To understand who Baptists are, it's essential to figure in missions as a major part of our spiritual DNA. I would dare to say that it is the biggest piece of what motivates us to form voluntary associations between congregations; we hold each church to be an autonomous ecclesiastical unit, but we also understand that it takes churches working together to support a vigorous mission program around the world. The missions mandate is a central part of our doctrine as well; when Jesus commanded us to "go and make disciples of all nations" (Mt. 28:19), we take that literally. As we learned last month, however, that wasn't always the case. In the days when predestination was more strongly emphasized for salvation, it wasn't apparent to many Christian leaders that worldwide evangelism was necessary. That's where the passionate teaching of Andrew Fuller figured in. With his book, The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation, he laid out the powerful argument that it was our Christian duty to proclaim the Gospel and command people everywhere to repent of sin and follow Christ.
Fuller went beyond merely thinking and writing about missions; he personally invested much time and energy into missions advocacy. He was a leader in the formation of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792, serving as its secretary until his death in 1815. He traveled extensively throughout Britain and Ireland to speak, raising both enthusiasm and funds. This private effort was needed because, at the time, there was little wider support for missionary efforts. Corporate interests, such as the British East India Company, worked to bar missionaries from the countries in which they had commercial interests. They feared that missionaries' work would be harmful to their economic prospects. Political leaders weren't terribly interested in supporting missionaries, nor were the leaders of denominational organizations. It was necessary for people like Fuller to go directly to the people. If their speeches won over the support of their audiences, they would become members of the Society who would pay dues to support missionaries.
The most famous missionary sent by the Baptist Missionary Society was William Carey, widely regarded as the father of modern missions. He was also a dear, personal friend of Fuller's. Carey was a brilliant man, largely self-educated after his formal schooling ended in his early teen years. He was apprenticed as a cobbler, but he certainly had the mind of a scholar. His curiosity and learning was impressive in many areas; he had a particular talent for languages. He mastered Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Italian and Dutch before he ever departed for Asia, where he learned many more languages.
Carey was ordained as a Particular Baptist minister in 1787 and became one of the twelve co-founders of the Baptist Missionary Society in 1792. When the Society began its work, they searched for a missionary they could send out. They faced some discouragement in that no one stepped forward right away, but in time, Carey felt that God was calling him to take the Gospel to India. In 1793 he departed for the field along with his wife and children. The Society pledged their full support for the endeavor, and in particular his friends Andrew Fuller, John Sutcliff and John Ryland (other co-founders of the Society). They envisioned sending Carey to India as if they were lowering him into a deep gold mine, and they promised to "hold the ropes" so long as Carey lived and ministered.
Heroes don't earn the label without facing great difficulty, however, and Carey certainly faced his own. From the outset, the British East India Company was determined to stand in his way. This money-making venture was so powerful as to essentially rule the nation of India for many years. It wasn't until 1858 that the British Parliament stripped the company of political power and placed India under direct control of the Crown. They held all the power when Carey arrived, and they forbade him from settling in Calcutta. They didn't want his preaching to limit their ability to exploit India's resources and people. He had to migrate up-river and establish operations in Serampore.
The work itself was anything but easy. For the first seven years, Carey saw no converts. It would have taken some time to learn the Bengali language well enough to communicate, to be sure. But even still, imagine teaching and preaching with all your heart, only to see the Gospel falling upon apparently deaf ears. To support his family, Carey also had to take a job as manager at an indigo factory. Missions work is some of the most intense spiritual warfare one can encounter, and discouragement is one of the Enemy's chief weapons. To discouragement was added grief when his son, Peter, died of dysentery. Carey was devastated, but his wife, Dorothy, suffered a nervous breakdown. She never recovered and eventually lost all touch with reality. We can only imagine the blow this would have been to Carey, his life companion now taken from him as well. He wrote in his diary, "This is indeed the valley of the shadow of death to me...O what would I give for a kind sympathetic friend such as I had in England to whom I might open my heart." Dorothy tragically died in 1807. She had never felt called to the mission field from the start, and she was quite abusive to her husband after her mental break. But say whatever you will, she sacrificed both sanity and life for the Gospel.
As was the case with Job, however, God restored much to William Carey's life to reward him for his faithfulness through so much difficulty. To join him on the mission field, the Baptist Missionary Society dispatched William Ward and Joshua Marshman. They were just the balm Carey needed for his soul, and the three of them became excellent partners in Gospel ministry. They were more like brothers than friends, working so harmoniously that visitors were amazed by the synergy between the "Serampore Trio," as they were dubbed. Their work was prolific. For example, as William Ward was also a printer by trade, the three of them set up a press and began to translate Scripture into no less than 44 regional languages. Carey translated the Bible into Sanskrit himself. They built a paper mill and a steam engine to amplify the work. They also produced grammars and dictionaries to further the inhabitants' literacy in their own language.
Their work went beyond translating and distributing the Bible. They noticed a lack of news sources in the Bengali language, so they started a newspaper. Carey conducted extensive agricultural experiments, helping to found the Agricultural and Horticultural Society of India in 1820. The "Serampore Trio" founded 26 churches and 126 schools, including the first girls' school. The combined enrollment of these was 10,000. They also set up a seminary for training local ministers, a savings bank, and India's first medical mission. This is significant, because of a man named Krishna Pal, a Hindu carpenter. Though he'd heard the Gospel previously from some Moravian missionaries, he hadn't yet given his life to Christ. But one day in 1800, he was bathing in the river, where he fell and injured his shoulder. The mission at Serampore was close by; they nurtured him back to health and both shared and displayed the love of Christ to him. Krishna Pal embraced Christ as Savior and was baptized. He went on to become one of the most powerful preachers at the mission (he was why they started a seminary). William Carey described him as "fluent, perspicacious and affectionate, in a very high degree." Pal and Carey worked together to challenge some of the social problems in India; Carey campaigned against the practice of suttee (burning a widow on her husband's funeral pyre), and Pal publicly challenged the caste system that kept people in such terrible bondage.
It did take a very long time for the Gospel to catch fire and spread in India, and we admire the faithful, longsuffering nature of William Carey, who doggedly believed in the motto, "Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God." He and his colleagues provided the inspirational example whose stories propelled thousands of others to enter the mission field. The work of the "Serampore Trio" was so beneficial to Indian society that when the British East India Company's charter came up for renewal in 1813, Parliament put in a clause that forbade the Company from interfering from missionaries' work; they were to be granted free access. This opened the door for more missionaries to work. New Missionary Societies sprung up throughout Europe and America. This includes the London Missionary Society, the Netherlands Missionary Society, as well as others formed in Switzerland, Germany, Denmark and France.
One American who was greatly inspired by the work of William Carey and his friends was named Adoniram Judson. Reading of the great things God did in India, Judson felt called by God to bring the Gospel to Burma. Though he started out as a Congregationalist missionary, he developed Baptist convictions during his voyage. This prompted stateside Baptists to found a new missions agency, the American Baptist Missionary Union, in 1814. That joint effort among Baptist churches in America went on to be the founding of...us! More of Judson's story next month.
Your Brother and Servant,
Pastor Scott
Note: My sources for this article include The Baptist Story: From English Sect to Global Movement, by Anthony L. Chute, Nathan A. Finn and Michael A.G. Haykin. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 2015; Who's Who in Christian History by J.D. Douglas, Philip W. Comfort, and Donald Mitchell, ed. Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., 1992; and The Story of Christianity: Volume 2, The Reformation to the Present Day by Justo L. González. San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1985.
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