“Time Will Fail Me . . .”
Chapter two
Apostles and Suffering
For I think that God has displayed us apostles last, exhibited like those condemned to death, because we’ve been made a public spectacle to the world, both to angels and people. . . . Even to this present hour we go hungry and thirsty and are poorly clothed and beaten and homeless and we endure manual labor. When others ridicule us, we bless them; when we are persecuted, we endure it; when people slander us, we speak encouragement. We’re treated like this world’s trash, like the scrapings of everything, even until now.
—the apostle Paul, 1 Corinthians 4:9–13
So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel, by the power of God.
—2 Timothy 1:8 (niv)
Last of All
It’s very popular today to talk about apostolic ministry, though not everyone agrees on the definition. The Gospels usually reserve the term apostle for the original Twelve, but Paul uses the term more broadly for those establishing new ground for the kingdom, laying foundations in new spheres (e.g., Rom. 1:1; 1 Cor. 15:7; Gal. 1:19; 1 Thess. 2:6–7).1 In this chapter, I am using Paul’s broader definition.
I met Baba Tambaya Jibirin on July 2, 1998, with my close Nigerian friend Emmanuel Itapson. Emmanuel’s father had worked with Baba Tambaya planting churches in northern Nigeria a generation earlier. By the broader Pauline definition, Baba Tambaya was surely an apostle. In one story about him, he boarded a bus and started preaching, and the bus driver ordered him to get off. “All right,” Baba Tambaya warned, “I’ll walk, but I’ll get there before this bus does.” It would take days to walk to the destination city! But as soon as he got out and the driver tried to start the bus, the engine was dead. So some people ran after Baba Tambaya and begged him to board the bus again. Once he got aboard, the bus started—and he preached about Jesus all the way to their destination.
Yet Baba Tambaya also suffered for his witness. On one occasion, like Paul, he was stoned and left for dead (Acts 14:19; 2 Cor. 11:25). Some of his fellow Christians thought that the stoning had made Baba Tambaya unstable mentally. Every morning he would sound a call to Christian prayer before the Muslim prayer call. As a night person, I personally can see why some would find this disturbing! But one fully enculturated missionary confided to me, “I sometimes think that Baba Tambaya is really saner than the rest of us.”
Whereas Paul lists apostles first among gifts in 1 Corinthians 12:28, in 1 Corinthians 4:9 he describes them as “last,” like the climactic spectacle that bloodthirsty Romans would watch die in the arena. Although it is popular today to hail “apostolic” ministries, a key biblical hallmark of such ministry is suffering. As Jack Deere points out, “The main proof of [Paul’s] apostleship was the sufferings he endured for Christ and the gospel ([2 Cor.] 11:16–33).”2
Daniel Kolenda, appointed successor to Reinhard Bonnke and one of the world’s leading evangelists today, points out that when people challenged Paul’s apostleship, you might have expected him to have “flashed his ‘big-A’ credentials”: “Hey, you’d better listen to me because I’m a big-A apostle!” Instead Paul cites as proof of his apostolic status his suffering for Christ. “In five passages between both Corinthian letters, Paul catalogs his hardships specifically to demonstrate that he is an apostle of Christ.”3
Hungry, Shabby, Imprisoned Witnesses
In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus sends out his first apostles with a promise of signs (Matt. 10:8) along with far more extensive warnings about suffering (10:16–39). Matthew later revisits ongoing apostolic ministry as the good news goes out to the nations. Although we often apply the phrase “the least of these my brothers” to the poor (and God does reward concern for the poor as service to himself, for example in Prov. 19:17), that is probably not its sense in Matthew 25. In Matthew 25:31–46, “the least of these my brothers” (and sisters) probably refers to those sent to spread the good news. This seems clear when we compare language there with that of the rest of Matthew’s Gospel elsewhere.
Matthew 10 and Elsewhere Before Matthew 25
Matthew 25
Good news about the kingdom must be preached among all nations before the end comes (24:14).
The nations are judged at the end (25:32).
God will reward whoever gives disciples even a cup of cold water (10:42).
The righteous fed and gave drink to Jesus’s representatives (25:35).
God will bless whatever house takes in Jesus’s emissaries (10:11–13).
The righteous took in Jesus’s representatives, though they were strangers (25:35).
Jesus’s emissaries will face courts, beatings, and persecution (10:16–22).
The righteous visited Jesus’s representatives when they were sick or in prison (25:36).
Whoever receives his disciples receives Jesus (10:40).
Whatever was done for Jesus’s representatives was done for Jesus himself (25:40).
Jesus’s followers are his brothers and sisters (12:48–50).
Jesus’s representatives are his brothers and sisters (25:40).
The wicked who do not receive Jesus’s representatives will be judged (10:14–15).
The wicked who did not receive Jesus’s representatives will be judged (25:41–46).
