Adapted from the talk as a book chapter, in the speaker's voice. It keeps the argument, stories and wording where possible, but it is an edited retelling, not a transcript. Tap a time in the margin to hear that moment.
Before the talk
Brooks BuserAbout fifteen years ago I was introduced to a short, readable biography of John G. Paton written by our next speaker, Paul Schlehlein. I love it because it covers Paton's children and his missions methodology: what he saw as the finish line and how to get there. Conferences loosely about missions often lack missionary speakers, and we wanted to remedy that. I met this brother about five years ago when we preached at a conference together; I sat with him in the cafeteria and essentially interviewed him for two hours about how he thought, why he did what he did, and what the church looked like in southern Africa, where he serves. I was so impressed that we asked him to give the Radius graduation address a couple of years ago. He has come a long way to be here. He's not just a talker; he's a walker. Please welcome my friend Paul Schlehlein.
In our own ministry we practice something we call slow evangelism, quite different from what is common in missionary methods today. Fifteen years ago I met a boy who was twelve. A few years ago he became the pastor of the church we planted. He's in his late twenties now, married with a child. It takes time to give people the gospel and make sure they understand what the Scriptures teach. Our congregation worships in a different language (you could fit most of it in these first few rows) and sings in a different style. But we love the same Christ, read the same inerrant word and follow the same gospel.
“I have thought it necessary to send to you Epaphroditus my brother and fellow worker and fellow soldier, and your messenger and minister to my need, for he has been longing for you all and has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, lest I should have sorrow upon sorrow. I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious. So receive him in the Lord with all joy, and honor such men, for he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life to complete what was lacking in your service to me.” (Philippians 2:25–30)
Our Father, humbly and yet with great confidence we ask that the gospel would run in every place where Satan reigns, that sinners would know and love and honor and worship you forever. Awaken our consciences. Melt, convict, encourage, illumine and refresh us, and use your lowly servants to bring multitudes around the world to faith. Launch us, catapult us into the fields, and make us willing even to die to that end. In Christ's name, amen.
On November 17, 1840, David Livingstone left England for Africa, and for the next sixteen years he served as a missionary, exploring parts of Africa most foreigners had never seen. When he returned home for the first time in 1856, he came with worldwide acclaim and heavy scars. He had trekked eleven thousand miles across Africa from coast to coast. His left arm had been shattered by a lion. He had endured malaria, dysentery and tropical fevers that nearly killed him. He had sent his wife and children home for safety, and those years apart took a heavy emotional toll. When he arrived, his wife gave him a poem that included these lines: “A hundred thousand welcomes! How my heart is gushing o'er with the love and joy and wonder thus to see your face once more. How did I live without you these long, long years of woe? It seems as if 'twould kill me to be parted from you now.” And yet part they would. A year later they went back together; a few years later she died in Africa, and a decade after that, so did he.
As he travelled across Britain preaching and calling for missionaries, people were surprised that Livingstone played down his sacrifices, calling them simply a repayment of the great debt he owed to God. “It is emphatically no sacrifice,” he said. “Say rather it is a privilege. Anxiety, sickness, suffering, or danger now and then, with a foregoing of the common conveniences and charities of this life, may make us pause, and cause the spirit to waver and the soul to sink; but let this only be for a moment. All these are nothing when compared with the glory which shall hereafter be revealed in and for us. I never made a sacrifice.” He was reflecting the mindset of the missionaries in Africa in his day, who said, “If we wait till we run no risk, the interior will never be reached.”
Risk
So I want to zero in on that word, risk. It is the theme of our passage, which is perhaps Scripture's fullest explanation of Paul's philosophy of risk, specifically missionary risk. Verse 30: “he nearly died for the work of Christ, risking his life.” We could define risk simply as exposing oneself to the possibility of danger.
Did Jesus Christ take risks? In one sense, yes: he entered a world full of danger, resentment, hatred, persecution, pain and loss, and he bore the ultimate peril, the wrath of the Father on the cross. But risk also involves uncertainty about the future, possibility, things that may or may not happen. In that sense Christ never risked, because he knows all things. “I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place you may believe that I am he” (John 13:19). He knew Peter would deny him three times before the rooster crowed. But you and I are called to risk, and we risk because we do not know the end. We don't know how things will turn out.
The word appears only a few times in Scripture. In Acts 15:26 Paul and Barnabas are described as men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ; literally, they handed over their lives. How? They were stoned, persecuted, beaten and slandered. We all need this message, because we live in a very comfortable society, and comfort creates soft people. Too much comfort is not good for a nation. We spend so much time seeking risk-free spaces that we are paralyzed from serving Christ with unfettered zeal.
