What is a missionary according to Oswald Chambers or Lettie and Charles Cowman?
Chambers explains it well in My Utmost for His Highest:
A missionary, in this case, is someone sent by Jesus Christ just as He was sent by God. The great controlling factor is not the needs of people, but the command of Jesus. . . .
But in the New Testament, the inspiration is put behind us, and is the Lord Jesus Himself. The goal is to be true to Him— to carry out His plans.
My Utmost for His Highest October 26
Someone sent by God, obviously, to serve Him with his/her life.
While the term in the west traditionally refers to a Christian missionary, it can be applied to any person who believe it’s important to share “good news.”
Chambers’ commitment to the missionary movement
Oswald Chambers and his wife Biddy ran a Bible Training College in London from 1911 to 1915.
Designed to train and prepare Christians for the mission field, the BTC focused on Biblical training.
(Wheaton College Special Collections)
It wasn’t, however, just Bible knowledge. Students needed to know how to apply it–to themselves first.
As Chambers explained in My Utmost for His Highest on September 21: “A missionary is created for the purpose of being God’s servant, one in whom God is glorified.“
The result?
“The first thing God will do is force the interests of the whole world through the channel of our hearts. The love of God, and even His very nature, is introduced into us. “
My Utmost for His Highest on September 21
Once Christians get their hearts right, they can move on to others.
Designed to prepare them for the field, the BTC sent out missionaries throughout their native countries and around the world.
(You can read about the fruit of the BTC training in the lives of a dozen students after they finished their coursework here).
Chambers’ idea for the BTC came after spending a semester at God’s Bible School in Cincinnati, OH, followed by a 1907 visit to the Oriental Missionary Society Bible Training Institute in Tokyo.
Lettie and Charles Cowman on missionary life
As two of the five founders of the Oriental Missionary Society, the Cowmans devoted their lives to spreading the good news of Jesus Christ to people who had never heard before.
While the mission’s focus started in the Far East, specifically Japan, Korea, and China, it eventually circled the globe.
Like Chambers, the Cowmans believed growing faith meant learning what the Bible said about Jesus, God, and the Holy Spirit.
How could a missionary expect to share good news if they didn’t know it themselves?
They trained for the mission field by attending classes at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago. The two poured through books, and spent hours studying the Bible first hand.
A desire to share good news overwhelmed them some days.
Indeed, the vigorous Charles Cowman rarely slowed down and began sharing the good news of Jesus Christ’s gift of salvation available to all, the day after he bent his knees to God.
The first person he spoke to was a close friend, Ernest Kilbourne. Kilbourne thought through Cowman’s words, checked the Bible, and submitted his life to Christ that night.
Kilbourne and his family moved to Tokyo the year after the Cowmans and Juji Nakada established the Bible Training Institute.
The OMS (Now called One Mission Society) is still going strong today.
Why does a modern missionary serve?
When God “calls” a person to become a missionary, he places a longing in their heart to do several things.
A missionary wants people to know the freeing power of Jesus’ salvation. Medical missionaries want people to be physically healed and cared for, along with healing.
Or, as the lyrics explain in What a Beautiful Name It Is, (addressing God): “You didn’t want heaven without us, so Jesus you brought heaven down,” to earth in his life.
How does being a missionary change a person’s priorities?
Several of my friends got “caught” in the early 2020 United States COVID shutdown while on furlough from their foreign mission fields.
Photo by Dr Josiah Sarpong (Unsplash)
They fretted about being “stuck” so far from the people they’d given their lives to serve.
One “escaped the US” the minute her continent opened.
The other chose to fly the long way around the world, after months of begging her missionary agency to let her return. She endured three overnight flights and four days of travel to reach her mission field.
Frankly, their overwhelming desire to return to the field made no sense to me at the time–which is why I’m not a foreign missionary.
Aren’t we all missionaries?
If you’re a Christian, Chambers believes you are a missionary.
The goal of the missionary is to do God’s will, not to be useful or to win the lost. A missionary is useful and he does win the lost, but that is not his goal. His goal is to do the will of his Lord.”
(My Utmost for His Highest, September 23)
Streams in the Desert includes a quote from Reverend Henry van Dyke on December 14: “The missionary enterprise is not the Church’s afterthought; it is Christ’s forethought.”
Which, of course, takes us to the Apostle Paul in the book of Acts.
Read Acts if you don’t believe Chambers or the Cowmans.
(Or, check out Dr. Jack L. Arnold’s overview of Paul’s missionary life in Biblical Perspectives Magazine).
Christian missionaries come in all shapes and sizes.
You may be one yourself.
But certainly, someone, somewhere told you the good news of Jesus Christ’s life, death, and sacrifice on your behalf.
However they told you about Jesus, they were a missionary–to you.
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The people down there knew of Christ;
’twas I, then, that did not,
so they slow and gentle spliced
their faith unto the man they’d got
to protect them and to serve
through the long night, through the day,
a man who would not lose his nerve
because he chose to fight for pay.
And praise the Lord, I listened
to their quiet simple speech,
saw faces as they glistened,
and took the lessons each by each
from farming folk so ordinary,
missionaries to a mercenary.
Lovely, Andrew.
Is this your poem?