Yesterday’s post argued that unity made the great missionary teams great. These men had the majority of things in common, like background, theology, age and interests. 

In this post, I’d like to encourage missionary teams to embrace their differences. Sometimes it’s the contrasts that make the Missions Locomotive run fast and far. 

The Serampore Trio embraced their dissimilarities. Here are three of them. 

1. They Had Different Personalities

Carey might have been the leader, but he was painfully shy in some settings compared to his teammates. There seemed to have been little jealousy between the Trio. They sharpened each other when they saw a dull blade. Carey wrote to his friend Ryland back home about his teammate Marshman:

“Marshman is all keenness for God’s work. Often have I seen him, when we have been walking together, eye a group of persons, like a hawk, and go up to try on them the Gospel’s utmost strength. I have known him engage with such for hours, more eager for the contest when he left off than when he began. It has filled me with shame. In point of zeal he is a Luther, I an Erasmus.”

Carey excels twice. First, he acknowledges a serious way Marshman is his superior. Carey owns this very real difference and verbalizes it to a mutual friend. Second, Carey tries to improve by observing Marshman’s superiority. It filled him “with shame,” he said. Carey didn’t say, “that’s just the way he is.” Carey effectively said, “When I watch Marshman evangelize, guilt fills my heart. I’ve got to do better. I’ve go to improve.”

Introduction

When Jesus sends missionaries around the world, he’s uses them as individuals and as parts of a team. David Brainerd lived alone for many years as he evangelized the Native American Indians. Elisabeth Elliot, Amy Carmichael, John Paton, Robert Moffat, James Gilmour, David Livingstone and a host of other missionaries all experienced years of ministry alone. The very definition of pioneer missions often means working solo, at least in the beginning.

But I’m a proponent of team missions and believe the Serampore Trio is one of the greatest examples of teamwork in the history of world evangelism. They tripled and quadrupled the output of their work compared to what they could have done individually.

Henry Martyn, the great missionary to India and Persia, never had the privilege of enjoying a permanent teammate and companion on the field. He did, however, have the joy of knowing each member of the Serampore Trio. He wrote:

“Three such men as Carey, Marshman, and Ward, so suited to one another and their work, are not to be found, I think, in the whole world.”

In 1793, William Carey arrived in Bengal as a missionary. Today he is known as the Father of Modern Missions. William Ward and Joshua Marshman joined him six years later. They eventually chose as their headquarters the city of Serampore, just a few miles north of Calcutta, one of the largest cities in India. They became known as the Serampore Trio. Carey’s biographer wrote of this team: “No three men ever had a soul so single.” Continue reading →