Here in Philippians 2 we have a story of extraordinary sacrifice and risk. And here is the amazing thing: Paul does not hold himself up as the example, though he could have. He uses a very ordinary man. And in doing so he gives us five marks of godly risk that I hope will help us think carefully about this important part of missions.
1. The representatives of risk: committed Christians
What kind of person should the church send on risky endeavors around the world? We find out here. Paul wrote this letter during a risky time in his own life, traditionally believed to be his two-year imprisonment in Rome. He expected to be released, but if he were executed, he wanted Christ honored in his death: to live is Christ and to die is gain, and to be with Christ is far, far better. To help him, the Philippian church (probably the healthiest church Paul ever planted) sent a man to meet his physical and spiritual needs. His name was Epaphroditus.
Paul and the Philippians were very close. He planted that church in Acts 16, and he did it unusually. On his journeys he usually followed the same plan: go to a town and speak to Jewish men in the synagogue, as at Iconium, Corinth, Pisidian Antioch and Salamis. But in Philippi he spoke instead to Gentile women by the riverside. The gospel message stays the same, but how and where we present it will change. That's Missions 101.
Wouldn't it be remarkable to fast-forward and see what became of that church plant? In fact, we can. How does a missionary know when to leave a church? Historically we've used the “three selfs”: when a church has its own leaders, does its own discipleship and evangelism, and supports itself, the missionary moves on. We find all three in Philippians. Self-governing: in 1:1 there are elders and deacons. Self-supporting: at the end of the letter, when no other church would support Paul, the Philippians did (4:15). And self-propagating, right here: the church is now mature enough to send out one of its own members, Epaphroditus, to take risks for Paul's sake.
How was it risky? Sea travel meant storms and shipwrecks; land travel meant exhaustion, bad weather and robbers. And we learn that following Christ means risking the loss of life, family, approval, finances or health. That is not only for missionaries: “All who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). Let me give you six details about Epaphroditus.
He was ordinary. He had no extraordinary credentials. His name appears only twice in the Bible. There's no indication he was a pastor; he wasn't one of the Twelve; he probably wasn't wealthy. He isn't even mentioned in Acts 16. You might expect them to send the Philippian jailer, or Lydia with her wealth. Instead they sent a very ordinary man to do a very extraordinary thing. The call to sacrificial living is not for an elite; it is for everyone. In Paul's longest list of greetings, in Romans 16, first come Priscilla and Aquila, ordinary tentmakers who “risked their necks” for his life. (Notice Priscilla is named before her husband, unusual in Scripture, which shows at least in part that it was just as dangerous for her as for him. Risk is not only a man's thing.) Epaphroditus wasn't the Reverend Epaphroditus VI from six generations of preachers. His name comes from the goddess Aphrodite, which means pagans, not Christians, named their children Epaphroditus. Yet despite no credentials, no Christian background, no fame and no wealth, he left family, comfort and safety for Christ.
He was converted. “My brother.” Risk begins with a new heart. We're not talking about secular risk, the X Games, but risk for Christ's sake. When was he converted? We don't know. Maybe he was by the riverside with Lydia when he heard the gospel. Maybe he was one of the men who beat Paul and Silas with rods, or in the jail nearby listening as they sang hymns with their feet in the stocks, perhaps Psalm 103: “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits, who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy.” Maybe he belonged to the jailer's household that repented and was baptized. We don't know. But we know God had given him a new heart. He was a brother, and now he was willing to take risks. The gospel changes us and our desires.
He was active. “Fellow worker.” Whom should the church send to the hardest, most dangerous fields? Those who are working diligently at home. “Fellow worker” was one of Paul's favorite terms; he used it of Priscilla and Aquila, Timothy, Titus, Clement and Philemon. God will not dust off lazy, antique Christians at home and send them overseas. We need workers. Too many churches send missionaries overseas they would never want as elders at home: “He doesn't work hard, he's not a good communicator, he can't preach well. Let's send him to China!” In another language and culture it will be three times as hard.
He was devoted. “Fellow soldier” is a military term for those fighting side by side. Twenty years ago I left for the mission field as a single man. I wanted to be married, but I wanted to be a missionary more, and telling a prospective young lady that you planned to spend your life at the far ends of the earth tended to end the date quickly. So off I went, and for two years I lived in the chief's compound. He was a polygamist with three wives; he lived elsewhere with the third, and I lived with his second wife and children. She was old enough to be my mother. I learned the language the old-fashioned way. John Paton said he learned languages with two questions: “What's your name?” and “How do you say this?” So I went around asking, “How do you say this? How do you say this?” I lived among the people. She cooked me the staple porridge, with chicken heads and chicken feet, known as “walkie-talkies.”
