Missions Quotes

“Was the man a ghost, a figment of my imagination, or something else? I didn’t know, but it was a memory I’d carry with me my entire life, and eventually, I figured out that the man I saw on top of Scafell Pike that day was….”
― Steven Decker, Addicted to Time

“The life of every missionary abounds in crosses," said Théophane Vénard. And again: "True happiness consists in suffering, and in order to live we must die.”
― Thérèse de Lisieux, Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St. Thérèse of Lisieux

“It was an opportunity to intervene at the heart of the problem: to bring God and language to natives who were assumed to have neither; to alter their diets, their clothes, their minds; to help them despise everything that had once made their lives worthwhile and to offer them instead the privilege of knowing the one and only God and a chance, thereby, for redemption. (227)”
― Toni Morrison, Paradise

“The establishment of the missions and presidios from San Diego and Los Angeles and Santa Barbara to Carmel, San Francisco, and Sonoma, traces the colonization of California's Indigenous nations. The five-hundred-mile road that connected the missions was called El Camino Real, the Royal Highway.”
― Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States

“The gospel isn't just the message we take to small places; it's our motivation for going to them in the first place and our means of fruitful ministry once we get there.”
― Stephen Witmer, A Big Gospel in Small Places: Why Ministry in Forgotten Communities Matters

“We waited 45 years for the Americans to come and set us free. . . When I was a child, we used to say that even if the Americans were coming in a wheelbarrow, they should be here by now.”
― Taryn R. Hutchison, We Wait You: Waiting on God in Eastern Europe

“But in the case of the Indian mass movements there was also the simple external fact that in no case were the forces supplied by the Western Churches adequate to secure the necessary continuity in the work and the after-care that is so urgently needed by simple and illiterate Christians. Experience shows that intensive pastoral care must be supplied during a period of thirty years before a Christian community of this kind can be regarded as stable. In hardly any case was this possible. As a result, far too much came to be taken for granted; it was assumed, mistakenly, that the sons and grandsons, who had not shared the experiences of the first converts and the persecutions that almost invariably followed upon their decision to become Christians, would follow loyally in the same steps. In many cases failure in pastoral care resulted in the existence of masses of baptized heathens, and, when once a movement has run down in this way, it is very difficult to get it started again.”
― Stephen Neill, A History of Christian Missions

“God demonstrated His wisdom in that, even as people in Europe began despising the gospel, He was already preparing to go somewhere else.”
― Sinclair B. Ferguson, Church History 101: The Highlights of Twenty Centuries

“You are now drinking the bitter cup whose dregs I am somewhat acquainted with. And though, for some time, you have been aware of its approach, I venture to say that it is far bitterer than you expected…But don’t be concerned. I can assure you that months and months of heartrending anguish are before you, whether you will or not. I can only advise you to take the cup with both hands, and sit down quietly to the bitter repast which God has appointed for your sanctification…Take the bitter cup with both hands, and sit down to your repast. You will soon learn a secret, that there is sweetness at the bottom. You will find it the sweetest cup that you ever tasted in all your life.”
― Adoniram Judson

“All that you need to WIN OTHERS for LORD (Fulfilling The Great Commission) is embedded in whatever Gifts, Talents, Capabilities, Callings, Assignments, Dreams, Visions, Missions and Aspirations you have. Just use them.”
― Wisdom Kwashie Mensah, THE HONEYMOON: A SACRED AND UNFORGETTABLE SAVOUR OF A BLISSFUL MARITAL JOURNEY

“God has his ways to loosen your roots.”
― John Piper, A Holy Ambition: To Preach Where Christ Has Not Been Named

“It can be difficult to go to such humble places (small rural communities), and difficult to stay. But if these billions of souls are to be reached with the gospel, we must go.”
― Stephen Witmer, A Big Gospel in Small Places: Why Ministry in Forgotten Communities Matters

“The fact that the world needed Christian missionaries didn't negate the fact that it also needed Christian doctors and teachers and journalists and janitors and taxicab drivers.”
― Alana Terry, What Dreams May Come

“Out of 135 space shuttle missions, two were total losses.”
― Steven Magee

“A man his motivated by his mission.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“Through my studies, a picture was painted: God desires His people to be set apart as His pure bride, our purity is possible because of the grace we receive at the cross, and a lifestyle of purity is a direct result of God's enabling and empowerment.”
― Kristine Akana, God, Missions, And A Man: A young woman's remarkable journey to know Christ and make Him known.

