REACHING THE WORLD FOR CHRIST

Paul’s Missionary Strategy
(Romans 15:14-33)

Paul was the most brilliant missions strategist the world has known. His travels were perhaps unequalled till the world travels of John R. Mott in the first half of the twentieth century. His methods weren’t really understood or expounded till the writings of Roland Allen, less than a hundred years ago. In this message, preached at Greyfriars Classical Service on 2 December 2007, Rob Yule — who has done some travel himself in service of Christian mission — identifies the key aspects of Paul’s missionary strategy, and pays tribute to his greatness as a missionary statesman.

The previous three chapters have shown us Paul’s pastoral heart — his concern that the Christians in Rome respect one another’s beliefs and feelings, and live together in love and acceptance. Yet many pastoral-minded people have absolutely no concern for mission. Here we see Paul’s greatness. He combined in one man the compassionate heart of a pastor and the strategic vision of a missionary statesman.

Paul’s motivation

First let us consider Paul’s motivation. His global vision to take the good news of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles was the result of the dramatic change in his life that happened at his conversion. It supercharged his life. It gave him boundless energy. It gave him a divine mission.

1. He describes himself as God’s priest or representative. He says he is ‘a minister of Messiah Jesus to the Gentiles.’ He describes his calling as ‘the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God.’ (15:16).

2. Implied in this description is a view of his converts as God’s possession or property. He says his priestly role is that of presenting Gentiles as ‘an offering acceptable to God’ (15:16b). Evangelists need to remember that they do not control the life or soul of a convert. ‘All evangelists are priests,’ says John Stott, because they offer their converts to God.’ (Romans, p. 379). Converts, says Paul, are ‘sanctified by the Holy Spirit’ (15:16c); they are the property or possession of God.

3. Paul consciously relied on God’s power or activity. It was God’s work he was involved in. ‘I will not venture to speak of anything except what Messiah has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done — by the power of signs and miracles, through the power of the Spirit.’ (15:18).

Paul’s methods

In considering Paul’s methods, we note that Paul’s was a holistic mission. Many lesser Christian leaders ride their favourite hobby-horses. Paul drove a whole team. He says that he brought Gentiles to know God by what he ‘said’, by what he ‘did’, and ‘by the power of signs and wonders’ (15:18-19). Paul witnessed in a comprehensive way, appealing to eargate, eyegate and mindgate — in words, works and wonders; in speech, service and signs; in preaching, practical action and power.

‘Human beings often learn more through their eyes than through their ears.’ says John Stott. Words explain works, but works dramatise words.’ (Romans, p. 380).

Bold and courageous preaching, presenting, reasoning, explaining, arguing. In the book of Acts we see Paul using all these methods of speech and communication.

In caring action and self-sacrificing labours, Paul gave himself for his converts. He laboured to support himself. He gave of himself to build converts up in their faith, tirelessly labouring for their welfare. His collection of money for the poor believers in Jerusalem is just one example of his compassionate lifestyle.

Paul’ ministry was charismatic and Spirit-led. It wasn’t just a work bounded by human possibilities, but validated and grounded in the Holy Spirit, so that converts were genuinely converted and lastingly impacted.

Paul’s mission

In considering Paul’s mission, we see that it was a pioneering mission. He was a pioneer, a trail-blazer. He made it his ambition not to build on any one else’s work, and not to work where Christ was already known. ‘It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation.’ (15:20). Paul explains that this was so that ‘those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand’ (15:21, quoting Isaiah 52:15).

This strategy involved several key elements:

1. Itineration

Paul traveled enormous distances to take the gospel to new areas, ‘regions beyond’. In eleven years — beginning with his first missionary journey in AD 46 — he travelled and evangelised from Jerusalem ‘all the way round’ in a great arc to Illyricum (the Adriatic coastal region of modern Albania and Macedonia).

Paul speaks of his future travel plans, which leave you exhausted just to contemplate them. He is going to sail from Corinth to Jerusalem, taking the collection he has been gathering for the poor believers there. Then he plans to travel from Jerusalem to Rome to visit his correspondents. And finally, he plans to travel from Rome to Spain, to begin evangelizing the West Roman Empire.

If he was to make all these journeys by ship, the first would be 1,300 kilometres, the second 2,400 kilometres, and the third 1,100 kilometres. By sea the total distance would be nearly 5,000 kilometres— and many more if he were to travel some of the way by land.