About six months after I arrived, a friend and I were nearly killed in a severe crocodile attack while crossing a river in Mozambique. That story reached the ears of a registered nurse in Nashville who was furthering her medical studies at Vanderbilt. We began corresponding, and early on I said, “I'm going to marry this girl.” After months of old-fashioned correspondence, before we had even met, I told my teammates I wasn't coming back without a ring on her finger. I flew home; two weeks after meeting her, I proposed. She came from a fine Christian home, a pastor's home, and had always wanted to be a medical missionary. I went back to the village to build us a house. People said, “What is happening here?” She had a beautiful condo in downtown Nashville, and I was living in a shack with no running water, eating walkie-talkies. Months later I flew back a few days before the wedding, and we were married, having spent less than three weeks together in person. People ask me, “Paul, would you recommend that?” I say, “No. Three weeks was a little short. I'd recommend at least a month.”
My wife was totally committed. She sold her condo, sold the American dream, sold her piano, sold everything. We still laugh about one way she showed it. Her parents wanted to buy her a really nice wedding gift, and having heard the electricity in our village was spotty, she asked for a really good pair of night-vision goggles. My wife is a dignified woman, but imagine her walking through the villages at night in night-vision goggles. She was all in. That was eighteen years ago, and nine children ago. And still, daily, we must come back to the Scriptures and say, “Lord, give us a wartime mentality.” We are not here on vacation. We are fellow soldiers, dedicated to the arduous task of missionary work.
He was approved. Epaphroditus was no lone ranger. The word translated “messenger” is the word from which we get apostle. He was sent out with the approval of the local church, carrying a message. In that sense there is a close parallel between today's missionary and the New Testament apostle: both are sent out and commissioned with the message of the gospel.
He was servant-hearted. “Minister to my need.” He risked his life to serve others. I think of the Puritans who risked their lives in the plague, rushing into their people's rooms. Or of Paul at Lystra: stoned, he wisely left for Derbe, and then went right back to the place where he had been stoned, saying, “Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). Paul took risks because he knew the Christian life is not defined by freedom from danger: “I do not account my life of any value nor as precious to myself” (Acts 20:24). Friends, to avoid all risk is to avoid the Christian life. “We ought to lay down our lives for the brothers” (1 John 3:16), and that is for all of us.
It might be the risk of old age, like Polycarp, who refused to deny Christ and was burned at the stake at eighty-six. It might be violent risk, as Tertullian said: “Rack, torture, grind us to powder; our numbers only increase as you mow us down.” It might be professional risk, like Wycliffe, who lost his position at Oxford for resisting Rome's errors. It might be the risk of a woman like Anne Askew, racked and burned for denying the Catholic Mass. It might be family risk, like John Bunyan, with four children including his blind daughter, Mary. They told him, “Just stop preaching and you can go home to your children,” and he answered that the moss should sooner grow on his eyebrows than he would stop preaching. Risk is the inescapable consequence of a faithful Christian life.
2. The rescue from risk: God's prerogative
God has not promised to rescue us from risk. “He has been distressed because you heard that he was ill. Indeed he was ill, near to death. But God had mercy on him.” We reject the prosperity gospel, a false gospel that says Jesus came to make us healthy and wealthy. No, Jesus came to remove the Father's wrath. I once heard a prosperity preacher say, “This church is the pool of Bethesda, and I am the angel who stirs the waters; all who come to me will be healed.” But God has not promised to spare our lives, and if he does, it is a mercy.
Great men and women throughout Scripture took risks knowing they might or might not be rescued. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refused to bow to Nebuchadnezzar's golden image: “He will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not…” Esther, to save her people, risked coming before the king uninvited, which could have meant death: “If I perish, I perish.” And here is Epaphroditus, apparently taken ill on the way to Paul, near to death, on his deathbed because of Paul. These verses are full of longing and distress; that word distressed is used of Jesus in Gethsemane. Paul says that if his life had not been spared, he would have had sorrow upon sorrow. God has not promised that when we go to Uzbekistan or Indonesia he will spare our lives. If he does, it is a mercy.