When others feed them and take them in, they are welcoming Jesus—just as with the apostles earlier sent out in Matthew 10:11–13, 40–42 (compare 2 Cor. 5:20; 6:13). Elsewhere in Matthew, Jesus’s true brothers (and sisters) always refer to his followers (Matt. 12:48–50; 23:8–9; 28:10). Likewise, those who reject Jesus’s agents and face judgment in 25:41–46 sound like those who rejected Jesus’s agents in 10:13–15. Notice again the conditions that may characterize Jesus’s agents as they labor for him in Matthew 25: “hungry . . . thirsty . . . needing a place to stay . . . poorly clothed . . . sick . . . imprisoned” (25:35–39, 42–44).4
Suffering often occurs in the context of mission. Brother Andrew, founder of Open Doors, emphasized that there is no place in the world that the gospel cannot penetrate, but he also warned about the cost: “Show me a closed door and I will tell you how you can get in. I won’t, however, promise you a way to get out.”5
An Apostle Named Paul
Certainly such suffering was evident in Paul’s ministry. When Paul writes from Roman custody, he calls himself “the prisoner of Christ Jesus for the sake of you gentiles” (Eph. 3:1) and speaks further of his sufferings for them (3:13). Following Jesus’s teaching (Mark 13:9), Paul views his arrest as an opportunity to spread the gospel further (Phil. 1:7, 12).
Of course, Paul was not trying to suffer or go hungry.6 He simply learned to be content, trusting Christ’s power whether he was full or hungry, whether he had more than enough or was in need (Phil. 4:11–13). In a fallen world, suffering was often a necessary part of Paul’s mission. It was in fact explicitly part of Paul’s calling from the start. Part of the prophetic message that God gives Ananias for Paul is, “I will show him the things he must suffer on behalf of my name” (Acts 9:16). Luke, who records that message, sometimes uses the term must for God’s plan, including for suffering as part of Jesus’s own mission (Luke 9:22; 17:25; 24:7, 26; Acts 17:3). Paul and Barnabas later use this same term to tell new believers what all Christians must be ready to face. When they exhorted “them to remain true to the faith,” they explained, “‘We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God’” (Acts 14:22 niv, emphasis mine).
In context, these passages focus on the opposition we may face for following Jesus in a world that does not understand his values.
Apostle to the Corinthians
Paul’s emphasis on apostolic suffering becomes especially clear in 2 Corinthians, where Paul will eventually contrast his ministry with that of false apostles.
For just as we share abundantly in the sufferings of Christ, so also our comfort abounds through Christ. (2 Cor. 1:5 niv)
Just as you are sharers in our sufferings, so you are also in the comfort. (1:7)
We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, of the affliction we experienced in Asia; for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. (1:8–9 nrsv)
But thanks be to God, who always leads us as captives in Christ’s triumphal procession and uses us to spread the aroma of the knowledge of him . . . among those who are being saved and those who are perishing. To the one we are an aroma that brings death; to the other, an aroma that brings life. (2:14–16 niv)
Rome executed most captives at the end of a triumphal procession. Just as people without faith viewed Christ’s cross as failure, so those without faith viewed apostolic suffering as the stench of death. Those who trust God’s message, however, experience the aroma of life both in the cross and in what apostles sacrificed to bring others God’s message.
That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:10 niv)
Paul chose to embrace his sufferings for Christ, recognizing that God’s grace would be more than commensurate with his suffering.7
Listing His Sufferings in 2 Corinthians 4 and 6
Ancient sages sometimes listed their sufferings to prove that they genuinely believed and lived for their message.8 Paul does the same.
We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed;
perplexed, but not driven to despair;
persecuted, but not forsaken;
struck down, but not destroyed;
always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.
For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus’ sake,
so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh. (2 Cor. 4:8–11 nrsv modified)
Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way:
in great endurance;
in troubles, hardships and distresses;
in beatings, imprisonments and riots;
in hard work, sleepless nights and hunger;
in purity, understanding, patience and kindness;
. . . through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report;
genuine, yet regarded as impostors; . . .
dying, and yet we live on;
beaten, and yet not killed;
. . . poor, yet making many rich;
having nothing, and yet possessing everything. (2 Cor. 6:4–6, 8–10 niv modified)
False Apostles
Paul’s longest list of sufferings comes near the end of the letter. Here Paul contrasts himself with “false apostles” who are pretending to be true ones (2 Cor. 11:13). As noted earlier, there were genuine apostles beyond the twelve original ones (1 Cor. 15:5–7). These included
Nevertheless, false apostles also existed, requiring churches’ discernment (Rev. 2:2). Paul distinguishes these false apostles from himself partly on the basis of fruits of ministry. Paul had founded Jesus’s movement in Corinth (1 Cor. 9:2); he sought to lay foundations where churches did not exist before (Rom. 15:20). The false apostles, by contrast, simply tried to come in and take over what real apostles had started, while claiming the title for themselves (2 Cor. 10:12–16).