“As we continued to serve, we saw that HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, poverty and malnutrition had infiltrated the people”
― Kristine Akana, God, Missions, And A Man: A young woman's remarkable journey to know Christ and make Him known.

“I had created a vision for this team as a wide-eyed teenage girl when I had signed a commitment to wait for my future husband.”
― Kristine Akana

“Here’s one thing I can offer you C, and I’ll be brief. Please consider the budget. The company spends too much on food meant to allure newcomers. We invite people to events and say there’s Chipotle, and do you know comes? People who like Chipotle. We put our cause on the bottom of our newsletters and the “FREE FOOD” goes bright and center and we wonder why no one stays. If people want to come, they’ll come. We don’t need guacamole. We need people who are hungry for our mission.”
― Karl Kristian Flores, The Goodbye Song

“The mission field is where we are, never where we go.”
― Kim Meeder, Encountering Our Wild God: Ways to Experience His Untamable Presence Every Day

“It is these men and women who ask us to tell it out clearly how sorely our Indian Church needs your prayers. They have no desire to hide things. They speak straighter than we do, and far more strongly, and they believe, as we do, that if you know more you will pray more.”
― Amy Carmichael, Things as They Are: Mission Work in Southern India

“The first thing I remember about Bucharest is how very dark it was.”
― Taryn R. Hutchison, We Wait You: Waiting on God in Eastern Europe

“In retrospect this period of Roman Catholic missionary expansion represents a mixed picture. Christianity did spread far beyond the borders of Europe and the Mediterranean basin as a result, but at the cost of being inextricably associated with Western colonialism in the minds of the subject peoples. This same problem of disentangling the essentials of Christian faith from its Western political and cultural trappings was also to face Protestant missionaries in succeeding centuries.”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“The foregoing observations...suggest that influences other than purely exegetical ones can affect the church's outlook....Church history also suggests that eschatological positions can significantly influence the church's understanding of the nature and scope of its mission to the world.”
― John Jefferson Davis, Christ's Victorious Kingdom

“To an eye of reason, everything that respects the conversion of the heathen is as dark as midnight; and yet I cannot but hope in God for the accomplishment of something glorious among them.”
― David Brainerd, The Life and Diary of David Brainerd

“But still, this great awakening, this surpassing concern, was never excited by any harangues of terror, but always appeared most remarkable when I insisted upon the compassions of a dying Saviour, the plentiful provisions of the gospel, and the free offers of divine grace to needy distressed sinners.”
― David Brainerd, The Life and Diary of David Brainerd

“My soul was this day, at turns, sweetly set on God. I longed to be with Him that I might behold His glory. I felt sweetly disposed to commit all to Him, even my dearest friends, my dearest flock, my absent brother, and all my concerns for time and eternity. Oh, that His kingdom might come in the world; that they might all love and glorify Him, for what He is in Himself; and that the blessed Redeemer might 'see the travail of his soul, and be satisfied! Oh, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly! Amen.”
― David Brainerd, The Life and Diary of David Brainerd

“If we make missions about sharing the Gospel and not about discipleship, then we are left with converts that are susceptible to being eaten by wolves.”
― Philip Duttry

“In a giddy tone I announced, “Operation Demon Days, Hexy Knights. Knight with a ‘K’.”

Someone groaned.

Matthias grimaced. “Absolutely not. It’s ridiculous.”

“It’s perfect!” Blake picked me up for a quick twirl around. “I’m a Hexy Knight. I love having her in the group.”

“No,” Matthias said. “She’s not—we’re not keeping her.”

What am I, a stray?”

Jayden shook his head. “‘Hexy’ isn’t even a word.”

Tristan frowned. “It makes us sound like wizards casting spells.”

“No, dude. It makes us sound sexy.”

“It makes us sound stupid,” Matthias said. As Blake settled me back on the checkered blanket, I huffed,

“Well, thank you Professor of the Dark Arts.”

“Aren’t you the clever sheila. Really dug deep for that one.”
― A. Kirk, Demons at Deadnight

“How we long to point to something - anything - and say "This works! This is sure!" But if it is something other than God Himself we are destined for disappointment.”
― Elisabeth Elliot, The Savage My Kinsman