3. Restraint from risk: love and wisdom
Verse 28 surprises us: “I am the more eager to send him, therefore, that you may rejoice at seeing him again, and that I may be less anxious.” You'd expect the great missionary Paul to say, “Suck it up, Epaphroditus. Welcome to big-boy Christianity. Never quit.” Instead Paul shrewdly sends him home to Philippi. That surprises us because Paul is the example of risk; in 2 Corinthians 11 he needs his fingers and toes to count the beatings, slanders, tortures, stonings and shipwrecks. He was public enemy number one. Yet he was not given to a hyper-risk, throw-caution-to-the-wind, go-out-in-a-blaze-of-glory gamble. We don't want that kind of risk in missions.
There is a difference between careful risk and thoughtless chance. We don't call thoughtless chance godly risk; we have another word for it: presumption. Presumption was Satan's third temptation of Jesus: throw yourself down so the angels will swoop in and save you. God does promise in Psalm 91 (quoted by Satan) to guard his beloved, but only within the framework of his holy will. Snake handlers and poison drinkers take ill-advised risks because they are not trusting God; they are tempting him. Not Paul. His words drip with emotion. He is tender, and he decides it is better for Epaphroditus to go home. The Philippians are concerned about Epaphroditus, Epaphroditus is concerned about the Philippians, Paul is concerned about them both, and no one is concerned about himself. They are humble, and Paul is compassionate.
Several lessons follow. First, local churches, you should have a close, intimate relationship with your missionaries. When is the music on the platform too loud? When you can't hear the congregation singing. When does a church have too many missionaries? When it can't hear its missionaries weeping. I fear many churches have too many missionaries today; they are just faces on prayer cards. I don't know your denomination or your church's approach to missions, but if you have no sorrow upon sorrow when your missionaries are hurting, no anxiety when they are in danger, and no over-the-moon joy at their success, you don't know your missionaries, and something is wrong.
Second, there are times to restrain risk. Every missionary falls off the horse on one side or the other. Some take too many risks and need to be pulled back; some take too few, are fearful, and need to be pushed out of the nest. Paul was not opposed to avoiding danger: he escaped in a basket down a city wall (Acts 9); he withdrew from the synagogue when opposition hardened; he judged a Mediterranean voyage in winter too risky; he appealed to his Roman citizenship when things got too dangerous. So churches need wisdom and love as they counsel their missionaries.
In 1862 John Paton had been on the island of Tanna for four years, running for his life. He had lost his wife and buried his baby boy (“I almost went mad beside that lonely grave”). Then a ship of deliverance appeared, and he decided to take it. But one of his fellow missionaries locked himself in a room, saying he would die rather than take the way of escape. They pleaded, and he wouldn't listen. Paton wrote: “We tried to show him the inconsistency of praying to God to protect us or grant us means of escape, and then refusing to accept a rescue sent to us in our last extremity. We argued that it was surely better to live and work for Jesus than to die as a self-made martyr.”
So was Mathieson's choice good risk or bad? Camp Courage points to 1 Corinthians 15:30, where Paul is in danger every hour. Camp Caution points to Luke 4:30, where Jesus slips away from his countrymen. Paul and Paton seem to agree, as Paton later wrote: “Though I am by conviction a strong Calvinist, I am no fatalist. I held on while one gleam of hope remained. Escape for life was now the only path of duty.” Paul wasn't worried about notches on his church-planting belt. He loved people, and through love and wisdom he decided this man should go home. Church leaders, may you know your missionaries so well that you can counsel them wisely through risk.
4. The response to risk: honor
When Paton reached Australia after four years, having lost everything, his family, after running from cannibals for four years, a church leader told him, “You should have died at your post.” Paul is worried about the same thing for Epaphroditus. When he returns to Philippi, Paul wants him honored. (We write biographies of great missionaries precisely because they risked their lives for Christ.) So in verse 29 Paul tells the Philippians to respond in three ways. Receive him in the Lord: welcome him as a brother in Christ, not a second-class citizen. Receive him with all joy: with unreserved enthusiasm, not resentment. Honor such men: the word describes a precious stone in 1 Peter 2:4. Diamonds are precious because they are rare, and missionaries who put their lives on the line for Christ are rare. So when your missionary comes back to your church broken, physically, emotionally and spiritually, Paul says: honor them. Don't discourage them; build them up.
5. The reason for risk: Christ
Ego is a wrong motive for risk. So are ambition, popularity, adventure and curiosity. “He nearly died for the work of Christ.” Nothing makes Christ look more beautiful and glorious than when we risk our lives for him. When we take risks, it highlights not human wisdom but Christ's worth.
Before we close, I want to speak to some specific groups, because I don't want anyone to leave thinking, “This is only for missionaries,” or that you should feel guilty about the good things God has given you in this great land.