Paul therefore elaborates the differences between himself and the false apostles. The Corinthians themselves witnessed divine miracles through Paul (2 Cor. 12:12), and he had plenty of visions, though he had learned not to boast about them (12:1–7). But central to Paul’s apostolic ministry, proving his genuine commitment to Christ, was not only his ministry or miracles but also his sufferings. Although he mentions visions and miracles, he elaborates on sufferings most extensively by far.
Paul’s Qualifications in 2 Corinthians 11
After explaining why he has to “boast” at all, Paul offers a résumé that boasts in the sorts of things that most of his contemporaries instead considered embarrassing:
Are they servants of Christ?—I am speaking as if insane—I more so;
in far more labors,
in far more imprisonments,
beaten times without number,
often in danger of death.
Five times I received from the Jews thirty-nine lashes.
Three times I was beaten with rods,
once I was stoned,
three times I was shipwrecked, a night and a day I have spent adrift at sea.
I have been
on frequent journeys,
in dangers from rivers,
dangers from robbers,
dangers from my countrymen,
dangers in the city,
dangers in the wilderness,
dangers at sea,
dangers among false brothers;
I have been
in labor and hardship,
through many sleepless nights,
in hunger and thirst,
often without food,
in cold and exposure.
Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches.
Who is weak without my being weak?
Who is led into sin without my intense concern? (2 Cor. 11:23–29 NASB modified)
Imagine evaluating a résumé for a pastoral search committee that highlighted how many times your beloved government had arrested the candidate! To top it all off, Paul adds a story that some might have considered cowardice—the opposite of the honor given to any (surviving) Roman soldier to be first to scale an enemy wall. When Paul’s enemies were guarding Damascus’s gates to capture him if he tried to flee, “I was let down in a basket through a window in the wall, and so escaped” (2 Cor. 11:33 nasb).
Crucified with Christ
Paul learned to boast in his weakness so that any credit would go to the one to whom it was due: the Lord working in him. Paul’s hard situations made him rely all the more on Christ, on whom he depended literally for dear life. Jesus told Paul that Jesus’s power was completed in weakness. Paul thus insisted,
Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in distresses, in persecutions, in difficulties, in behalf of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong. (2 Cor. 12:9–10 nasb)
In so doing, he was embodying the message of the cross that he preached. Christ
was crucified in weakness, but he’s alive by God’s power. In the same way, we are weak in him, but we shall live with him by God’s power in us. (2 Cor. 13:4)
Paul was preaching to a church that reflected the values of its culture. Ancient sources show us how much Corinth valued the quest for honor, social power, and wise speech. Paul’s preaching challenged these cultural values:
We preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. (1 Cor. 1:23–25 esv)
Similarly, after emphasizing that he has been crucified with Christ (Gal. 2:20), Paul notes that the Galatians had witnessed Christ depicted as crucified in him before their eyes (3:1). While “before your eyes” was a common expression for dramatically narrating an event so that audiences felt that they themselves witnessed it, Paul may have had a more literal visual aid.9 Just as Jesus showed his wounds after the resurrection (John 20:20), Paul declared that he carried in his body the marks of Jesus (Gal. 6:17). In contrast with his circumcision (see 6:13, 15), these marks—probably scars from past beatings—demonstrated his sharing in Christ’s cross (see 6:12, 14). These were his trophies, his medals of honor. Because the apostolic mission requires suffering, Paul elsewhere even says that he rejoices in his sufferings for the church,
completing in my flesh what remains of Christ’s sufferings for his body. (Col. 1:24)
In the wider, Pauline sense of apostles as those who lay new foundations for the kingdom, we may, as already noted, apply the label generally to planters of church movements laying foundational new ground in unevangelized areas or spheres. Satan, however, does not surrender ground gladly, and those who break new ground are also often themselves broken in some ways. Although Axum in East Africa, for example, received the gospel peacefully, many other mission fields in history, including many in Europe, were opened through the blood of martyrs.
Apostolic Determination: Other Cross-Cultural Laborers
Through much of history and also today, many laborers have been ready to break new ground for the kingdom, often starting church-planting movements or ushering in major shifts for the gospel. Hardship has long characterized ministries regarded as “apostolic,” such as those of medieval missionaries to new regions or early Methodist circuit riders.10 Estimates are that nearly half of the pioneering circuit riders died before they reached the age of thirty. Church planter Rich Stevenson shared with me some of his conversation with Vineyard leader John Wimber shortly before the latter’s death. Wimber mentioned John Wesley’s ministry as an example of the apostolic kind and noted that a key evidence of apostolic ministry is suffering for one’s calling.11
This seems likewise true of the ministries of Francis of Assisi, Francis Xavier, George Whitefield, Francis Asbury, and others. Because of their influence for the gospel we might also include some of the Reformers. I’ll focus here on more recent examples.
