Pensees: A Missionary Statesman

A Missionary Statesman

My wife and I had the distinct privilege of hosting Dr. David Hesselgrave and his wife, Gertrude, along with our missionaries and a few other friends for brunch. Our time around the table lasted three missions-saturated hours. Many years ago I read David Hesselgrave’s work, Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally, and more recently his latest work, Paradigms in Conflict. Both are superb.

One might imagine that a man in his eighties who started ministry in 1945 and has written at least 14 published works would be slowing down. That is hardly the case for Dr. Hesselgrave. He is planning his next book, writes several hours a day, and is very current with issues, trends, and controversies in today’s world.

We were delightfully refreshed by his passion for truth, his vigorous explanations and critiques of the emergent church, his opinion on all things world missions, and his old-fashioned views of missions. By “old-fashioned” I mean a yearning to turn the eyes of young pastors away from the allure of extra-biblical methodology and toward a recommitment to straight-forward, propositional evangelism and church-planting.

I was stimulated by the fellowship. What a blessing both he and his wife were. We enjoyed her zeal for the Lord as well.

It is unfortunate that fundamental baptist missions generally lacks awareness of trends, philosophies, cross-cultural analyses, and paradigm conflicts. Most fundamental baptist missionaries have never heard of David Hesselgrave because intellectual training for the specific challenges of cross-cultural evangelism is almost non-existent. My guess is that an exception would be missionaries from Inter-city Baptist Church in Allan Park, MI. I am willing to wager that they, for the most part, are probably more trained in missiology. That is a very uneducated guess (hope) based on the fact that there is a seminary there as well as Student Global Impact.

That’s irrelevant, but I am just wondering outloud where fundamentalists are when it comes to missiology. My impression with most missionaries that I encounter is that they have no earthly idea what they are doing. I am, to put it bluntly, generally dismayed by the low expectations we have of our missionaries. I plan to write extensively on this in the future.

Nonetheless, I added to my library a number of books by David Hesselgrave and he autographed our books for us. Jennie’s brunch was delicious, the coffee was superb (if I may say so myself), and I am now ready to go hear our speaker for tonight’s meeting, Pastor Tony Jones from All Nations Community Church in St. Helena, SC.