“Foolishness of Faith”
“He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose”
Jim Elliot, missionary martyr (1927 – 1956)
Today is “April Fools Day” – no kidding! Remember the growing up years? On April 1, we would go off to school, bracing ourselves for unbelievable comments or stupid practical jokes, and hoping not to be called “April fool.”
Was it “foolish” for Jim Elliot (quoted above), a dynamic athlete and scholar at Wheaton College, to pack up with his wife, Elisabeth, and other young families to head off to the jungles of Ecuador? He and his friends could have chosen any number of “profitable” or “safe” career paths. Instead, he and four of his friends eventually became world renown missionary martyrs, dying at the hands of Auca Indians on January 8, 1956. Their story riveted the evangelical world and the secular press. Reflecting upon Elliot’s influential and visionary life, a college classmate said years later, “I was there when Jim Elliot died!” Those around this person protested, reminding him that all five of the missionaries present that fateful day were killed. “No, you don’t understand,” his friend responded. “Jim Elliot did not die in Ecuador. I was beside him in the altar at a student revival. It was there – in the altar – where I saw him die.” In his moment of consecration to the call of God, Jim Elliot found the secret of dying to self, losing his life in order to find it in service to God.
One of the five, Nate Saint, had written in his journal, “And people who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives…and when the bubble has burst they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted” (Jim Elliot and Nate Saint quotations are from World Shapers: A Treasury of Quotes From Great Missionaries. Compiled by Vinita Hampton and Carol Plueddemann. Wheaton, Illinois: Harold Shaw Publishers, 1991).
As a young intellectual and radical, Saul of Tarsus (later known as the Apostle Paul) was born into privilege. He had all he wanted from the best of three worlds – a Jew by birth, a Greek by training, and a Roman by citizenship. After a radical encounter with Jesus Christ he embarked on a self-denying life of introducing people to the One who had forever changed him:
“To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings” (1 Corinthians 9.22-23).
Paul understood that, “…the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God” (1 Corinthians 1.18).
Janice and I (well, let me speak for myself!) are not even in the same league as the Jim Elliott and Nate Saint families, and the Apostle Paul. But we can testify to this reality: Since our first teen-age commitments to the Lordship of Jesus Christ, and the past 40 years of world missions ministries, we have never regretted one moment of serving God and His international family in all parts of the globe. There we have met a lot of “fools for Christ” – intelligent and talented people who could do anything they wanted in a secular career but chose a missionary lifestyle. These missions leaders are the ones we now serve by training their national leaders and pastors, mentoring their younger missionaries, encouraging missionary families, and consulting with denominational missions departments, missions agencies, training schools, and local churches.
Fifteen months ago, in the “foolishness of faith,” we launched into an international ministry of training, consulting, and mentoring the global Great Commission community. It was the same “foolishness” that caused us to come home from our first “exploratory trip” to Germany in 1976 and tender our resignation from a stable ministry in California – before the official and final invitation to the European Theological Seminary was finally issued. So here we are in 2010 “foolishly” walking, by faith, through doors the Lord is opening across six continents in multiple contexts.
Grant McClung, President
Missions Resource Group
Missions Educator
Church of God World Missions
