CHAPTER 55

Fruitful Fellow Workers

The Often-Untold Story of the Central Role of Local Leaders

Pam Arlund

Pam Arlund is a missionary, trainer, and Bible translator with All Nations International. She served in Central Asia, where she helped several previously unreached Muslim people groups to know and love Jesus. She has written numerous books and articles on missions. She is the co-editor of the fifth edition of perspectives and a Perspectives instructor.

Missionary work has never been a solo endeavor. Yet missions history is often told in such a way that it might seem like a single foreign, pioneering superhero did all the work alone. However, that is not the case. Local leaders are a large part of the story.

Krishna Pal and William Carey

Krishna Pal, a young man in India, first heard about Jesus from Moravian missionaries but had not become a Christian. One day, he dislocated his shoulder and was treated by John Thomas, a medical missionary working with William Carey. Thomas set Pal’s shoulder, saw his interest in Jesus, and gave him a small booklet about Jesus in Pal’s native language, Bengali. After much dialogue with the missionaries, Pal and one of his friends decided to follow Jesus. To celebrate, all the missionaries immediately shared a meal with the two new brothers in Christ. Normally an Indian at the time would not eat with foreigners due to the rules of the caste system. Some Indian servants who saw the meal reported to the rest of the neighborhood that the two Indians had “become Europeans.” As a result, the two new believers were attacked by other Indians on their way home and Pal’s daughter was abducted.

Despite persecution, Pal continued sharing Jesus with many. He also went with Carey and other missionaries on preaching trips. He built a church building across the street from his own home and gathered children there to teach them. Because Pal was a high-caste Indian, he was able to communicate with other Indians better than the foreigners. As a result, many high-caste Indians became interested in Jesus—a major break-through in Indian missions. Carey reported that so many Indians began to believe through the ministry of Pal that it was “difficult to find room for all who come”¹ to learn about Jesus.

Pal served as a missionary for twenty-two years. He was the first missionary to the northern Indian state of Assam. He was also the first to write hymns in Bengali. Among those influenced by Pal was his sister-in-law Jeymooni. She was baptized on the same day as Pal. She also went on to carry out missions among Indian women for the rest of her life, saying she had “found a treasure in Christ greater than anything in the world.”²

Qian, Guihua, and Hudson Taylor

Hudson Taylor, a pioneering missionary to the inland of China, was often accompanied by two Chinese men on his missionary journeys. These men from Shanghai, named Qian and Guihua, were among the first people Taylor led to Jesus. As a part of his routine every morning, Taylor instructed them on how to share Jesus from home to home. Each evening, Taylor finished his day by giving them three more hours of further training.

When Taylor moved inland, the great dream of his heart, Qian and Guihua went with him. Together, the three men scouted out and found a suitable place to rent and live as Taylor’s first permanent inland mission station. To move inland at that time was illegal for Taylor. If the group was arrested, Taylor would simply be sent back to Shanghai. For Qian and Guihua, however, they would lose everything and be punished. Often, these men would preach to the gathered crowds while Taylor attended to those with medical needs. Taylor was rarely without these men at this early critical juncture in the work. The knowledge of these local leaders saved the mission from near catastrophe on several occasions. Without Qian and Guihua, it seems unlikely that Taylor would have ever been able to move to inland China and launch his breakthrough work there.

Francisco Díaz and Cameron Townsend

Francisco Díaz lived in Guatemala. He was Cakchiquel, one of the many ethnic minority peoples of Guatemala who have their own distinct language and culture. Spanish was not his first language, nor could many of his fellow people speak it. He often accompanied Cameron Townsend, a young American missionary, as Townsend traveled Guatemala selling Spanish Bibles.

While Díaz and Townsend walked thousands of miles together over a nine-month period, Díaz persistently challenged Townsend to remember the need of Díaz’s own people to hear the good news in their own language. One evening, while camping together on a mountain ridge, Díaz again challenged Townsend to make the Bible available in Díaz’s own language, saying, “If your God is so great, why he can’t speak my language?” That night, Townsend’s heart was changed, and the entire trajectory of his life was redirected. Townsend realized that translating the Bible into local languages would be necessary for all the peoples of the world to hear about Jesus. Díaz had realized this necessity before Townsend did.

When evangelism among Díaz’s people was unsuccessful, he realized that people in rural areas wouldn’t listen to him. But Díaz found the breakthrough. He asked for a barber set. Thereafter, he would enter each village as a barber and gain a captive audience to share Jesus. Díaz thought creatively about how to present himself in a way that he would be accepted so that the gospel might also gain acceptance. With his identity as a barber, he was able to break down the walls of suspicion, and the gospel began to flow through his own people.

Townsend subsequently worked for years to translate the New Testament into Díaz’s own language. Townsend finished the New Testament, but Díaz did not live long enough to see it. It was Díaz’s persistent insistence that nudged Townsend to establish Wycliffe Bible Translators. Townsend said of Díaz: “I believe the Lord applauded the efforts of this man for his ingenuity and humble spirit of service learned a great deal [from him].”³

Hira Lal and Don McGavran

Don McGavran, the mission strategist who discovered socioeconomic principles of people movements coming to Christ, didn’t discover these principles alone. McGavran grew up in India because his parents had been missionaries there. Although he had grown up in India, he still had plenty to learn.

McGavran came to respect an Indian man named Hira Lal like a father. Hira Lal had become a believer through McGavran’s father’s ministry. After following Christ, Hira Lal became both a preacher and a doctor. He had also helped present the gospel to several people groups in the area. Hira Lal consistently reached out to provide hospitality, go on evangelism trips, and establish relationships across ethnic boundaries.

When McGavran began to map out a plan to reach the Satnami villages in India, he turned to Hira Lal for help. He tutored McGavran on the fine nuances of the Indian caste system. Together, these men eventually led about one thousand people to Christ and planted fifteen churches. More importantly, McGavran began to discern the principles of how Indian socioeconomic structures worked within the caste system. The information he gained from Hira Lal was key to helping McGavran discern the principles of missiological breakthroughs.

Each of these Western men profoundly changed how missions is done, but it is a disservice to them if we do not credit the local leaders with whom they worked. By restoring the stories of these fruitful fellow workers to our missionary histories, we can all be reminded that no one can do missions alone.

RETURN TO LESSON 7: Eras of Protestant Mission History

Notes

1. George Smith, The Life of William Carey: Shoemaker and Missionary (London: J. Murray, 1885).

2. Smith, Life of William Carey.

3. Hugh Steven, Yours to Finish the Task: The Memoirs of W. Cameron Townsend: 1947–1982 (Orlando, FL: Wycliffe Bible Translators, 2004).