Sermon illustrations on missions & calling

St. Patrick — back to the land that enslaved him

Acts 16:9

Patrick had every reason never to see Ireland again: he had been enslaved there for six years. Yet he writes of a vision — the "voice of the Irish" pleading with him to come back — and he obeyed, returning to spend his life baptising and ordaining among the people who had once held him captive. A calling that ran straight at the place of his deepest wound.

From Confessio (The Confession of St. Patrick) by Patrick of Ireland (450) — read the account →

Hudson Taylor — the inland millions of China

Isaiah 6:8

Converted as a teenager while reading the words "It is finished" in a gospel tract, Hudson Taylor became convinced God meant him for the vast, unreached interior of China. He founded the China Inland Mission in 1865 and gave the rest of his life to the people few others would go to reach — adopting Chinese dress and customs to do it.

John G. Paton — "eaten by cannibals or by worms"

Matthew 16:25

Warned that he would be eaten by cannibals if he sailed for the New Hebrides, John G. Paton answered that it made no difference whether he was eaten by cannibals or by worms — either way he would rise at the resurrection. He buried his wife and child early on Tanna, endured years of danger, and lived to see the whole island of Aniwa profess Christ. A calling that counted its own life as nothing.

Amanda Smith — from slavery to three continents

Romans 10:15

Born into slavery, Amanda Smith became an independent evangelist whose calling carried her far beyond anything her beginnings would have predicted — preaching at camp meetings across America and then on to Britain, India, and Africa, and founding an orphanage. A reminder that God's call is bounded by neither birth nor borders.

Samuel Crowther — a homeland evangelised by its own son

Acts 1:8

Carried off by slave raiders as a boy and freed by a Royal Navy patrol, Samuel Crowther was baptised in Sierra Leone in 1825, became a pioneering Bible translator, and in 1864 was consecrated the first African bishop of the Anglican Church. Then he sailed back up the Niger to bring the gospel to his own homeland — the mission field charting itself.