Christians believe Jesus Christ came to Earth with a divine message. After the Ascension, the followers of Jesus took the baton from him and picked up the task of spreading that same message. These messengers were called missionaries. This post will investigate Christian missionaries through the ages, with the focus being on how the Gospel message of Jesus spread from Jerusalem throughout the world. This article is not about church history or world historical events. Rather, the focus is on how Christian missionaries carried the message to new places.
What Is a Christian Missionary?
A missionary is a person with a mission—usually a religious mission. The Bible does not explicitly mention the term “missionary,” but the idea has its roots in the teachings of Jesus Christ. According to the Gospels (the Biblical books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) Jesus Christ is the Son of God who came to Earth with a divine message. Jesus taught people how to live according to the principles of the Kingdom of Heaven.
In the Great Commission—which became known as Jesus’s famous last words on Earth—Jesus commanded his followers to take what they learned from him out into the world. A missionary is someone who shares that message. One might say that Jesus was the first missionary who ever lived since Christian missionaries model their actions to his.
The Apostolic Age: The First Missionaries After Jesus
According to the Book of Acts, the first messengers were not called missionaries yet, they were called “Followers of the Way” (of Jesus). Only the apostles who were the original disciples of Jesus were believed to have the authority to be Christian missionaries at first. This changed when someone named Paul who used to persecute Christians had a divine encounter with God and went on to become the second most influential Christian missionary of all time (after Jesus himself, that is).
What is known as the Epistles (letters) in the New Testament were written as mentoring/coaching prompts from the first Christian missionaries to communities of new believers or churches that accepted the message. These missionary letters make up 21 of the 27 books in the New Testament. The historical narrative of the Bible ends around the year 70 CE with these missionary letters that signaled the birth of Christianity.
Jesus was opposed to institutionalized religion. However, the first missionaries saw that some structure was needed to spread the message successfully. After the original disciples, three Apostolic Fathers arose as leaders of Christianity from about 75 CE—they were Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycarp of Smyrna. During the Apostolic Age, the message spread for the first time to Gaza, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, India, Malta, Armenia, and Iran.
Ante-Nicene Period: Missions After the Time of the Bible
Two main threats faced the Early Church:
1. Persecution was a serious reality in those days and many of the first messengers were martyred by the Roman Empire.
2. What was originally a Jewish messianic movement soon turned to non-Jews instead and, like Jesus, Christian missionaries faced persecution from the Jews as well.
Therefore, being a Christian missionary in those times was by no means glorious or easy. The message that these first Christian missionaries brought was mostly only accepted by the poor and those in slavery, it was a message of hope for the hopeless. Despite all odds, the Christian missionary movement was impossible to suppress by 300 CE. Some parts of what we know as the New Testament Bible were already available in ten different languages. Missionaries spread the message to an even wider audience during this period, including modern-day Monaco, Algeria, Sri Lanka, Portugal, Morocco, Austria, Southern France, North Africa, Switzerland, Belgium, Paris, and Italy.
Late Antiquity: When Christianity Became Popular
Severe persecution continued until 313 CE when the Roman Emperor, Constantine the Great, converted to Christianity and issued the Edict of Milan which allowed freedom of religion. The message continued spreading quickly and like any story that is told and retold, different variations started popping up. The first council of Nicaea gathered in 325 CE with the aim of restoring unity among the different streams of Christianity.
Western and European expressions of Christianity had structures of power and often even had state support, but African and Asian Christianity spread more freely. During this period, Christianity was adopted as the state religion of numerous countries. The message spread even further and reached Ethiopia, Romania, Scotland, Ireland, and Liechtenstein. In 370 the first (non-Latin or Greek) Bible translation was created especially for missionary purposes when Ulfilas translated the Bible into Visigothic.
Early Middle Ages: Christian Missionaries Shine Light in the Darkness
Christianity was the dominant religion in Europe during this period. The Pantheon in Rome was converted into a Christian church in 608 CE. Monasteries became very important during this time. They became hubs for healthcare, education, charity, and spiritual guidance. The painting above shows that the Christian mission at this time was built on three virtues, namely: faith, charity, and hope.
Religion was a part of daily life for many people and the church was able to continue sending out missionaries to new places. The message spread to North Yemen, Northern China, Central Asia, Northern England, Andorra, the Netherlands, Iceland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Germany.
