Playing Hooky on Sunday & Grace
by Becky Dietz
I’m probably the only pastor’s wife who’s played hooky on Sunday morning...but yes, I did. It wasn’t often. It was when I finally got overwhelmed. I’d use the excuse of an upset stomach, a migraine, one of the kids having the sniffles—the excuse just didn’t matter. I wanted to stay home occasionally. The reasons were varied: there was conflict in the church, I was tired of wrangling teenagers at church (Andy was youth pastor), I was overwhelmed with my own four young children, and probably the biggest reason was that I just never got a break from church. I chose church—but church was also my husband’s job.
And you know what? It was ok. God understood. He knew my heart. He knew I loved Him and the Church. It’s no different than needing an occasional break from my husband or kids. And you know what I did those Sundays I stayed home? I stayed in bed. I rested. I enjoyed the quiet. And I talked to God.
It would have been more honest if I’d just said, “I need a break!” But would the church have understood? Some would have...but younger believers might have been offended. They wouldn’t have understood that I really loved the Church and that I just needed a break. Not to mention that Andy would have had to explain my need to take a break all morning.
Grace. As pastor’s wives, we never give ourselves enough grace. We’re constantly trying to live up to the expectations of others when we really only need to please the audience of One. And He’s full of grace.
I’m praying you live immersed in that grace! If you do, you’ll probably never have to play hooky like I did.
Pastors and their wives fight rejection. I don’t know any pastor who thinks he’s perfect—he’s usually the first to admit he’s fallible. And as much as a pastor speaks, he’s going to say something wrong. Even Paul “corrected” himself in his later writings. I believe he progressively came to see his complete humanity and then came to the conclusion that he was chief among sinners.
There’s probably no person who is dissected more than a pastor. As discontent reaches the pastor’s ears (because it always does), it’s hard not to examine every word he’s spoken and he can easily fall into despair.
Here’s the thing...if the pastor has sinned, he needs to confess it and be the leader of repentance. But if, after allowing the Holy Spirit to examine his heart, he’s spoken the truth and someone is offended by the truth, he needs to realize those people aren’t rejecting him but God. At that point, he needs to be confident in truth.
I don’t know about you, but when my pastor-husband is attacked, my flesh is activated. I want to go confront someone! But actually, it’s a good time to allow God to examine my own heart. It’s a time to bless and pray for those who are attacking. It’s a time for some holy transformation.
God allows these things to grow us and mature us. (James 1). Submit to what God is doing and resist the destruction the enemy wants to bring into your lives and the life of your church. There’s no better time than this to offer a sacrifice of praise! Praise is truly a sacrifice when you’re under fire.
“But no weapon that is formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment you shall show to be in the wrong. This [peace, righteousness, security, triumph over opposition] is the heritage of the servants of the Lord [those in whom the ideal Servant of the Lord is reproduced]; this is the righteousness or the vindication which they obtain from Me [this is that which I impart to them as their justification], says the Lord.”
Isaiah 54:17. AMP
Adoniram Judson was America’s first foreign missionary. He and four other young men longed to be missionaries in the Far East (Adoniram particularly wanted to serve in Burma) and Adoniram was commissioned to go to London to ask the London Mission Society if they would support their work—since America had no work. The LMS board reluctantly agreed but before the missionaries left for East Asia, a man left them $30,000 which enabled them to go under the newly formed American Mission Board.
Judson was born into the home of a Congregationalist minister in Malden, Massachusetts on August 9th, 1788. As a young man, he evidenced a significant intelligence and ability to learn languages. By the time he was ten, he was reading in Latin and Greek. He was sent off to then Rhode Island College—now we call it Brown University—and he graduated as the valedictorian at Brown at the age of twenty.
It was while he was at Brown, however, that he drifted from his father’s religion and the Congregationalism that he grew up with to deism. From deism, he drifted into atheism. That’s his first journey, his journey to atheism.
One night as Adoniram was traveling, he came across an inn, and wanted lodging. So, he knocked on the door and went in and found the innkeeper, and the innkeeper informed him that there was only one room available, and the innkeeper thought, in the interest of full disclosure, that he should tell them that the room was next to a man that was very ill. Judson said, “I’ll take the room. Death has no terrors for me, you see, I’m an atheist.”
