The apostle Paul received his call to overseas mission in a dream. A foreigner had pleaded with him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us” (Acts 16:9, NRSV). Did Paul recognize the man by his clothing? his accent? And just where in Macedonia? No place was specified, although the province wasn’t a really big place. Details were lacking. Nevertheless, Paul and his companions interpreted the dream as a call from God, and they left the next day in faith. They traveled from Asia Minor across the Aegean Sea and planted the first Christian church in Europe in the port city of Philippi. There they met an immigrant businesswoman from Paul’s home province, and she welcomed the missionaries into her home. Providence?
The Adventist Church received its call to venture into overseas mission not in a dream but in a letter written in 1869. Review editor John Andrews answered the letter. Further correspondence led to an invitation to “come over and help us.” Andrews himself would answer the call. This, too, was seen as a clear leading of providence.
Out of Ashes
Adventism’s “Macedonian call” had come from Switzerland. It was perhaps a little more complicated than Luke’s account of the one the apostle Paul had received. The Swiss letter writer represented a small group of watchmakers living in a cluster of villages in the Jura Mountains just north of Neuchâtel who had found themselves in trouble. They had heard about the seventh-day Sabbath and had begun to keep it, and had heard about the Second Advent and believed it.
Some years earlier they had responded to the preaching and teaching of a Polish former Roman Catholic priest, Michael Czechowski. He had settled in one of their villages for a short time as a Protestant missionary with sponsors in America. The Swiss Sabbathkeepers were spiritual heirs of Zwingli’s reformation, with some from a Lutheran background. Czechowski, who had earlier been converted to Adventism and was enthusiastic about the Sabbath and Advent teaching, had wanted his church to send him as a missionary to Europe, but Seventh-day Adventist leaders did not feel able to trust him. He went anyway, but sponsored by a first-day Advent church. He preached Advent teaching in various places, but along the way he also secretly taught Seventh-day Adventist doctrine, including the Sabbath, and he organized his converts into five small congregational groups. Then things went wrong.
His deception was exposed, the little religious publishing business he had established went bankrupt, and he decided to flee the area, leaving his wife and children behind. The Sabbathkeepers lost serious money. There was conflict. Then they found out that their pastor was caught up in some moral irregularities. They were badly hurt and confused.
In rummaging through Czechowski’s papers, they discovered a copy of the Review and Herald and learned, to their astonishment, about Seventh-day Adventists. Now more confused, they wrote to the editor, John Andrews, to find out more about their Sabbathkeeping cousins. A correspondence began.
Recalibrating
Like Paul hearing the call of the Macedonian and being “convinced that God had called” him to Europe, so Seventh-day Adventists recognized the opening of providence in the news of the group in Switzerland. But the language barriers and the cultural differences were much more of a hurdle for Andrews than they had been for Paul when he had first ventured overseas. It took some time for the young Adventist denomination to assemble an adequate fund for the new endeavor and then further time to decide on who should be sent. Finally, five years after the first correspondence, they authorized the answering of their “Macedonian” call in August 1874. Andrews sailed from Boston the next month. It would be a totally new venture.
The church had no policy framework ready for an overseas mission, nor were their expectations of results altogether realistic. Church leaders hoped that the mission would be able to support itself in a very short time. This proved not possible. They also assumed that sharing the message of the three angels would be as easy in Europe as it had been in America and that the methods that worked so well in America would also work just as easily in this new “Macedonia.” This too was unrealistic. Expectations and assumptions had to be reassessed, as the mission grew more slowly and cost much more than expected. The needs of this “Macedonia” were also different.
The response to this call required not only evangelistic passion and preaching skills. It also required skill in pastoral understanding and pastoral care. James White thought that the assigned worker should not waste time in solving pastoral problems; just push on with evangelistic endeavor. But the pastoral hurts in Switzerland ran deep, and Andrews had to be a pastor before he could be an effective evangelist.
Unlike Lydia, the dealer in purple cloth who in Philippi apparently had ready resources to assist Paul in his new mission, the Swiss believers and John Andrews found themselves with very few funds. Just before Andrews arrived, the network of relatives that formed the Sabbathkeeping community had invested heavily in an industrial restructuring. This was partly an effort to recover losses over the failed missionary publishing outreach, and also to rejuvenate their watchmaking industry. The endeavor soaked up funds and energy. Furthermore, the negative attitudes created in the communities over the scandalous departure of Czechowski lingered on and created deep prejudice against the witnessing of Sabbathkeepers and against a ready reception of Andrews’ own preaching.
Andrews’ pastoral ministry trying to reach through cultural and language barriers was not at first successful. But he believed that the call had indeed been the call of God, and he persevered. He launched a missionary magazine, Les Signes des Temps, and preached wherever and whenever he could. Others came to help him, and the small Adventist mission grew. It reached into Germany, into France, into Italy, and even down to Egypt. This “Macedonia” might be different, but the call of God was the same. And the church grew.