Churches: be careful not to stockpile your most gifted men for stateside service and send out your least qualified. “We'd never want so-and-so as an elder here, so let's send him somewhere else.” Don't do that. And churches discourage risk among their most gifted men by implying that suffering among the poorest, most dangerous and least educated peoples is beneath them, dangling ecclesiastical carrots to urge them to stay.
Seminaries: I am all for well-educated missionaries who can teach. Yes, give them a heavy dose of systematic theology, hermeneutics, homiletics, languages and church history. But don't swing so far the other way that education keeps them home and the dream dies. I've seen it a hundred times. A young man dreams of missions overseas. He goes to college, then of course the MDiv; but if you have an MDiv you need a ThM, and with a ThM you need a DMin, and with a DMin you might as well get a PhD. Now he's thirty-five with three kids and a mortgage, and the dream of cross-cultural missions has died. Like it or not, missions is usually a young person's game. It takes enormous strength to endure the heat, the work, the change and the grind of a hard place. And think of language, and how much harder it is to learn as we age. Every missionary wishes the gift of preaching in an unknown language still existed; it would save years of anguish and heartache. But successful missionary work usually begins not with visions but with vocabulary cards. We need to give our strongest years to Christ, so be careful not to quench missionary zeal by fostering a thirst for unnecessary higher education. The St Andrews six were prodigies; they all went in their twenties, and many didn't even take their degrees.
Parents: sadly, parents are often the greatest deterrent to their children taking risks in missions. We sing, “Give of thy sons to bear the message glorious; give of thy wealth to speed them on their way,” as long as it's not my child. John Paton was in church when the call went out for missionaries to the cannibals of the New Hebrides. Everyone knew what that meant: twenty years earlier John Williams had anchored off Erromango, rowed ashore in a small boat, and, in view of his ship, been chased, captured, killed, cooked and eaten. Now they were asking for missionaries again, and no hand went up. They cast lots, and that didn't work. Finally a hand went up: John Paton, Glasgow's prized city missionary. “No, you can't go; you're too valuable to us.” “I'm going.” “We'll pay you more.” “I'm going.” “You'll fail; your fruit will die on the vine.” “I'm going.” Everyone discouraged him. He went home and told his parents, and his mother said, “Come here, my child” (he was in his early thirties). They told him, “Your father always wanted to be a missionary, but it never worked out.” His father was a stocking manufacturer all his life. “We dedicated our firstborn son on the altar to missions, and now it is coming to pass. Go with our blessing, my son.” Oh, that parents would say those words to their children! I understand: it is much easier to yield myself to missions than my children, because praying that they become missionaries is essentially praying that they will suffer greatly. But yield your children to missions.
Men: ladies, I am so thankful for your interest in missions. We need you; the Great Commission needs you, and many young women come to our own ministry. But for two centuries, essentially since Hudson Taylor, missions has been dominated by women. Men, God designed you to be risk-takers. Epaphroditus was a man; Paul was a man; and through church history, from the apostles on, every great missionary movement has been led by men. Men, we shouldn't expect the women to be the first out of the foxhole. Take risks for Christ.
Children: my favorite part of missions conferences is talking with children. To the young ones here (Josh, fourteen; Nolan, thirteen; Owen, thirteen; and others I've met): cultivate that desire for missions. Be active in your local church and read great missionary biographies to fan the flame in your heart.
We need missionaries to take risks, and churches to take risks, for Christ's sake. Three weeks ago I was in a place in Africa that shows up on the Codex app as a notch on the map: a people of three million with no churches. It is among the poorest places on earth: no roads, no electricity, a three-hour boat ride to get there, unimaginable lack of education, malaria, heat, and on our property, hippos and crocodiles. Three million people, no churches, and we have no missionaries to go. We need risk-takers, missionaries, and risk-awakeners, churches, to throw off the myth of safety and the enchantment of security. Use your wealth for Christ, like Lydia, who supported missions. Use your compassion for Christ, like the Philippian jailer. Use your encouragement for Christ, like Epaphroditus. And use your life for Christ, who came, suffered, pleaded and died.
Is it worth putting yourself in danger for Christ? Yes. So what are you risking for him? Mary Paton, age nineteen, left with her husband John for the island of cannibals. She knew the danger and counted the cost; everyone told her she was being careless and frivolous with her life. She did die, at nineteen. And among her last words were these: “If I had the same thing to do over again, I would do it with far more pleasure. Yes, with all my heart.”
Father, raise up risk-takers, and risk-advancers in the local church, and may the name of Christ be exalted. We ask in Jesus' name, amen.