Well, it turned out to be a long night for Adoniram Judson. The man next to him groaned literally on the doorstep of death all night long, and in the morning, the man in fact died. When Judson inquired as to who the man was, it turned out it was his college friend, Jacob Eames, and Eames was the very one who influenced Judson to be a deist. This shook Judson to the very core of his being, and he realized that he was lost and that death was not something he would bravely take on. Remember, he had said, “Death has no terrors for me,” but he was literally scared to death of death. After that night at the inn, as he was traveling on the way, he stopped right at the side of the road, repented of his disbelief, and turned to God.
Three months later, he would write in his journal, “This day, I made a solemn dedication of my life to God,” and that’s what Judson did. He went on to seminary, and he would become a missionary. He was one of the pioneer missionaries to leave from America. He and his new wife, Ann, left for Calcutta with Samuel & Harriett Newell. Four other missionaries went on another ship so if one capsized, all wouldn’t be lost. As they sailed, Adoniram spent time studying the Bible in Greek & Hebrew. As he studied, he began to question the Congregationalist’s method of baptizing babies. He began to believe people should be baptized after salvation. When he arrived in Calcutta, he came under the influence of William Carey, who was careful not to influence Judson’s thinking on the matter. But after careful consideration, Judson asked Carey to baptize him md Ann, who had come to the same conclusion. Carey told Adoniram that his son lived in Burma but only because he’d married a Burmese woman. To do mission work was punishable by death. But Adoniram knew God had told him to go to Burma.
It was in Burma where Judson would begin his own work as a missionary. He started, of course, with translating God’s Word into the language of the people. It was a bad time to be in Burma. There was a war between the British and the Burmese, and Judson was suspected to be a spy for the British. He was thrown into prison for seventeen months. The Burmese realized they needed him for his ability as a translator for treaty negotiations, and so they released him.
Adoniram Judson died aboard a ship on April 12, 1850, and he was buried at sea. He died at the age of sixty-one, and he spent thirty-seven of his sixty-one years on the mission field.
From the late 1940s until the 1960s, Betty Greene ferried missionaries to some of Mexico's and South America's most out-of-the-way settlements. She also was the first woman to fly over the rugged Andes. Betty also flew throughout New Guinea and Africa, where the Sudanese Parliament had to make allowances for a woman to fly her Cessna 180 in the country. She said, “It took an act of Parliament to allow me to fly in Sudan!” They called her `The Golden Voice of the Sudan' because she was a woman, and of course there weren't any women on the radio waves" between the airplane and the ground.
“These experiences were thrilling,” Betty once remarked humbly, “but in all honestly I did not have any ambition to achieve 'firsts' in flying. My mind was set on doing productive work and any achievements in flying came about incidentally as I carried out my assignments.”
Betty Greene died of Alzheimer's disease, April 10, 1997. A group of women from First Presbyterian Church made a roster and took turns caring for her until her death. One day, with clarity, Betty raised from her bed and asked the woman caring for her, “Do you know God?” Upon the woman’s “yes,” her face lit up and she said, “Isn’t it wonderful?”
William Cameron “Cam” Townsend was born in California in 1896 to a poor farmer and his wife. Cam was not a good student in school, but after a near drowning incident, he decided to focus on his studies and did very well. After finishing college, Cam decided he wanted to be a missionary and headed to Guatemala, a country in Central America, to hand out Spanish Bibles.
When Cam was just 21, he felt called to take the Bible to the peoples of South America. But there he discovered something that shaped the rest of his life’s work: he’d brought Spanish Bibles to give to the people he met, but often they didn’t speak Spanish. Indeed, when he tried to give these Spanish Bibles to people who only spoke their own mother-tongue language they asked Cam something that really made him think – why didn’t God speak their language? Was he only the God of English and Spanish speakers?
Cam thought everyone should be able to read God’s word in their own language. So within a few years, he and his new wife, Elvira, were living with the Cakchiquel people of Guatemala, studying their complex language, creating an alphabet and helping them to translate the Bible so they could understand it. Elvira seemed to be the perfect wife in every way, visiting the sick, playing the organ, teaching the women how to sew and sing. But Cam was shocked to learn Elvira had a violent temper which could be set off by the slightest thing and she would throw objects as she ranted. He eventually came to learn it was a mental illness for which they had no treatment.
He became ill, and had to return to the US, but that didn’t stop him. In 1934, he had a vision to teach others how to understand and write the languages of the poor who’d never been taught and who had no written language. He created and ran the first Wycliffe Summer School, a school named after John Wycliffe, the man who first translated the Bible into English. Camp Wycliffe trained missionaries in language learning, translation, and in rugged living, since most missionaries had to live without basic comforts. Within 10 years, this had become the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL), one of Wycliffe’s key partners, and Wycliffe Bible Translators.
