Heart of a founder: William Carey
William Carey (1761-1834) was an impoverished village cobbler and part-time pastor with a limited education.
As a young pastor, Carey became focused on one question: “Was not the command given to the Apostles, to teach all nations obligatory on all succeeding ministers to the end of the world?”
Since the Reformation it was held that: either the Great Commission was given to the original Apostles and the heathen had already rejected the gospel or; God was sovereign and would save the heathen only when he was ready. The church was not concerned to take the gospel to the world.
In 1792 the Baptist Missionary Society was formed and Carey became its first missionary. In June 1793 Carey and his family left for India.
The Carey’s struggled for seven long years. Housing, health care and food were inadequate, resulting in the death of their young son and the emotional breakdown of Carey’s wife Dorothy. There was constant tension with the dominant power in India, the East India Company. Carey saw little progress in his ministry. His first Bengali translation of the New Testament was a failure.
No one would have blamed Carey for giving up. Yet he persisted and went on to become the “father of modern missions”.
As reports of Carey’s work began to reach home, others were inspired to form missionary societies and send out workers. More than any other individual, he had turned the tide of Protestant thought in favour of foreign missions.
Within half a century of his death in 1834 there were half a million Protestants among the peoples of India. Carey had redefined the nature of missions in such a way as to lay a foundation for the most expansive spread of the gospel the world has ever seen.
Lesson: Great founders see reality from God’s perspective and so they never give up.
