Why Not Go Himself?

“How then shall they call on him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in him whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? and how shall they preach, except they be sent?” — Romans 10:14-15 (ASV)

The Studds came home in 1894 with four small daughters, poor health and no money of their own. Charlie was thirty-three: a famous cricketer at twenty-one, a famous missionary at twenty-four, and now a semi-invalid with asthma and no obvious work. They lived simply, with help from relatives and friends, and by the standards of the poor they were still very fortunate.

With no adventure to carry him, he didn’t sink into self-pity or try to get his money back. In 1896 and 1897 he spent about eighteen months speaking on American campuses for the Student Volunteer Movement. From 1900 to 1906 he was pastor of the Union Church at Ootacamund, a hill town in southern India where British officials and soldiers escaped the heat. His work there was among the British who ruled India, not among Indian people. The family was together, and the girls grew up with their father at home. He was faithful in work with no drama.

But he was restless. He had come to believe that the world’s greatest need was for the gospel to reach people who had never heard it at all. Ootacamund already had churches. In 1906, ill again, he brought the family home.

In 1908, walking in Liverpool, he saw a notice outside a hall, worded in the sensational, insulting way missionary posters of the time often talked about Africans. Inside, a German missionary named Karl Kumm was speaking about the peoples of central Africa who had never heard the gospel, and the traders, hunters and slavers reaching them first. Studd came out with a question he couldn’t shake. Why had no Christians gone? Because no one had been sent. And then the personal question: why shouldn’t he go himself?

He had every reason not to. He was forty-seven, asthmatic, with a history of serious illness. He had no money, no mission behind him, and a wife in poor health who didn’t want him to go. He went against medical advice. To him it was simple obedience. He was right that God sometimes calls people to do what common sense forbids. He wasn’t always willing to consider that common sense might sometimes be God speaking too.

At the end of 1910 he sailed for the southern Sudan to see for himself. He became convinced that in the north-east of the Belgian Congo lay a large region with no Protestant mission. There were Catholic missions in parts of it, but like most British evangelicals then, he didn’t count them. On the voyage he also became convinced his call was to the whole unreached world.

Back in England, he applied to the Africa Inland Mission in November 1912 and was accepted. But soon after he left for Africa he asked for changes to its constitution, the council refused, and within weeks both sides agreed his membership should end. It was the first clear sign of a pattern: Studd found it very hard to work inside anything he didn’t control. At the end of 1912 he and a few friends formed their own Heart of Africa Mission, run from the family home at 17 Highland Road in south London.

Scilla’s opposition is part of this story too, and the sources don’t hide it. She had a heart condition, and he was being asked to leave her and their daughters for years. He went. Then she did something remarkable. She took over the mission’s letters, money and recruits, spoke at meetings all over Britain, and became its home director in all but name. That was courage too, and it has been praised far less than his.

Paul asks, “how shall they preach, except they be sent?” Sending isn’t a solo act. Studd had a fierce sense of being sent by God, and a much weaker sense of being sent by anyone else.

One thing to do this week: before your next big decision, ask two people you trust what they honestly think. Listen to the one who disagrees, all the way through, before you answer.