Devotional Materials. Week Commencing Sunday 22nd August 2021
‘Missionary Morning’
Call to worship
“In your relationships with one another, have the same attitude as Christ Jesus: who being in very nature God did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant.” Philippians 2: 5, 6
“God is love.” 1 John 4:8
It’s great to have Tim and Linda Hobson and Martin and Mary Barber with us. We are all called to show the servant love of Jesus Christ to others, and we will be hearing about their missionary service this morning. Good to have you with us. 1
Opening Prayer
Heavenly Father we thank you for your great faithfulness and unfailing love. We see your great glory and power in Creation, we enjoy the fruits of your Creation, so many material blessings, and we ourselves, along with the whole of your Creation, continue to exist moment by moment because of your sustaining hand.
Father we thank you that you love to redeem that which has grown ugly with sin, and create beauty in its place. We thank you for giving your own Son as an atoning sacrifice for the redemption for our sins, though it cost you everything to do so.
Thank you for that love which means that by your Spirit you have come to live within us. You do not give up on us, rather you work in our hearts and minds to refine and purify our lives; to increasingly free us from the grip of sin, and make us more like the true Son- the Lord Jesus Christ, showing more of his beauty of life, in gentleness and patience, in compassion and mercy, in a zeal for your truth and lives led for your glory.
Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven. Thank you our loving Lord. We praise you. Amen.
Opening Hymn (Piano)
‘Praise, my soul, the King of heaven’ 560
Henry Francis Lyte
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyRIVbdsi4c
Tim and Linda Hobson1 (PowerPoint)
Hymn (Guitar)
‘You shall go out with joy’ 796 MP
Stuart Dauermann
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unWnWSgoSt0
Prayers
Prayer of Thanksgiving
Lord, there are marvellous things that I do not know, nor can I comprehend.
Lord, things that happen in my life, and things that happen in my friends lives.
Lord, I desire to be thankful, to appreciate everything that comes across my path.
Lord, so often life hurts, I get angry -- upset, I do not understand, yet Lord You ask me to be thankful for everything, and have faith – thank You.
Lord, keep me thankful. You send sunshine and rain on the just and the unjust, you are kind to all.
Lord, you care so much about me that you chasten in order to build character and godliness in me.
Lord, I thank you for mercy, for the hunger for righteousness, for forgiveness, for purity, for providing for my needs.
Lord, I thank you for prayer, that I can come before you and call You Father.
That I can cast my burdens on you.
Lord, I thank you for my heart, the treasure and light you placed in there -- the Holy Spirit.
Lord, it seems most of the time, what happens is about me.
Lord, I thank you that You gently remind me that the things are not about me, however, my life and what happens is more about you, your will, and your Kingdom.
Lord, I thank You, I praise you. Lord, in you do I find strength and courage to go on.
Lord, I thank you for being the author and finisher of my faith – and that in you is hope everlasting.
Lord, I thank you for the precious blood of Christ shed for me.
Thank You Lord God! Amen
Prayer for love
Say together:
Almighty God, you have taught us through your son that love is the fulfilling of the law. Grant that we may love you with our whole heart and our neighbours as ourselves; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen (PowerPoint)
Prayer for Missionaries
Heavenly Father we thank you for Tim and Linda, Martin and Mary here with us today. We would bring them and indeed all missionaries before you. Father we thank you for all who have gone to other countries with the good news of Jesus. When their work is difficult and tiring, make them strong. When they are lonely and homesick, remind them that you are with them; when they are uncertain what to do, guide them. Keep them at all times loving you; for Jesus sake. Amen
Reading. Isaiah 43: 16-21.
43 16 This is what the LORD says— he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters,
17 who drew out the chariots and horses, the army and reinforcements together, and they lay there, never to rise again, extinguished, snuffed out like a wick:
18 “Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past.
19 See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland.
20 The wild animals honour me, the jackals and the owls, because I provide water in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland, to give drink to my people, my chosen,
21 the people I formed for myself that they may proclaim my praise.
Hymn (Piano)
‘Be Thou my Vision’ 51 MP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=clqdCXxqYvI
Martin and Mary Barber 1 (PowerPoint)
‘All the way my Saviour leads me’ 22 MP
Fanny J Crosby
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnEZyfzkJgs
Blessing
Go in peace, be very courageous, hold on to what is good, do not return evil for evil, strengthen the faint hearted, support the weak, help the afflicted, honour all people, love and serve the Lord, rejoicing in the power of the Holy Spirit; and the grace of the Lord Jesus be with you.’ Amen.
1This service is recorded and will be shown on ‘YouTube’ later this Sunday. However, it might be that you do not have access to YouTube and so are unable to hear the missionaries we have with
us today. I have therefore included this piece about the best known Baptist Missionary William Carey for your interest and encouragement.
‘Missionaries You Should Know: William Carey’. By Nathan A. Finn
Englishman William Carey (1761–1834) is almost certainly the most well-known missionary in Baptist history. Had there been no William Carey, it is uncertain whether there would have ever been an Adoniram Judson, Lottie Moon, or Bill Wallace. Carey has been called the father of the modern missions movement in the English-speaking world because of his forty-plus years as a missionary in India and the role he played as a missions apologist.
Pastor and Missions Advocate
Carey was converted while working as a blacksmith’s apprentice as a teenager and then baptized by a Baptist pastor named John Ryland Jr. in 1783. Carey pastored a village church in Moulton, Northamptonshire, but because the church was unable to financially support the Carey family, he also worked as a grammar school teacher and a shoe cobbler.
