Marianne Vermeer, who recently returned from the three-year assignment on the administration of Forman College in Lahore, Pakistan, offered a brief history of Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) missions, including that of the predecessor denominations. In the early years of work in India/Pakistan, she said, the focus was to “convert the heathen” in those exact words.
“They never had enough money. They always felt the home church didn’t need as much support as they needed, and they felt they weren’t paid enough. Some things never change,” she added with wry grin.
Given the caste structure there, the Presbyterian missionaries focused on the poorest, the least educated, and most despised people on the continent: the untouchables.
Forman College became one of the most important institutions in that part of the world, educating many of the nation’s leaders, including one-third of the members of the recently deposed Musharraf government. Nevertheless, “It was never far from my mind,” she said, “that Forman Christian College was started as an evangelistic effort in 1864.”
Vermeer offered six lessons she has drawn from such global missions efforts that can help US Presbyterians revive their evangelistic efforts.
We cannot underestimate the importance of a strategy, she declared, citing the earlier missionaries. “You cannot argue with the fact that they decided what to do and they did it. They got on boats, traveled half way around the world to do what they’d never done before, and they established institutions that continue to serve a hundred or more years later.”
Second, we need to target, as they did, the people most likely to be receptive to the gospel.
Third, we should be using mission workers to help start conversations — right here where overseas cultures continue to intrigue and draw people into dialogue.
Fourth, we need to embrace and even search for the disruption and displacement that entrepreneurial development inevitably stirs. Just as early mission efforts disrupted the caste system in India, we need to be asking how the church can “catalyze a healthy response” to such situations as the present economic crisis.
Fifth, our past mission success resulted in large part from a commitment for the long haul. “I am amazed at what the early missionaries were willing to do. Fred and Marky Stock have been on the Indian mission field for 50 years … We have to be willing to commit to that kind of effort. It takes a long time.”
Finally, the power of prayer. “My Pakistani friends shame me in their faith in prayer and their devotion to it.” They believe that “faithfulness in prayer is how you show God that you’re ready for God to work. As you pray your heart is made ready to receive God’s answer to your prayer. God is preparing us for the day it might happen.”
How might we emulate the Pakistani Christians? Simply by adopting the same resolve they have. “They are led by the cross, are empowered by prayer and believe they have been called to evangelize the lost.”
