Lisa Barry: If I were assembling a group of people and asked them to describe what a missionary is and does, we?d get as many descriptions as there are people. Some will envision only the images of the last slide-show at church which featured church members. Others put missionaries on such a pedestal they almost cease to remain human. Well, today on Gateway To Joy, Elisabeth Elliot will seek to level the playing field for all of us and give an accurate portrayal of missionaries past and present. It promises to be an eye-opening 15 minutes, so stay with us as we begin this Friday edition of Gateway To Joy.

Elisabeth Elliot: "You are loved with an everlasting love." That?s what the Bible says. "And underneath are the everlasting arms." This is your friend Elisabeth Elliot, talking today about a missionary story. I had a letter from somebody saying, "I would love to hear Elisabeth do a broadcast on what we in the United States can do to support missionaries. I did a paper on this once and found it very interesting to see that we can do so much, but we do do so little. As we are to remember those in bonds as bound with them, it would be wonderful if Elisabeth could open people's eyes to the area of missions."

Well, I want to read to you an interesting story about one of those 19^th century missionaries. I've heard a lot of nonsense about 19^th century missionaries. They did everything wrong and it's only in the last half of the 20^th century that we've learned how we're suppose to behave as missionaries. Well, I just don't buy all of that. Of course, some missionaries have made mistakes and some of them haven't. So let's hear the story of one of those 19^th century missionaries.

All generalizations are false, including this one. Yet we keep making them. We create images--graven ones that can't be changed. We dismiss or accept people, products, programs and propaganda according to the labels they come under. We know a little about something and we treat it as though we know everything.

I couldn't count the times I've heard 19^th century missions and missionaries sighted as examples of stupidity and failure. I heard a whole lecture predicated on this assumption. They were bigoted and imperialistic and naïve and arrogant and hypocritical. Some of them probably were some of those things. Some 20^th century missionaries might make the ones of the last century look like paragons by comparison. Missionaries are, and indeed we go over this again, human like everybody else.

But the world has seen some great ones. In a box of old family papers, I found a little frayed booklet put out in 1906 by the Yale Foreign Missionary Society, entitled A Modern Knight by Joseph Hopkins Tritchell. It broke up some of my categories. It was the story of John Coleridge Patteson, Bishop of Melanesia. He was English. Of course, I said to myself. I think of 19^th century missionaries as English. That's my generalization, of course.

"He came from a refined English home. He was the nephew of the famous poet Coleridge and the son of an eminent jurist. He had his place by birth, the booklet says, in the upper circles of English society. He grew up in a praying household, notably pervaded with the spirit of humble piety.

"He was confirmed in the Church of England, went to Eton, and graduated from Oxford--a rarely-accomplished scholar. But instead of becoming a jurist, like his father, John went as a missionary to the Melanesian Islands to work with people who were nearly all savages and naked and cannibalistic. A people marked by features of repulsiveness and horrible ferocity, according to the chronicler. But it is interesting to notice that Patteson himself spoke of them as men. To him they were naturally gentlemanly and well bred and courteous.

"I never saw a 'gent,' by which term I think Patteson meant one who vulgarly tries to imitate a gentleman in Melanesia, though not a few savages. I vastly prefer the savages. He saw that they spoke a language, not the uncouth jargon of barbarians as many assumed. Patteson considered some of the Melanesian languages better than English for translating the Bible Hebrew and Greek.

"He gave them his company, writes Tritchell. For years together he scarcely saw any human being save his handful of assistance and his dark-skinned Melanesians. He never married. He adopted that race as his family. It is Tritchell who thought of them as a wild race. Patteson had none of the conventional talk about degraded heathen.

"They were his brothers. He was ecumenical in spirit. At one time, having to assume charge of a mission of another denomination, where he scrupulously conformed to the practices of that mission, though he admitted that he greatly missed the prayer book.

"The nurture of the indigenous Church has been thought to be a recent emphasis in missionary work. Patteson made this is primary object. He visited the islands for 4-6 months of each year, and spent the rest of the time instructing people of both sexes at a central location. He insisted that they return to their homes at the end of the instruction period as a test of their own progress.

"Patteson himself was up against gross misconceptions of the nature of his work, but he wrote truthfully about it. Quote, "In these introductory visits, scarcely anything is done or said that resembles mission work in stories. The crowd is great, the noise is greater. The heat, the dirt, the inquisitiveness, the begging makes something unlike the interesting pictures in a missionary magazine of an amiable individual, very correctly dressed in a white tie and black-tailed coat, in a group of very attentive, decently-clothed, nicely-washed natives.