The Careys, the Judsons, and the Taylors
In 1792, William Carey declared, “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God!” Soon after he reached India, he and his family suffered destitution until he found some secular work. When his five-year-old son died of dysentery, his wife, Dorothy—who had never wanted to come to India to begin with—snapped mentally. Eventually she even tried to kill William. After twelve years in mental agony, she died in 1807. Carey’s original missionary colleague, John Thomas, also suffered from mental illness.
This was not the end of hardship. It had taken seven years from Carey’s arrival before he had even one convert, yet he persevered. When a fire in the printing room claimed years of work, including the only copy of the Sanskrit dictionary he had completed as well as ten Bible translations, Carey was devastated. The spiritual battle was surely intense.
Trusting in God’s sovereign plan, however, Carey determined to start over.12 Meanwhile, news of the costly fire brought attention to and more support for the work. With local help, Carey translated Scripture into many of India’s languages, laying foundations for the harvest that faith anticipated. Eventually hundreds more came to faith. When Carey died after forty-one continuous years in India, he had laid foundations and a model for missions that were respectful and supportive of local peoples and that deeply influenced following generations.
Two of those influenced by Carey’s example were Adoniram (1788–1850) and Ann (1789–1826) Judson, among the first missionaries from the newly formed United States. When England and Burma went to war in 1824, however, Burmese authorities supposed that English-speaking Adoniram was a British spy and imprisoned him for seventeen months. Ann set up a shack outside the prison so she could provide food for her husband. The cramped prison cell lacked toilet facilities, and guards suspended the prisoners in the air by their feet at night. Some prisoners eventually died on a forced march. Ann meanwhile was translating Scripture into Burmese and Thai. Soon after Adoniram’s release, however, Ann and their third and only surviving child died. Adoniram continued to serve the gospel and Burma until his death a quarter century later. By then he had translated the entire Bible into Burmese, created the Burmese dictionary, and helped plant many churches.13
As a medical missionary to China, Hudson Taylor (1832–1905) chose to adopt local Chinese dress and culture and depended radically on God to supply his needs. Moved with concern for China’s spiritual needs, he recruited more missionaries for the interior, founding China Inland Mission (CIM; today, Overseas Missionary Fellowship). Sometimes he was deathly sick; his first wife, Maria, died at thirty-three, and half of their children died in childhood. Serving “China’s millions” continued to drive him regardless of the cost. In 1900, Taylor experienced a breakdown; he could do no more than cry out to God as seventy-nine of CIM’s missionaries (twenty-one of them children) were martyred during China’s Boxer Rebellion. Yet by the time Taylor died in 1905 at the age of seventy-three, his movement had changed the world. From 1865 to 1949, CIM fielded 2,680 adult missionaries to China.14
Church Planters in 1960s Congo
That pattern has also held true in more recent times. Many examples are possible, but I begin with 1960s church planters in what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.15 Like James and Peter in Acts 12, they faced varying fates.
Exploitation and Violence
Foreign church planters in Congo faced a time of severe danger in the 1960s. Before I talk about that, though, I should give some background about foreign abuses in Congo. This was a region primed for suffering. Local believers had suffered terribly, and local nonbelievers had reasons to resent foreigners. Some evils build on earlier evils, and sometimes we get caught in the conflicts.
From 1885 to 1908 the playboy king of Belgium, Leopold II, cruelly exploited Congo as his private slave colony. His abuses led to the deaths of up to ten million people in a genocide often forgotten in the West.16 Finally, African American missionaries William and Lucy Sheppard and their missionary colleagues got word out to the wider world and Leopold was forced to hand over Congo to the Belgian government.17 That reduced the exploitation but didn’t end it. Indeed, international exploitation of the region continues today, not least in labor for the world’s cobalt supply.18
When Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) finally won its independence, it came with convulsions of violence, some directed at foreigners. In 1964, many missionaries were killed or severely abused.
Survivors
Dr. Helen Roseveare had built a hospital and was serving the local population. On October 28, 1964, however, six soldiers surrounded her, struck her, then hurled her to the ground. They then kicked her until she was bloodied and her back teeth were shattered. She was too numb even to pray. Roseveare survived five months in captivity, being raped and beaten. Despite all that, she afterward continued to serve her host country.19 (I return to her story in chap. 5.)
My current next-door neighbors, Wes and June Eisenman, were missionaries in the Congo at that time.20 Wes was a pilot with Mission Aviation Fellowship and helped rescue many missionaries who had fled into the jungle to escape being killed.21 The former owners of our home were also working for Christ in Congo at that time; their participation in celebrating independence and providential timing helped keep them safe.22
One Swiss Assemblies of God missionary whom the Eisenmans knew, Jacques Vernaud, remained in Congo during the bloodshed. His wife, Johanna, pretended to drive him to the airport, but he secretly returned in the trunk of the car. I attended Bible college with his daughter Liliane—herself healed of leukemia as a child—and she introduced me to her parents when they visited. Jacques Vernaud was also close friends with my Congolese father-in-law Jacques Moussounga, who received a spiritual gift of healing after Pastor Vernaud laid hands on him. Later, when my wife and I were visiting Congo, Pastor Vernaud also laid hands on my wife and me. We hosted Johanna and sometimes their granddaughter in our home.
