Editor’s note: This year marks the 200th anniversary of Adoniram Judson’s historic missionary journey. This column, which first appeared on Baptist Press, is adapted from the introduction of a new book about Judson’s life.
HEARTLAND | Paige Patterson
My appreciation for the life of Adoniram Judson began in 1957 when my dad, a missionary-hearted pastor, placed a book in my hands and urged that I read it carefully.
Courtney Anderson’s biography of Judson, “To the Golden Shore,” wrapped its tentacles around this red-haired young teen’s heart, mind and soul. And to this day, I read it often, unable to shirk the adventure, the love, the risk, the suffering, the faith and the courage that leap from every page.
I was an unlikely missions candidate. A puckish prankster almost from the womb, not much in the world seemed very serious to me. I roamed the woods without my parents’ knowledge or permission by the time I was 10, caught sunning cottonmouths with my bare hands and hunted with a contraband .22 pump rifle which no one knew I had.
Because I had a better than average awareness of my capacity for sin, my conversion to Christ at age 9 was vivid. With it came a commitment to the ministry which I grasped fully. Conversion healed immediately the more gross of my sinful impulses, but I fear that the prankishness and love for exploration and adventure were only exacerbated.
The sometimes stodgy Adoniram had another side to him, I learned. He loved to laugh and could evidently spin a yarn or two himself. And, as I read the pages of “To the Golden Shore,” two different but not at all contradictory notions were stoked into a raging fire.
First, the desire to see the world, to embark on a great adventure gripped my soul. And to attempt this journey bearing the Gospel as the sole solution to the agonies of life only made such an enterprise seem more essential.
More important, if the Judsons could sacrifice akin to the sufferings of Christ (Colossians 1:24), then it dawned on me that lost people must really matter. Clearly for all the tragedy that engulfed them, the Judsons believed the lost of Burma and the saving message of Christ were more important than all else in life.
Though I envy those called of God to permanent mission assignments, the Lord never led me to those. Rather, for the last 37 years I have followed what I believe to be the leadership of the Spirit of God to train missionaries and mission-hearted pastors so that no one is left without an opportunity to know of the Savior who could save even a freckled-faced, red-headed, hot-blooded prankster. At every juncture, the impact of Adoniram Judson has played a major role in my life’s work.
Paige Patterson is president of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. Read his full column at BPNews.net.
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