After Elvira’s death, “Uncle Cam” (as he came to be called) married Elaine Miekle, a missionary in Mexico who was 19 years his junior. They worked well together and traveled the globe instituting more Wycliffe work. Cam refused to be limited by any closed door. He’d learned in his very first mission to approach the mayor or chief of the region to gain their confidence in his plans. It was because of this that Cam & Elaine we’re invited behind the Iron Curtain to do linguistic work.
In all, Cam founded three ministries: Wycliffe Bible Translators, the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Camp Wycliffe became part of this), and the Jungle Aviation and Radio Service. He saw how missionaries in remote jungles needed an airplane to travel to what would take a week to walk. He had amazing vision and incredible energy to accomplish his vision. These ministries are still making an impact today. Because of Cam’s efforts, and the work of the ministries he founded, the entire Bible has been translated into hundreds of native languages. Over 1,000 people groups have a New Testament in their own tongue, and translators are working in every region of the globe on nearly 2,000 language projects. By 2025 Wycliffe hopes to have started a translation project in every language group around the world.
Cam served for over sixty years in Latin America, working in many countries. He knew everyone, including more than 40 heads of state. He was invited to the White House by President Nixon, who supported his work. He received an honorary doctorate, was decorated by five Latin American governments and was declared ‘Benefactor of the Linguistically Isolated Populations of America’ by the Inter-American Indian Congress.
Jonathan Goforth became the foremost missionary revivalist in early twentieth-century China and helped to establish revivalism as a major element in Protestant China missions. He grew up on an Ontario farm, the seventh of eleven children. Hearing G.L. MacKay, Presbyterian missionary to Formosa (Taiwan), speak, he sensed God’s call to go to China. Attending Knox College for training, Jonathan appeared on his first day as a farm boy in a suit his mom had made. His entire class hazed him and made fun of him until Jonathan’s steadiness and zeal for evangelism changed their minds. Goforth met Rosalind Bell-Smith at the Toronto Union Mission. She had been born in London, England, and had grown up in Montreal. They married in 1887, ready to go to China. Within a year of graduating from Knox College, his classmates, who had at one time hazed him, offered to support him in China since the Presbyterians had no work in China at that time. The Goforths eventually had eleven children, six of whom survived childhood. Five of their children were buried in China. They pioneered the North Honan (Henan) mission in 1888. Hudson Taylor, a fellow missionary in China, had hoped to establish work in Honan and wrote Jonathan a letter asking him not to begin work there. But Jonathan felt compelled by God to go where no work had been done.
In 1900 the Goforths had to escape China because of the Boxer rebellion. They were stoned and tortured in many villages they passed through to get to Shanghai. Jonathan almost died at one point. The only way they survived was because of the kindness of fellow believers or people they’d influenced. Most Chinese were ready to kill the “foreign devils” in their country. They barely escaped the Boxers and returned to Canada. Jonathan read newspapers to know what was going on in China—he was anxious to return and continue the work they’d begun. Because of his vision to create outposts of their work and incorporating many native Chinese in their work, they saw thousands come to Christ. After their return to Honan in 1901, Jonathan Goforth felt increasingly restless. He became an itinerate missionary—traveling all over their region. In 1907, Jonathan was asked to accompany Dr. MacKay, secretary of foreign missionaries for the Presbyterian Church in Canada, on a trip to Korea. There he experienced the eye-opening revival taking place. As he returned to China through Manchuria, congregations were so fascinated by his accounts that they invited him back in early 1908. During this extended visit there occurred the unprecedented “Manchurian revival,” which transformed Goforth’s life and ministry; from then on he was basically an evangelist and revivalist, not a settled missionary. He also became one of the best known of all China missionaries, admired by many, but disliked by some for his “emotionalism.” Jonathan had a detached retina in both eyes and became blind but he never let it hinder their work and never complained about being blind. But in 1934, Rosalind’s health demanded they return home. As her health improved, Jonathan was in demand in Canada and the United States as a speaker. He spoke on average, ten times per week. After speaking at a church service on October 7, 1936, he went to bed and fell asleep and never awakened. Jonathan had helped start 48 churches in Manchuria and his work had touched thousands of lives over the entire eastern side of China.
In 1931 the Goforths coauthored Miracle Lives of China. After his death in Toronto, Rosalind, a capable writer who had first published in 1920, wrote the popular Goforth of China, and her own autobiography, Climbing: Memories of a Missionary’s Wife (1940).