Although Carey was mostly uneducated, he was a voracious reader who became very interested in literature about foreign lands, especially Captain James Cook’s journals of his travels. This curiosity about other lands slowly became a spiritual concern for the salvation of foreign peoples. Carey increasingly mentioned unevangelized nations in his sermons and wept when he discussed those with little access to the gospel.
As a young minister in the Northamptonshire Association, Carey became close friends with other young pastors like Ryland Jr., John Sutcliff, and Andrew Fuller. He was influenced by their evangelical Calvinism, which, unlike the dominant hyper-Calvinism of the era, included a commitment to evangelistic urgency.
When Carey attended the 1785 meeting of the association’s Ministers’ Fraternal, he was invited to propose a topic for the pastors to discuss. Carey proposed: “Whether the command given to the apostles to ‘teach all nations,’ was not obligatory on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world, seeing that the accompanying promise was of equal extent.”
Carey had come to believe that the Great Commission of Matthew 28:18–20 was a binding command on every generation of Christians.
“Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matt. 28:18-20 NIV)
John Collett Ryland, the father of John Ryland Jr., publicly rebuked Carey at the meeting, calling the young pastor a “miserable enthusiast.” The topic was not discussed that day.
In May 1792, Carey published his treatise An Enquiry in the Obligations of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens—a manifesto calling upon the Particular Baptists to engage in foreign missions. Later that spring, Carey was asked to preach the associational sermon before the 1792 meeting of the Northamptonshire Association.
His text was Isaiah 54:2–3.
Enlarge the place of thy tent and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; for thou shalt break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited. (KJV)
In this sermon, Carey argued that believers must expand the territory of the kingdom by taking the gospel to foreign lands. The sermon, which was the perfect complement to the Enquiry, culminated when Carey urged the association to form a mission society, exhorting them to “expect great things, attempt great things.” Though no action was taken that day, in October 1792, a group of twelve pastors formed a society they named The Particular Baptist Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen, later shortened to the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS).
All of the men were poor pastors, so the sum they raised to start the BMS equated to about twenty-three dollars in today’s US currency. Carey himself was too poor to contribute. Carey’s close friend, Andrew Fuller, became the secretary of the BMS, while Carey himself became one of the society’s first two missionaries.
Pioneer Missionary
In 1793, William Carey, his wife Dorothy, and their son Felix arrived in the British colony of India. John Thomas, a Baptist physician who had already been working with the East India Company, was also appointed, bringing along his wife and daughter. Dorothy’s sister Kitty also accompanied the party. The missionaries faced considerable hardship.
The East India Company was opposed to mission work. So the missionaries had to secretly sail to India on a Dutch ship. Once they arrived, Carey and Thomas became managers of indigo factories to support their families, but Thomas squandered all of the missionaries’ money. Within a few short years, Carey’s young son, Peter, died, Kitty left the mission to marry a British soldier, and Dorothy began to show signs of mental illness—a condition that ultimately took her life in 1807. Yet, Carey persisted through these challenges.
In 1800, Carey relocated to the Danish colony of Serampore, where he remained until his death in 1834. He joined two new missionaries in Serampore: Joshua Marshman, a gifted preacher, and William Ward, a printer. Collectively, the three missionaries came to be known as the Serampore Trio.
In 1805, Carey, Marshman, and Ward drafted the Serampore Form of Agreement, which laid out their missionary approach. The document proved very influential among later missionaries. As the trio’s missionary work was chronicled in the Periodical Accounts Relative to the Baptist Missionary Society, they inspired others all over the English-speaking world to answer God’s call to missionary service.
The Legacy of William Carey
Carey and his colleagues served as role models for a holistic vision of mission work. In 1800, Carey finally baptized his first convert, Krishna Pal, who soon became an evangelist. Despite these early years of minimal fruit in terms of conversions, by 1821, Carey and his associates had baptized 1,407 converts. Marshman proved the most gifted evangelist and apologist on the team.
Carey’s great gift was linguistics, so he translated the Bible and various other works into Bengali and several other dialects. Ward printed and distributed these resources. Carey’s commitment to Bible translation proved his most important legacy, and his Bengali Bible was widely used, becoming the basis for subsequent translations in that language.
The Serampore Trio also promoted education, founding Serampore College. Although the school educated believers and unbelievers, its primary goal was to train indigenous ministers. Carey and his colleagues also laboured for social reform. Most famously, he was a fierce critic of the practice of widows burning themselves upon their late husbands’ funeral pyres—a horrific practice that was often forced upon widows who had little voice in Indian culture.
“Carey’s holistic approach to missions provides a template for missionaries who wed evangelism, translation work, and ministries that contribute to human flourishing.”
William Carey continues to be revered for his place in the history of evangelical missions. His journals and letters, his Enquiry, and the Serampore Form of Agreement continue to inspire a passion for fulfilling the Great Commission. His holistic approach to missions provides a template for countless missionaries who wed evangelism, translation work, and ministries such as education, social reform, and health care that contribute to human flourishing. Contemporary believers would do well to become more familiar with Carey and his missionary legacy.
(Nathan A. Finn is provost and dean of the university faculty at North Greenville University in Tigerville, South Carolina. He has written widely on Baptist history and the history of Baptist missions, including co-authoring The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement.)
Recommended Resources
William Carey, An Enquiry into the Obligations of Christians to Use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens (1792).
Timothy George, Faithful Witness: The Life & Mission of William Carey (New Hope, 1991).
For those who do have access to YouTube, Elizabeth and I have watched a full film version of Carey’s life A Candle in the Dark: The Story of William Carey (1998) and would commend it to you. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0ppqpfI4WA
David Barnes 18/8/21