When you consider the difficulties of travel in the Roman world, Paul must have been one of the most-travelled people of ancient times — just as John R. Mott, the St. Paul of modern times and perhaps the greatest Christian of the first half of the twentieth century, was said to be the most travelled person in the age the steamship. In a sixty-five year career he travelled some 2.75 million kilometres on behalf of YMCA, Student Volunteer Movement, and World Student Christian Federation, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1946 (Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions, ed. Gerald H. Anderson [Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1999], p. 476).

2. Propagation

Introducing these travel plans, Paul makes what seems an outlandish claim, that ‘there is no more place for me to work in these regions.’ (15:23).

If you did mission like most people do mission — trying to witness to everybody yourself — this would be a ridiculous statement. It wasn’t until the work of an unconventional mission strategist of modern times, Roland Allen, that Paul’s strategy of building self-propagating churches was properly understood.

In 1912 Allen published his radical book, Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? As a result of Allen’s insights, we can now appreciate what Paul’s strategy was. It was to plant self-propagating or self-reproducing churches in each of the main provincial cities of the Roman Empire. He would stay around long enough — usually one to three years — to establish a church, train the local Christians in the basics of the faith and to share their faith, then leave them to evangelise their locality or hinterland themselves.

With that strategy Paul could truthfully say — without a note of falsehood or exaggeration — that he had nothing left to do in these regions. He had established viable, self-propagating churches right across the East Roman Empire, from Jerusalem to the Adriatic coast.

3. Integration

A third feature of Paul’s mission strategy was the integration of Jews and Gentiles in one community of faith.

We have become so accustomed to nineteen centuries of estrangement of Christian churches from our Jewish origins and Jewish roots, that we don’t even realize what stunted and deprived religious movements we have grown up in. Indeed, I have heard a modern woman theologian, Margaret Brearley, of Selley Oaks Colleges in Birmingham, England, say that Christian churches need renewal movements to continually recover their Jewish core, to stop them degenerating into the natural paganism of their Gentile surroundings.

The whole burden of Paul’s mission was to take the good news of the Jewish Messiah first to his fellow Jews, then to the Gentiles. As he puts it, ‘Christ has become a servant of the Jews on behalf of God’s truth, to confirm the promises made to the patriarchs so that the Gentiles may glorify God for his mercy.’ (15:8-9).

Paul the Jew was God’s chosen messenger to take the message of the Jewish Messiah and of the God of Israel to the Gentile nations and the whole world. Wherever he went he worked tirelessly to do this — ‘to the Jew first and also to the Greek’ (1:16) — speaking to Jews in their synagogues and Gentiles in their town squares and city halls.

This dependence on the Jews for our spiritual blessings, Paul explains, makes us debtors to the Jews for their material provision. ‘For if the Gentiles have shared in the Jews’ spiritual blessings, they owe it to the Jews to share with them their material blessings.’ (15:27). Gentile churches would be greatly blessed if they would give practical support to Messianic Jewish witness today.

Participation

Mission is not for loners. It’s a cooperative enterprise. Paul seeks the assistance of the Christians of Rome in his future mission plans (15:24). John Stott points out that the word ‘assist’ used by Paul — ‘I hope… to have you assist me on my journey’ to Spain — had become ‘almost a technical term for helping missionaries on their way.’ (Romans, p. 385). Paul seeks two forms of assistance, two ways they might participate in his mission:

• By helping him in his courageous plan to evangelise the West Roman Empire — rather as he had for the previous decade used the church at Antioch as the springboard for his missionary journeys in evangelising the East Roman Empire.

• By helping him in his compassionate plan to subsidise the church in Jerusalem — so expressing gratitude and honouring the mother church of the Christian movement.

Paul’s modesty

You cannot read this section of the Bible without realizing that you are in the presence of a towering Christian figure. What Mozart is to world music, or Shakespeare to world literature, St. Paul is to world evangelism. What largeness of vision, what energy of achievement, what dedication of life he displayed!

Yet Paul was utterly modest and self-effacing about his achievements. This great missionary statesman could say, ‘I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me.’ (15:18).

Rob Yule, 2 December 2007
© 2007, Greyfriars Presbyterian Church