Lausanne World Pulse – Brother Flack: Missionary to India Offers Insight to Younger Missionaries
By Chacko Thomas
Q. What kind of missionary training would you suggest?
A. I can think of no better training than I had myself: to become a person of God and a worker who need not be ashamed (2 Timothy 2:15). The Missionary Training Colony provided excellent training for missionary work. There was Bible study and practical training. The Bible is the missionary’s manual. Read it and study it. Accept discipline in the service and welcome advice or criticism. Learn from your mistakes and failures. Your aim is excellence, not good or better.
The meekness and gentleness of Christ are the “weapons of our warfare” because our service is indeed warfare (2 Corinthians 10:1-5). At the Missionary Training Colony we had an evangelistic trek each year when twelve men set out on a four-hundred-mile trip. We preached from place to place and slept in tents or whatever else the Lord provided. It was quite strenuous and we sometimes had to walk up to twenty miles a day. We were all very immature preachers, but it was a good exercise. If we are prospective missionaries we must learn everything we can before we go. The Missionary Training Colony only accepted as students those who had already led souls to the Lord. There must be some evidence of our calling before we go.
Q. What advice would you have for missionaries going to the mission field?
A. Go as a learner. Be prepared to learn from the national people and from the culture of the country. Do not try to make the churches like the one in your own country. Do everything you can to develop indigenous growth. Do not be masters; be servants. Identify in every way you can with the people God puts you among. You are there to establish self-supporting; self-governing and self-propagating churches.
Do not go first to the villages. The Lord and the apostles started in the cities and towns. They were less conspicuous there. When missionaries are mostly among the poor, their converts will be “rice Christians” and any developing leadership will be “yes men.” This is fatal for spiritual development. I was asked to attend a missionary conference in India on one occasion. Missionaries were gathered to pray and confer about the work. They had many Christian workers, but not one of them attended that conference. Everything was being done without one of them present. The work was being directed by “remote control” somewhere outside the land. Brother Bakht Singh established self-supporting, self-governing and self-propagating churches.
Missionaries must be prepared to live a very simple lifestyle. Only then will the people feel we are one of them. National believers who are sent away to Bible school abroad for training are of little use when they return because they have developed a different lifestyle. Our Lord Jesus and the apostles did not establish institutional centres, Bible colleges or schools.
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Chacko Thomas is coordinator of Missions Mobilisation Network (MMN). He is also a missionary with Operation Mobilisation, having served in India, and on three of OM’s ships, the Logos, Doulos and the Logos ll, in various ministry and leadership roles. |