Early years.
I first heard the word missionary when I was very young while attending a Sunday school run by a group of Christians attached to Robert Hall Memorial Baptist Church. The meetings for children were held in our local day school near where I lived. I was told that “young Robert” arrived home one Sunday afternoon to announce, “The teacher says that next week we MUST bring our parents along with us because we have a special visit by a missionary.” I had no idea what a missionary was but I was zealous enough to get my parents to attend the special meeting. These were the war years of the 1940’s, WW2 was coming to a conclusion and life, it was hoped, would get back to normal!
Isaiah 11 verse 6 states “ . . a little child shall lead them”.
That was true in my case, for from that very moment my parents attended the newly formed Baptist Church and with renewed faith put their trust in the Lord Jesus and were baptised. I can remember them being baptised by immersion, and I can recall the dedication both of them had to this church which was eventually built on the corner of the street where we lived.
I first heard the word missionary when I was very young while attending a Sunday school run by a group of Christians attached to Robert Hall Memorial Baptist Church. The meetings for children were held in our local day school near where I lived. I was told that “young Robert” arrived home one Sunday afternoon to announce, “The teacher says that next week we MUST bring our parents along with us because we have a special visit by a missionary.” I had no idea what a missionary was but I was zealous enough to get my parents to attend the special meeting. These were the war years of the 1940’s, WW2 was coming to a conclusion and life, it was hoped, would get back to normal!
Isaiah 11 verse 6 states “ . . a little child shall lead them”.
That was true in my case, for from that very moment my parents attended the newly formed Baptist Church and with renewed faith put their trust in the Lord Jesus and were baptised. I can remember them being baptised by immersion, and I can recall the dedication both of them had to this church which was eventually built on the corner of the street where we lived.
Not only is there a church in Leicester named after Robert Hall but there is a fine statue of this Baptist preacher in one of the city’s squares. Today the name of Robert Hall means little or nothing to present day Christians. He was born in 1764, at Arnesby near Leicester, where his father, Robert Hall (1728-1791), was pastor of a Baptist congregation. Robert was the youngest of a family of fourteen. From a child his passion for books absorbed the greater part of his time, and in the summer it was his custom after school hours to retire to the churchyard with a volume, which he continued to peruse there till nightfall, making out the meaning of the more difficult words with the help of a pocket dictionary. Before he was nine years of age he had read and re-read Jonathan Edwards’s Treatise on the Will. Eventually after successful ministries around England he returned to Leicester to a small congregation in Harvey Lane Baptist Chapel. That church being made more memorable by the fact that William Carey (1789) was the pastor there before he left to take the gospel to India. Born in Paulerspury, England, August 17, 1761 and he died at Serampur, India, June 9, 1834. William Carey became known as "the father of the modern missions".
So these ramblings of mine have come full circle back to its starting point.
What is a Missionary? The English word "missionary" is derived from Latin, the equivalent of the Greek-derived word, "apostle" – meaning “ one who is sent forth”.
In 1823, eleven years before William Carey’s death a young man named Thomas Gamble moved from Friar Lane Baptist Church with a deep sense of mission into the outskirts of a quickly growing town of Leicester and planted a church. That church was the Carley Street Baptist Church which during a period of major reconstruction in the inner city in the 1950’s was demolished and the congreagtion moved into a new build premises within walking distance of the centre of the city. Many years further on from when that young man with a mission went into the outskirts of our town, a middle aged man was inducted in 1985 into the pastorate of that Baptist church. With the zeal and the passion for mission making Jesus Christ known still being present that once young Robert, who with missionary zeal got his parents attending church, was using that same missionary zeal to bring others into a relationship with Jesus Christ.
The child became a man – a man with a mission
- sent by God to go and make Christ known.
Now in the City of Leicester according to the 2001 UK Census records 25.73 % of the total population of 279,921 are of Indian origin, while by religion 15% are Hindu - one in seven people in the city are Hindus! It now would appear that William Carey's mission field has become our mission field. We have a commission from the Lord Jesus Christ to go and make Him known.
"Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age." Amen." Matthew 28:19-20