Vernaud remained in Congo to continue his ministry even in hard times, and God protected and blessed that work. He planted a vast number of churches, and his great ministry included visible miracles attested by eyewitnesses I know. Even today, I periodically meet people he discipled or pastored. He passed away peacefully in 2011 at the age of seventy-eight.
And Martyrs
By contrast, some missionaries were martyred in 1964. One of them was a different Assemblies of God missionary, Jay W. Tucker, from the South Central United States. Simba rebels held Tucker and some Catholic priests prisoner at a Catholic mission, and on November 24, the rebels clubbed Tucker to death and discarded his corpse in the Bomokandi River. The Mother Superior of the captive mission had to report the grim news to Tucker’s wife, Angeline. “He is in heaven,” she shared, choosing her words carefully. “May God comfort your heart to know he was ready to die.”23
Grieving, Angeline and her children escaped with their lives. For the children who had grown up there, Congo was home, and she herself wished she could return. “It’s hard for us to understand why God took Jay from us when we needed him so much, but we know He had His reasons, and that they will be revealed in due time. . . . I pray daily that the children and I may be faithful to his ideals, and that, with God’s help, we may continue to carry on the work he was forced to lay down.”24 Jay had served for a quarter century in his beloved Africa, where he wanted to spend his whole life and be buried.
When I was in seminary, a guest speaker in a missions class told us that Tucker had shared with him his determination to serve Jesus in Congo regardless of the cost. We do not always get to see the reward of the cost in this life, but Tucker’s widow grasped it in faith. Citing Tertullian’s dictum that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church, Angeline insisted, “If Jesus tarries, there should be a wonderful harvest of souls in all of northeast Congo.”
In this case, Tucker’s family lived to see the fruit of his ministry. Although the local Mangbetu tribe had been hostile to the message of Christ, one of Tucker’s converts became police chief there. He explained to his people that Tucker’s body had been cast into their river. “Since Tucker’s blood had flowed through their waters, they believed they must listen to the message that he carried.” Thousands came to Christ, with miracles following. Some locals were reportedly even raised from the dead.25 The seed that fell into the ground and died bore much fruit (compare John 12:24).
The Bakers in Mozambique
I stay in fairly regular contact with Rolland Baker, who, like me, counts Pentecostal scholar Gordon Fee among his mentors. Fresh from master’s work at Vanguard University in Southern California, where Fee had been teaching, Rolland and his wife, Heidi, moved to Indonesia in 1985. There they worked with Mel Tari, one of the leaders who had earlier emerged from Indonesia’s 1965 West Timor revival.26 Later they worked with Jackie Pullinger in Hong Kong, serving among the neediest people in the world’s densest urban area.27
The Background
Eventually, after doing doctoral work in London, the Bakers headed for Mozambique.28 They chose Mozambique because at the time it was the poorest nation on earth, and they knew from Scripture that God works among the broken (e.g., Ps. 138:6; Isa. 66:2; Matt. 5:3; Luke 1:52). Soon they began taking in many of the children living on the streets, who themselves began sharing the love of Jesus with other children. (For God’s special care for children, see, e.g., Mark 9:37; 10:14–15.)
At one point, they grew deathly sick and were burned out, but God renewed them during an outpouring of the Spirit through the ministry of Randy Clark. Trusting God to confirm his message of grace with signs, as in Acts (e.g., Acts 14:3), Heidi prayed for people to be healed. She kept praying for months without any visible results until finally, all in one week, three blind women were healed. I asked Rolland whether perhaps God arranged it this way so they would recognize that the power for healing came from him and not them. Rolland thought so. (Admittedly, I asked with ulterior motives, to stir hope that I might yet see more blind people healed too!)
Homeless Again
After their orphanage grew to 320 children, however, a government department ordered them to stop all “religious activity.” Heidi recounts, “Our children were not allowed to pray, even under a tree. . . . We could no longer bring in street children, give out clothes or dispense medicine.” The children, who had suffered extensively in their previous lives on the street before being taken in, responded with holy defiance. They claimed that they would rather stay “in tents in the fields, with no water and electricity, than remain behind where they were beaten, starved and prevented from worshiping Jesus.”
The officials responsible at the time thus gave the Bakers and their colleagues forty-eight hours to abandon the property the Bakers had restored. Incidentally, Heidi was also told that a contract had been issued on her life.29 Staff labored night and day to salvage from their property whatever they could—for example, dragging bedframes across grass and packing medicine through rain and mud. The only place they could head for at the time was the office space they owned in Maputo, fifteen miles away. The orphans, lacking relatives or places to find shelter, walked the distance barefoot to Maputo. They said some persecutors had beaten them “with large sticks for singing” on the way, but they insisted that they would keep singing because they were committed to God.