"Patteson could not abide sentimentality. That lifeless, heartless and ultimately cruel idol of many Christians. 'One who takes a sentimental view of the Coral Islands and coconuts is, of course, worse than useless,' he wrote. A man possessed with the idea that he is making a sacrifice will never do. A man who thinks any kind of work beneath him will simply be in the way.

"Patteson was to be found milking cows and cutting out girls dresses, and doing things that people in England thought shocking. Integration was not a word in his vocabulary as we use it today. And he deplored that pride of race which prompts a white man to regard colored people as inferior to himself. They, the natives, have a strong sense of an acquiescence in their inferiority. 'Does an ant know how to speak to a cow?' one of them once said. But if we treat them as inferiors they will always remain in that position.

"My objection to mission reports has always been that the readers want to hear of progress, and the writers are thus tempted to write of it. And may they not, without knowing it, be at times hasty that they may seem to be progressing. People expect too much, because missionary work looks like failure. It does not follow that it is. Our Savior's work looked like a failure. He made no mistakes, either in what He taught or in the way of teaching it. And he succeeded, though not to the eyes of men.

"Patteson saw his own work as seed sowing. He was prepared to wait long and patiently, and not to dig up in doubt what he had planted in faith. He gave to the handful of Melanesians whom he was training a care of instruction and discipline that was deliberate and painstaking beyond measure.

"We've heard of missionaries of the last century accused of transferring European civilization to the native culture as though it were synonymous with Christianity. Patteson said, 'I have longed felt that there is almost harm done in trying to make these Islanders like English people. They are to be Melanesian, not English, Christians. Unless we can de-nationalize ourselves and eliminate all that belongs to us as English and not as Christians, we cannot be to them what a well-instructed countryman of theirs may be. Christianity is the religion of humanity at large. It has room for all. It takes in all shades and diversities of character, race, etc.'

"When he was a little over 40, Patteson visited an island he had never been to. He was received from his ship in a native canoe and taken to shore. The crew waited hours for his return. And at last saw two canoes leaving the beach--one towing the other which appeared to be empty. Soon the empty canoe was cast adrift while the other was paddled rapidly back to shore.

"Cautiously, the boat's crew made toward the drifting canoe. As they drew along side they saw the body of John Coleridge Patteson wrapped in a mat, a palm frond laid on his chest. It was the 1871.

"The Church for the most part has forgotten this name in the long list of its martyrs. It forgets most of what has been done and suffered and thinks it is doing and suffering now as never before. We boast of our progress from missions to mission, for example. And criticize those bunglers of 100 years ago. But criticism is an easy chair exercise, especially when the critic does not trouble himself to look at the data, but relies chiefly on what he himself feels or on 'what everybody knows' on generalizations.

"Thank heaven the work of Patteson and all other missionaries, as well as the work that you and I have to do today, is subject to the judgement of a Judge who is God of all--who never makes mistakes, never sees the counterfeit for the real, and never needs to revise His categories, never lumps men together."

I was so delighted to find that story about John Coleridge Patteson. He was way ahead of many of today's missionaries. May God give us a missionary spirit for His glory.

Lisa Barry: What great help that reading that was. I have to admit that I too am guilty of making broad generalizations about missionaries and their duties. I hope today?s program has broadened your horizons as well. In fact, if you?d like to learn more about the lives of famous missionaries, Elisabeth has put together a list of missionary biographies that we?d be happy to send to you free of charge. Just ask for the free copy of recommended missionary biographies. And as we bring this week of talks to a close, I?d like to give you one last opportunity to purchase the book Stepping Heavenward by Elisabeth Prentiss. It?s a book Elisabeth Elliot thinks everyone should read. It?s honest, vulnerable and challenging all at the same time. The cost of the book is $14.50 you can send that along with your request to:

Gateway To Joy, Box 82500, Lincoln, NE 68501. Or call toll-free, 1-800-759-4JOY. That?s 1-800-759-4569. Or a third option is our web site and that can be found at gatewaytojoy.org. All of the things I?ve mentioned today can be ordered over the Web site.

Gateway To Joy has been a production of Back to the Bible. And you can be a part of this ministry as you support us through your prayers and gifts. Gateway To Joy relies on the generosity of it?s listeners to keep these programs on the air. On Monday, Elisabeth continues on the theme of marriage with the popular series, "Me Obey Him?" Be sure and join us then for the next Gateway To Joy.