High Middle Ages: A Time of Division and Wars for Christianity
At this time, the eight Crusades occurred, and in an unfortunate turn of events, Christians started persecuting the Jews who once persecuted them. During this time, a divide also formed between Western and Eastern Christianity. Secular values began displacing the clergy who held the power up to this point.
But despite everything that was happening within the Church, the message continued to spread even further. It reached places like Bulgaria, Serbia, Moravia, Norway, Denmark, Greenland, and Sweden. By 1200, the Bible was mostly available to the clergy in churches or passed around through oral traditions among common people since literacy was uncommon.
Late Middle Ages-Renaissance: A Time of Crisis and the Reformation
This period is known as a time of crisis with power-hungry Popes challenging one another, amid warfare and the Black Plague. Martin Luther was moved by the gross abuses committed by the church and the Reformation started—the authority of the church was challenged and the message of Christianity was seen through a more personal lens. In 1462, the printing press was developed which meant the Bible became more widely available but literacy levels were still rather low.
While all this was happening, the message continued to spread to Mauritania, Ghana, Senegal, Gambia, Congo, Angola, the Dominican Republic, the West Indies, Kenya, and Zanzibar.
In the same way that artists had patrons or donors that supported them, wealthy followers of Christianity became donors or ministry partners, meaning they supported missionaries financially and sent them to specific destinations as representatives of the Kingdom of God and also of their families.
Early Modernity: The Reformation and the Religious Wars
The Reformation provoked religious conflicts that led to the French Wars of Religion, the Thirty Year’s War, and widespread witch hunts. Christian missionaries challenged traditional views of the societies they reached out to. Church and State were closely intertwined and the message was often shared along with colonization. However, some independent missionary organizations started sending out people too.
Some famous Christian missionaries of this time include John Elliot and Bartholomaus Ziegenbalg. In 1526 William Tyndale became the first person to write a modern translation of the Bible in English and in 1550 the Bible was available in 22 languages. The message spread for the first time to Brazil, Mozambique, Haiti, Mexico, Hispaniola, North America, South America, Canada, the Philippines, Vietnam, Paraguay, Trinidad, Morotai, Ternate, Malaysia, Peru, Pakistan, Bangladesh, South Africa, Madagascar, Cambodia, East Siberia, and Tibet.
Late Modernity: Historical Watershed’s Impact on Christian Mission
The Industrial, American, and French Revolutions mark this period as a time of great turmoil and change. A lot of horrendous acts were done during the World Wars, with some claiming Christianity as their foundation, including Nazi Germany. New modes of transportation and communication led to a new globally connected society which opened new doors of opportunity for Christian missionaries.
The years 1800-1900 have been called the great century of Christian mission. It featured well-known Christian missionaries like William Carrey, Samuel Marsden, Henry Martyn, Robert Morrison, Adoniram and Ann Judson, Robert Moffat, Anthony Norris Groves, David Livingstone, John Paton, and Hudson Taylor. The latter part of late modernity saw Lottie Moon, Mary Slessor, Jonathan Goforth, C.T. Studd, Amy Carmichael, and Robert Jaffrey enter the mission field. The message spread to Jamaica, Alaska, Tahiti, Namibia, Sierra Leone, New Zealand, Hawaii, Burma, Libya, Venezuela, Malawi, Zambia, and Lesotho.
Recent Times: To Be a Christian Missionary Today
A modern interpretation of a Christian missionary is someone who gives their life to share the teachings of Jesus and the Bible with others. Modern missionaries can be charismatic leaders of megachurches or humble servants of the poor that nobody knows about.
In 1990, the Christian missionary Luis Bush coined the term the “10/40 Window” to describe the general area (between 10 and 40 degrees north of the equator) that supposedly had the least contact with Christianity. The concept of “unreached people groups” is massive among modern Christian missionaries who go out with the message of Jesus today.
Some famous missionaries in more recent years include Gladys Aylward, Eric Liddell, Helen Roseveare, Jim Elliot, Elisabeth Elliot, and Andrew “Brother Andrew” van der Bijl. Christian missionaries are still sent by various Christian churches and mission organizations using the Great Commission as a mandate to fill the world with the message of Jesus.
“And this gospel of the kingdom will be proclaimed throughout the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come” – Matthew 24:14