Roughly one hundred children showed up at the office. Heidi tried to explain that there was not enough room, but they protested that she had promised that God always provides. Rolland, Heidi, and their own two children were hungry, not having eaten in days, and a kind friend from the US embassy stopped by with food for their family. Opening the door, Heidi showed her the mass of children. “I have a big family!” Horrified, the friend protested that the food wasn’t nearly enough, but they prayed and then began giving each person a full bowl. Miraculously, “all our children ate, the staff ate, my friend ate and even our family of four ate.”30
Physical and Spiritual Floods
More suffering awaited, however. When three cyclones struck in 2000, floods destroyed more ground than had Mozambique’s fifteen years of civil war. Inadvertently, “mothers struggling in neck-deep currents drowned their own babies in their back slings,” and communities stranded on high ground “were reduced to eating the decayed flesh of dead cows.” Survivors amassed atop buildings perished when roofs collapsed beneath their weight.31 Prayerful Christians were not spared. At one of the Bakers’ orphanage centers, for example, fifty children had malaria, including the Bakers’ birth daughter Crystalyn.32 Out of that suffering arose cries to God. In response to those cries, the church movement began to multiply, planting thousands of churches and caring for some ten thousand orphans in the following years.33
The children grew to be laborers for the harvest, many of them planting churches themselves. Rolland and Heidi moved to northern Mozambique to evangelize among a previously unreached people group. As God healed deafness and blindness in one unchurched village after another, churches were planted.
Some Other Recent Church Planters from the US
Church planting and cross-cultural ministry can remain risky today as well. The past century has seen hundreds or thousands of leaders of church-planting movements; here I offer only samples. Most of my wife’s mentors in Congo-Brazzaville were Congolese, but they also included Americans Eugene and Sandy Thomas. I later learned that Pastor Thomas grew up just a few blocks from where I (later) grew up in my hometown in Ohio. The Thomases planted churches in unevangelized areas and trained local leaders to continue spreading the gospel farther.34 Yet these cross-cultural laborers sacrificed much, including living through shelling and shooting.
On the border of Colombia and Venezuela, nineteen-year-old Bruce Olson braved severe sickness, deprivation, and being shot in the thigh with an arrow to reach the Motilone (or Barí) people, among whom he lived for decades. He spread the gospel, established medical and educational institutions, translated the Bible into their language, and worked for justice for Indigenous people—a story described in detail in his moving book Bruchko.35 In 1988, however, guerrillas captured and planned to execute him. This story ends differently than some others. Bruce was released after nine months in captivity, his name defended by the grateful local people among whom he had labored.
When Presbyterian Don McClure began work among the Anuak people of eastern Africa, they were completely unchurched. By the time he relocated to reach other peoples, a fifth of the Anuak had received baptism and another fifth were getting ready for it. God blessed his half century of ministry in Ethiopia and Sudan, and he was known as a joyful man whose prayers God heard. Still, on a final mission requested by the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie himself, McClure was murdered by Somali guerrillas in March 1977.36
Church planters are not limited to ministry outside their own country. In 1990, for example, I learned much from Dan Taylor, a Chicago church planter who pioneered churches in Cabrini-Green and the Robert Taylor Home, both crime-infested areas at that time. When I asked him whether many Christians in the suburbs came out to work with him, he indicated that this was very rare. The only explanation he could give was that “they aren’t ready to die for their faith.”37
Other US Cross-Cultural Laborers
Davy Lloyd grew up at the Pentecostal mission orphanage started by his American parents in Haiti, and Davy, 23, and his wife, Natalie, 21, devoted themselves to the orphans. Gangs were running Haiti, but the young couple were hopeful that God was bringing change. God had intervened for them in previous crises. One night in 2024 while I was safe at home working on this book, however, gangs burned the orphanage. They killed this couple and a local church leader, Jude Montis, who was with them.38
My dear friend and coauthor on another book, charismatic Bible scholar Michael Brown, is Chancellor of the Christ for All Nations School of Ministry. (You might know of Michael from his The Line of Fire broadcast, or his role in the Brownsville Revival, or his Messianic Jewish ministry.) One of Michael’s American graduates, in his mid-twenties, traveled with his wife and children to serve in a Middle Eastern nation. He was serving materially poor Muslims, teaching English and work skills, and even literally washing their feet. After al-Qaeda terrorists killed the student, “many of the Muslims who knew him (including women in burqas) risked their own lives by marching in the streets, speaking out against his death and commending him as a saintly Christian man who came to serve the poor and the needy.”39
Michael shared with me his journal entry from the time. “The loss of precious life and the reality of a new widow and her little children is deep and stunning. . . . But this day, we see the true price of Jesus revolution: the blood of . . . a spiritual son.”40 He elsewhere recounts, “I will never forget attending his funeral and watching his four-year-old son, the older of two boys, after his father’s casket was lowered into the ground saying, ‘Bye-bye, Daddy! I love you!’”41
Some Asian Church Planters
Michael travels regularly to India. During one visit there, he talked with a preacher who baptized three hundred people in 2007, after which local radicals stripped and beat him. When they realized that he would survive in the hospital, they sought to poison him there. Getting word, his family took him to a different hospital about 170 miles away. After six days in a coma he recovered—and went back to preaching.
