paul the person by looking at his “bio” information that is available (chapter 1), his conversion to Christ (chapter 2), and his ministry calling (chapter 3). The profile developed from these studies only prepares us to understand the service of the apostle from his conversion in the mid 30s to his martyrdom in the mid 60s of the first Christian century. Although this service had many aspects, it essentially revolves around being a missionary and a writer. In Part II, we will explore the missionary dimension, and in Part III the writer dimension. Part II: The Missionary Many of us in North America grew up in churches where missions and missionary service were greatly emphasized both throughout the congregation, and es- pecially by the women’s organization in the church. For those of us who grew up in Southern Baptist churches in the second half of the last century, the Christmas season always meant the “Lottie Moon Christmas Offering” in a foreign missions emphasis with special programs and money goals for the of- fering that year. Easter meant the “Annie Armstrong Easter Offering” for home missions emphasis. Then in September or October, depending on where you lived in the US, there was the state missions offering emphasis.1 Even in the small rural Baptist Church on the edge of west Texas where I Lottie Moon Annie Armstrong grew up, there were always missionaries on furlough who came and spoke -- almost always with slide pictures and displays of items native to the country where they were serving. Among Baptists in the US, missionaries were the heroic figures who represented individuals about as close to “Baptist saints” as was possible within the limits of the biblical understanding. Most Baptist young people grew up ideal- izing the missionaries and either praying that God would call them into such service, or else dreading the pos- sibility of such a calling that meant leaving home and family to serve God in some far off place in the world a long 1In Texas, this is the Mary Hill Davis Offering for Texas Missions. These three offerings were named after women who distinguished themselves in missionary service in different ways, and thus function as inspirational models. Among Baptists in the South, the role of the Women’s Missionary Union organization (WMU) in the churches has had a profound impact on generating missions sensitivity among the churches. These three women in their service in the early 1900s received their primary prayer and financial support from the various WMU groups in Southern Baptist and Texas Baptist churches. Page 128 way from home. My first experience of ‘direct missions’ came during the late 1950s when our little country church of 150 people sent the pastor, his wife, and four young people on a two week “missions trip” to a place outside Cleve- land, Ohio to help begin a church. Sometime later our pastor was called to serve this congregation as pastor after graduating from his seminary studies in Fort Worth, Texas. With parents who served as leaders in the church, and a saintly grandmother who had prayed all her adult life for God to call one of her children into Christian min- istry, I was surrounded by folks who had a passion for reaching the entire world with the Gospel of Christ. After making a public commitment to vocational Christian ministry in 1957, missionary service was clearly one of the possible directions available to me. Indeed, God guided my ministry in a very different direction with pastoring churches and teaching the New Testament in seminaries and universities on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean. But missions has never been on a “back burner” in my concerns and interest in it has been present through over half a century of service to the Lord. At the heart of this focus in missions has been the example of the apostle Paul. His missionary travels and work have inspired and challenged me for many, many years. In my formative years, the image of a ‘mission- ary’ was highly romanticized and without much understanding of what missionaries actually did “on the mission field.” Thankfully that has changed for me over the years with much better understanding. Sadly in today’s North American religious scene, missions is not a high priority emphasis, and the number of vocational missionaries serving from the US is slowing declining. But thankfully the trend is the opposite in southern hemisphere Christi- anity where Christian missions, not only regionally but globally, is thriving and exploding in growth, and the same thing as well as in Asia. Consequently, the question needs to be raised, “Who is a missionary?” And, “What do missionaries do?” We need some understanding of this both from a modern perspective, with some historical background behind the trends in our world today. But we also need a clear sense of the biblical perspective on missionary service as the scriptural roots of the contemporary practice. Part II of this study will concentrate on the study of the service of the apostle Paul as an early missionary in the cause of the Gospel. Both the primary sources of Paul’s own writings and the main secondary source of the Book of Acts by Luke will provide the foundational information. 4.1.0 Missions Overview If we are to understand Paul’s contribution to missionary service, some awareness of what missionary service is becomes necessary. And especially how that is understood in today’s world. Sounds easy enough. But when one begins trying to sort through the literature on modern missions immediately a bewildering maze of confusing ideas confronts the reader. What does become clear is that different Christian groups have very dif- ferent ideas of what constitutes missionary service. And this runs the spectrum of different denominations to the parachurch groups with some sort of missionary thrust in their organization. Doing missions as a Roman Catholic is very different than doing missions as a Baptist. And doing missions even as a Baptist means many different approaches, depending upon which Baptist missions sending agency you look at. How does one begin to describe such a complex and diverse dynamic?2 The modern missions movement 2When one begins searching through existing publications the challenge becomes finding materials done carefully and systemati- cally, Robert L. Plummer notes:. Two broad observations need to be made before we look at particular scholars’ views on Paul’s missionary expectations of the churches. First, biblical teaching on missions and evangelism has been neglected by the academy. This problem is widely recognized, though few attempts have been made to rectify it.6 Due to the lack of serious biblical studies on mission- ary themes, a missions-related “history of research” is difficult to write. A researcher is often left to piece together another scholar’s views on a missionary topic from a smattering of incidental references in his or her writings. Furthermore, while it may be shown that particular scholars have similar views, it is often difficult to show clear lines of dependence between them. Because many scholars judged missionary topics as only peripherally important, they apparently saw little need to document prior opinions on the subject. A second broad observation is that existing studies devoted exclusively to missionary subjects rarely meet the demands of a rigorous biblical theology. Such works are frequently written by missiologists for their peers and/or more popular audiences. David Bosch insightfully comments, Even where [missiologists] are sufficiently sophisticated not to use the Bible as a handy reference file of quotations to justify their own group’s actions, they do have a tendency to operate with a very large brush. On the one hand, they are inclined to overlook the rich diversity of the biblical record and therefore to reduce the biblical motivation for mission to one single idea or text (for instance, the great commission or, more recently in liberation theology circles, Jesus’ appeal to Isaiah in Luke 4); on the other hand, they tend far too easily to read back into the Bible aspects of the missionary enterprise in which they are involved today.7 [Robert L. Plummer, Paul’s Understanding of the Church’s Mission: Did the Apostle Paul Expect the Early Christian Communities Page 129 in its beginnings is often identified with the Baptist missionary to India, William Carey who began his service in 1792 through the sponsorship of the newly formed British Missionary Society, known today as the BMS World Mission.