“I hear that missions in Britain,” a friend said to me once during our deputation years, “is like plowing through concrete.” I was used to talking about missions strategy, or more often, deputation progress, so my friend’s gritty simile left me a little dumbstruck. “Surely that’s a bit pessimistic,” I thought to myself, probably while nodding stoically at my friend. However, during our nearly 13 years of “plowing” in Wales I have sometimes wondered if my friend had not painted a bit too rosy of a picture of what missions in the UK can be like.
Here in the UK, it is increasingly the case that Christians must take the long view of ministry. In this post-Christian, highly secular context, it is far more common for conversions to Christ to take years rather than happen suddenly. Accordingly, we have had to be content with a slow and steady plod in ministry accompanied by an even slower, but still steady, harvest of gospel fruit. Combine this phenomenon with the occasional ministry setback, and growth is slow. Three steps forward, two steps back, and so forth.
Proceeding in the Opposite Direction
Despite slow progress, we haven’t given up. God’s promises spur us on, and we have seen evidence that God is at work. We have often felt tantalizingly close to a significant breakthrough. Our goal for 2020 after almost nine years in our present location, was to plod a little faster. We felt it was time to boost the intensity of our ministry, try more new things, and challenge the church to launch out with us and see how the Lord might work.
As the year wore on and we passed through varying degrees of lockdown, our plans came to a halt. Like everyone else, we learned about Zoom, began livestreaming, sent a lot of texts, and prayed that God would somehow get us through this strange and seemingly endless difficulty. While we didn’t exactly panic, neither did we miss the irony that our ministry was proceeding in the opposite direction of how we had planned.
But Good Things Happened Anyway
Or was it? Despite our disappointment over all the cancelled plans and postponed goals, we began to see that really good things were happening anyway. People were growing through the Zoom Bible studies, which we assumed would be a poor substitute for face-to-face ministry. A couple people have been saved in the last year, after several years of attending church with Christian family members. Another was saved a few months before lockdown and continues to grow, despite a difficult home life. A young man who was saved in prison during the lockdown has since been released and is now attending our church and being discipled.
All told, we are hoping to add five new members to our small village church by the end of this year, three of them through baptism. At the start of 2020, I would not have dared to expect the kind of fruit we’ve seen since then, and nearly all of it has come through means we never envisioned.
Of the Many Lessons, One Stands Out
Stories such as this should encourage us, and the lessons tend to suggest themselves for those who have been plowing ministry furrows of their own, spreading gospel seed, and scanning the fields for a harvest or even just a few handfuls of fruit. God works according to His own timetable, by the means that He chooses, and gospel progress often comes in spite of us rather than because of us. No doubt, many readers could tell their own stories and give their own lessons!
Rather than expand on any of these applications, I wish simply to say that the past 18 months have reminded us in a new way that we are entirely dependent on the grace of God. Whether we “plow through concrete” or receive a fruitful harvest, we all serve the same gracious God Who justifies the ungodly apart from their works and could not be more favorably disposed toward His people than He is already because of Christ. As we labor imperfectly on the mission field, frequently confronted by our own limitations, it is a relief to realize, “…neither he who plants nor he who waters is anything, but only God [gives] the growth” (1 Corinthians 3:7).