Michael asked, “Are you afraid they’re going to kill you?” The evangelist replied, “Never!” and talked about taking up the cross to follow Jesus. There are still threats on his life, but the first man to strike him when he was first beaten has since received Christian baptism.
In 2010 Michael met a mom and her seventeen-year-old daughter in India. The mother had to watch aggressors beat and then behead her husband, a pastor. The daughter said that now that her father had been killed she had a sense of purpose in serving God. The mother and daughter are continuing the ministry for which the father was martyred.42 They are not angry with those who killed him; they forgive them and want to reach them with the gospel.43 Michael had participated in her husband’s commissioning, and now he wept as he washed the widow’s feet. After the foot washing, those who had lost loved ones or been beaten worshiped God joyfully.
During the 1965 revival in West Timor, Indonesian ministry teams traversed jungles and crossed wide rivers to evangelize. They experienced miracles, including healings of blindness, raisings from the dead, and (initially unknowingly) walking on water. But sacrifice, suffering, and a martyrdom also characterized their mission.44 More recently, Indonesian believer Tandi Randa, a doctor of ministry graduate of Asbury Seminary, has had confrontations with practitioners of curse magic. Though they had previously found their curses effective against others, they were shocked to discover how God protected Tandi. He has led scores of former curse-magic practitioners to Christ.45
A Sri Lankan man, angry that his wife had become a Christian, hired a gunman to kill Pastor Neil and his wife, whom I shall call Priya. One May night soon after, while the pastor and his wife slept, the assassin riddled them with bullets. Pastor Neil died immediately; friends rushed Priya to the Colombo hospital. Doctors did their best but did not expect her to survive the night. Prayers were answered, however, and shortly before Christmas 2008, she returned to the house church. Despite a paralyzed leg and hand, she was determined to fulfill the mission she originally shared with her husband.46
After Phan became a believer, he preached one message in his village in Laos, leading more than a hundred people to Christ. The village expelled all the Christians, but the new believers witnessed God providing for them.47 Such forced moves can be part of life for persecuted believers. In India, one effective evangelist and his family have had to relocate 185 times in nineteen years because of death threats.48
For the sake of planting churches, Nagmeh Panahi endured persecution in Iran, and she had friends there who were killed for their faith. She survived these crises only to also endure betrayal in her marriage—tragically, by a fellow Christian who had once shared many of the same sufferings.49
In Iraq, Karwan planned to convert infidels to Islam. But as he began studying the New Testament to refute Christians, he instead experienced peace and became a Christian himself. He soon began spreading the message about Jesus and planted a church. Now, he says, “Every moment we are waiting for someone to come and kill me. There is no moment in my life without this waiting.” He keeps reminding the church members of the example that Jesus set. “We are not higher than our teacher. If he died, if he was executed, of course it will happen for us. It is normal.”50 Is his assessment accurate, at least potentially?
If anyone wants to follow me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life on account of me and the good news will save it. (Mark 8:34–35)
“Time Will Fail Me . . .”
Hebrews 11:32 warns that time would fail if the author tried to tell of Gideon, David, and so many other “heroes of the faith.” Indeed, we will not in this life know the names of most of those breaking ground for God’s kingdom around the world, though we will someday surely celebrate their Spirit-inspired devotion around God’s throne. I offer just a few samples here.
Further stories could be multiplied. I will return to Hebrews 11 in chapter 4, but first, just as we have examined apostolic-type sufferings in this chapter, we should look at prophets, prophecy, and suffering in the next.
1 Mission is a central issue in Acts and was never meant to be (nor is it today) a Western monopoly; see, e.g., Keener and Keener, “Commission.” For example, Brazil sends forty thousand missionaries, South Korea sends close to thirty-five thousand, and Nigeria sends twenty thousand (Zurlo, Global Christianity, 66, 218, 269).
2 Deere, Still Surprised, 100.
3 1 Cor. 4:8–13; 2 Cor. 4:7–13; 6:4–10; 11:21–33; 12:7–10. I quote from Kolenda’s unpublished paper researching apostolic ministry in the Bible, shared with me in July 2024.
4 The meaning of the passage is understandably debated; for my interpretation, see Keener, Matthew, 360–62; Keener, Gospel of Matthew, 604–6. Elsewhere in Matthew, disciples are Jesus’s siblings (12:50; 28:10) who could be received with food and drink (10:8–13, 42); whoever received them would receive Jesus (10:40–42).
5 In the interview in Maudlin, “God’s Smuggler” (quotation on 46).
6 For early Jewish and Christian opposition to seeking martyrdom, see Martyrdom of Polycarp 4.1; Talbert, Mediterranean Milieu, 112–15.
