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Anthony Norris Groves is one of the great missionaries in Church history. Most of Christendom has never heard of him.

His first missionary stint was a “failure” to the Arabic-speaking Muslims in Baghdad, Iraq. He began there in 1829 and left just a few years later. His wife died there. So did his infant daughter. Floods, famine, plagues and war pounded relentlessly upon the little mission team. He moved to India.

God had not given Groves many natural gifts for ministry success. He was a dentist by trade and was not a natural street preacher. He lacked the passion and oratory skills that often drive evangelists to far-away lands.

But he accomplished much. Among his greatest feats was training John Arulappan (1810-1867), a promising young Indian Christian that had grown up in one of the missionary schools. He mentored John for almost 20 years and through him Groves saw innumerable churches planted and people won to Christ. What was the secret?

The answer, in part, can be found in the following quote from Groves:

“It would be desirable for every evangelist [i.e. missionary] to take with him wherever he went from two to six native catechists, with whom he might eat, drink and sleep on his journeys, and to whom he might speak of the things of the kingdom as he sat down and as he rose up, that they might be, in short, prepared for ministry in the way that our dear Master prepared his disciples, by line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little and there a little, as they could bear it, feeling from beginning to end that our place is not to set others to do what we cannot do ourselves.. but that we are rather to be examples of everything we wish to see in our dear brethren.” (p. 478, The Father of Faith Missions, Dann)

From this quote I can find four humble, practical ways missionaries can make disciples.

1. Keep the Roots Shallow

Groves referred to himself as an “evangelist” or missionary. He resisted the urge to become a kind of extended pastor on the foreign field. He knew his role was foundation-building like Paul did in Romans 15. The Apostle often carried responsibilities of a pastor but never used the title “elder” for himself—though Peter did (1Pt. 5:1). Paul poured the footings, then moved on, periodically returning from time to time to visit.

The natives on the New Hebrides referred to John Paton as “Missi”, an abbreviated form of missionary. As far as I can tell, nowhere in his 500-page autobiography does he use the title of pastor when serving as a missionary.

Linguistic precision like this goes a long way toward missionary disciples. It says, “You’re up next.” It says, “I’m moving on.” It says, “I’m not the running back. I’m the QB that hands off the ball so that you can score.”

2. Love

Groves took his disciples wherever he went. The way Groves loved is what drew people to him. This overcame many of Groves’ weaknesses, as 1 Peter 4:8 tells us. Arulappan said that no one ever loved him for Christ’s sake like Groves did.

In one of the great paragraphs in missions literature, Dann paints beautifully what made Groves great:

“He was not drawn to foreign cultures, he did not enjoy travel. He was not a gifted evangelist, nor a natural orator. He was not particularly sociable, and he often found relationships painful. He was never a great organiser or administrator; he was not physically or mentally tough. Frustrated, as he said, by ‘the natural badness of my memory’, he bemoaned the difficulty he found with languages. One might think he was not cut out to be a missionary at all. But he had one quality that more than made up for his deficiencies: he knew how to love. Love was the key to everything.” (372)

3. Keep it Simple

Groves says he took with him “two to six native catechists” on his journeys. A catechist was a term popularized by the Anglican missiologist Henry Venn. It refers to a class of un-ordained missionaries in the Church of England that were supposedly men of “inferior” station who could teach but were not allowed to lead church services or administer the sacraments.

Groves was willing to use the term but certainly didn’t view un-ordained preachers like Arulappan as inferior. Official ordination or formal schooling was not important to Groves, unlike Rufus Anderson, the great American missiologist, who believed eight to ten years of seminary training would qualify a native man for the ministry.

Groves modelled and taught character first. Arulappan was a humble man, not the kind that would dominate or overawe. Most of the Indian evangelists associated with Groves and Arulappan were never trained in a theological college.

They had no contract or salary. The church services were simple. The people walked long distances to meet on Sunday. They sang hymns. They prayed. They gave to the poor. They took the Lord’s Table weekly. Preaching was central but even that was simple. They would read a chapter of the Bible, divide the text into several heads, ask questions and then give answers as they could.

Groves kept it simple: gather a group of ordinary men, lead them to Christ, spend lots of time with them, try to eat, sleep and live as they do, and trust them to preach and lead as their culture perceives and Scripture demands.

4. Use Reproducible Methods

Groves wished to be an example “of everything we wish to see in our dear brethren.” He believed missionaries should use the same methods they expect from their disciples.

Groves constantly threw responsibility at his young Indian converts. They began by teaching in children settings. Then they’d travel with him once a month on his missionary tours. Groves would preach as they interpreted. He was preaching to the crowd, but he was really teaching his disciples. They would sleep in tents together and visit small groups.

Some of the missionary disciples would receive modest salaries as schoolteachers and translators of tracts and other Christian literature. But even in this way there was much care taken.

On one occasion, while Grove was teaching and Arulappan was translating, a Brahman hurled out a taunt that if the missionary wasn’t paying him, Arulappan would not being doing this ministry work. This cut Arulappan deeply and from that day forward he took a radical step of no longer receiving any kind of monetary support from the missionaries and from thereafter lived by faith.

Arulappan and Groves both believed Indians responded best to the gospel when they heard it from other Indians. It was best when there was no foreigner there at all. This proved remarkably successful. Arulappan travelled and visited new church plants and soon reported conversions in the thousands. He enjoyed five years of genuine revival and goes down as one of the great evangelists in Indian Church history.

Conclusion

The simple, New Testament methods Groves used to disciple his men are what made him a great missionary. Modern day missionaries would be wise to do the same.