7 Compare Kim, If I Perish, 139: “The harsher my torture, the more the Lord would comfort me.”
8 For details, see Fitzgerald, Cracks.
9 See discussion in Keener, Galatians, 212–13; Keener, Galatians (Cambridge), 120–21.
10 For missions history, see, e.g., Neill, History of Missions; Tucker, Jerusalem to Irian Jaya; for Francis Asbury and early Methodists, e.g., Wigger, American Saint.
11 Rich Stevenson, personal correspondence, July 6, 2024.
12 Carey apparently saw the disaster as judgment but started afresh more zealously (Tucker, Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 120).
13 See, e.g., Anderson, Golden Shore; Hunt, Bless God.
14 See Taylor and Taylor, Secret; on the Boxer Rebellion, see 214.
15 For earlier groundbreaking ministry there, with accompanying signs, see, e.g., Anderson, Pelendo; Emmett, Burton.
16 See Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost.
17 See Williams, Black Americans and Evangelization, 138–40; Phipps, William Sheppard.
18 See Kara, Cobalt Red.
19 Roseveare, “Counting the Cost,” 37–38. The article reflects her message from Urbana ’76; I heard her similar message at Urbana ’87. See further, e.g., Lagerborg, Though Lions Roar; Benge and Benge, Helen Roseveare; Roseveare, Living Sacrifice.
20 They were close friends with the Congo missionaries who owned our home before we did, and thus appear in, e.g., Braun, Here Am I, 82; Braun, On the Way, 230, 255, and especially 213.
21 His work with MAF appears in Hege, We Two Alone, 187. Hege was wounded when her missionary colleague Irene Ferrel was killed.
22 Again see Braun, Here Am I, 143–44; Braun, On the Way, 81. They too invested in leadership training in a movement that continues to bear fruit globally, today through Evangelism Resources (https://www.evangelism-resources.org/).
23 Tucker, Heaven, 210.
24 Tucker, Heaven, 224.
25 Gohr, “Blood.”
26 Recounted in Tari, Mighty Wind. On the revival, see the concise Wiyono, “Timor Revival.”
27 On Pullinger’s ministry among addicts and others, see Pullinger, Chasing Dragon.
28 I take much of the following summary from Iris, “Iris Story.”
29 Baker and Baker, Always Enough, 50.
30 Baker and Baker, Always Enough, 52.
31 Baker and Baker, Always Enough, 85.
32 Baker and Baker, Always Enough, 84.
33 Baker and Baker, Always Enough, 137–58.
34 Before her passing, Sandy was able to publish some of their stories in Thomas, Walls.
35 Olson, Bruchko; Olson and Lund, Bruchko and Miracle.
36 Partee, Adventure in Africa; Stafford, “Sit Still.”
37 Dan Taylor, August 15, 1990. I had learned even more from Everett and Esther Cook, church planters who earlier mentored me when they ran Springfield Victory Mission.
38 Silliman, “Missionaries Killed.” Global Christian Relief documented over one hundred kidnappings targeting pastors or other Christians in 2024 (GCR Red List, 17).
39 Brown, Authentic Fire, 76.
40 Michael L. Brown, personal correspondence, May 16, 2024. The journal entry is from 2012.
41 Brown, Authentic Fire, 77.
42 For another case in India of carrying on a murdered husband’s ministry, see Voice of Martyrs, Hearts of Fire 2, 238.
43 For other Christian widows forgiving their husbands’ killers, see, e.g., Voice of Martyrs, Hearts of Fire 2, 55–56, 85–88, 301–5.
44 For cases of persecution, from which, however, the ministry teams were usually protected, see Tari, Mighty Wind, 162–64 (the martyr is on 164).
45 Interview, May 23, 2012; updated confirmation, personal correspondence, May 26, 2012; September 19, 2024.
46 Correspondence from a mutual friend of Neil and Priya, January 10, 2009. Religious disagreement is not the only cause for martyrdom in Sri Lanka; twenty years after starting a house church, Kalithas’s ministry had so impacted the community that black-market traders, losing too much business, had him beaten so badly that he died two days later (Voice of Martyrs mailing, August 6, 2024).
47 Nettleton, When Faith Is Forbidden, 241–42. For four thousand Laotian Christians earlier forced to stop meeting, see News Briefs (1995).
48 Regarding Ahmed in Kashmir, in a 2024 Voice of Martyrs mailing.
49 Panahi, Didn’t Survive. Some groups in Iran fare even worse than Christians; Baha’is “may be murdered with impunity” (Shortt, Christianophobia, 46); likewise, in Pakistan, “at least ninety-nine Ahmadis were killed in faith-based attacks during 2010” (Shortt, Christianophobia, 81). My friendship with Nabeel Qureshi (Qureshi, Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus) helped alert me to the marginalization Ahmadis endure from many other Muslims.
50 Voice of Martyrs update, June 1, 2024.