in the previous two lectures we looked at the franciscan missionary movement from the 13th century and the jesuit missionary from the 16th century and in our case study we're going to do some comparing and contrasting and look at some of the relevant themes that i think will be really helpful for us to reflect on in the 21st century but i couldn't talk about the jesuits without doing a few small missionary biographies because i think it's important about movements and the big things that god did in the big geographical spread the numerical growth but sometimes what really changes our lives and captures our imagination is to hear individual stories of people who got the call of god and left everything and went somewhere so briefly we're going to talk about five jesuit missionaries from that first second third generation of the jesuits in the first hundred years of the jesuit movement and they went we're gonna cover many nations around the world they all were from western europe and they found themselves as far east as japan and as far west as brazil and as far south as indonesia right jesuits went everywhere right they took that oath to go to the ends of the earth wherever god would call them so we're going to just do brief biographical sketches again each one of these could merit their own lecture but we're going to do brief biographical sketches of five and i i was telling our video team this is hard for me to keep it brief because i really really love the stories of these different folks and i've told some of them not all a few of them i've told in leadership 15 so you'll be hearing a little bit of that again but some new ones that you've never heard that i've never talked about publicly that are some of my favorite missionary biographies of all time first francis xavier he was one of the founding members of the jesuits he was a close friend of ignatius loyola and in many ways he's the most famous catholic missionary in history he was a pioneer he he went from paris literally to the ends of the earth and let's talk briefly about his pioneering move again he was that first missionary who was sent before they even received papal approval he was already on a ship heading for india so there's xavier he was a close friend of ignatius of loyola it's it's not it's not surprising that they are close friends because they're from the same region of northern spain they're both basque by ethnicity and by language they were close friends and they're both at the university of paris together he was one of those original seven jesuits but he went on a portuguese ship to minister to portuguese merchants in india right in the 1530s his goal there was a portuguese trading colony in goa india and his original goal was well i'm going to at least minister to the portuguese who are there the merchants who are there i'm going to get on a ship and go all the way when you go all the way around africa and you end up in southern india very long journey 1530s he goes but he also wanted to minister to locals his ticket on the ship was to minister to europeans in india but he wanted to minister to the locals so he meets this group of tamil indians in southern india and they were the paravos people what's interesting is they'd actually been evangelized by franciscan missionaries a few decades earlier right franciscans had gotten there first in this age of global exploration they had been evangelized by franciscan missionaries who for whatever reason ended up leaving and there was this community of tamil indians the part of us people who had converted christianity but had not been disciple so xavier's first mission really was to disciple this newly cr newly converted indian community in order to do this he learned basic tamil and indian language he helps translate even though he's not great the language helps translate uh the liturgy into local languages so they can worship he established a local church in the region and he baptized and discipled many thousands of people in this first mission in southern india that he had and it was so successful and again think about the jesuits are like not even zero yet it's before 15 for they haven't even been found they haven't even they've been founded but haven't officially been approved by the pope and they're already so successful with xavier's first stab in india that they send more jesuits uh loyola sends more jesuits to aid in the work in india but xavier in many ways like the like he's jesuit right but like the franciscans they had this apostolic itch to keep going to keep moving from place to place xavier ends up going to the malay poli malay police peninsula in malacca then he went to some other indonesian islands across the peninsula and did some brief spats of work and these again are all places where there's burgeoning trade with european nations the portuguese with the dutch so he goes to several islands throughout southeast asia but ultimately he goes to japan in 1549 he travels with two other jesuits and actually a japanese christian he met in india and they travel in 1549 for a mission in japan xavier labor is there for two years two years in japan he baptizes 100 local converts which is not bad for two years and he dies in 1552 as he's making plans to go to china as he goes from india to malaysia to indonesia to japan he never stays in any place that long a kind of like the paul just a couple years he's learning local languages but he's not you'll see later jesus become really proficient he's learning him enough to get by because he's going he keeps bouncing from place to place but here's what's remarkable xavier is remarkable because of the breadth of where he goes right he goes from india to malaysia indonesia or japan he basically is this apostle to asia breaking all this new ground in the way that paul did in the mediterranean and he saw it that way but what's remarkable is is that he only baptized a hundred japanese converts in those two years of effective mission japan you think okay a hundred people but the disciples he would make and the later jesuits who would come and build upon his work would see a remarkable harvest in japan 30 years later by 1581 right 30 years after he died after his initial two-year stint there were over 200 churches and 150 000 christians in japan right so you go from zero to a hundred in two years and in 30 years you go to a hundred thousand with 200 churches planted by 20 years and generation or 20 years later by 1600 there's half a million christians in japan this is a remarkable groundbreaking movement that happened in japan as we all know from those who took leadership 15 there was severe persecution that breaks out right at this turn-of-the-century moment when the church seems to be peaking seems to be cresting their significant persecution and the church in japan within a generation was gone but consider a half century of really really fruitful work there that was started by xavier there's a remarkable pioneering thing but when he died they're only a hundred believers thirty years later they're over a hundred thousand so it's a remarkable thing to think about the what a first generation pioneering cross-cultural missionary can do it may not be a lot of fruit in their life right but the disciples that they're the local disciples the local priests the local leaders that they're establishing are going to do something great in the next generation that's something that we can all hold on to and be hopeful about wherever we are laboring many people the numbers are are difficult but throughout his work in asia there are over 700 000 that were baptized as a result either of his direct ministry or sort of disciples of his disciples so it's a remarkable thing to consider this man from northern spain who joins up with loyola in paris finding himself in goa and then in malacca and then in indonesia and in japan that is the jesuit missionary impulse very much like the apostle paul talk more about xavier let's jump on to brazil one of the earliest xavier was part of that early first generation fighting generation jose de ancieta was in many ways part of that second generation he would have been alive when some of the missionaries were moving during that time but he wasn't a original member he was one of the maybe the second generation members of the jesuits but he came to a mission it became as a missionary to brazil when he was in his early twenties in 1553 so a lot we could say about him i actually mentioned him in leadership 2 15 talking about latin american church history but at the time brazil was a heavily forested non-urban society where there were lots of tribal groups who would war and jose de ancienta had this very very uh aggressive missional stance where he was going to do the exact opposite of the conquistadors right conquistadors came and conquered and set up shop and he wanted to do the opposite of them so he was known it should ring a bell kind of like francis for walking around barefoot and not riding on a horsepower walking on foot from village to village preaching the gospel unarmed he believed in presenting this humble simple gospel that you're risking your life but you're offering something to the people who you're trying to reach shortly after he arrives in brazil he found a mission and a school i think jesuit jesus always found schools in a place that would later become sao paulo he founded the city of sao paulo right it becomes this mission center for southern brazil and from this place he walked from village to us he walked all over brazil is a massive place he walked all over brazil from that sort of local mission center preaching the gospel from village to village to village as all jesuits would do well he learned the local language and this is the tupi guarani language right and what's remarkable is that there would have been no european ever who had spoken or known this language it would have been a oral not a written language so the entity becomes the first person to turn this oral purely oral language into a written language give it an alphabet create a dictionary and a translation guide between european language and the tupi language the work he does linguistically not only is significant for history and sort of our anthropological understanding of these groups the unique thing about diancieta's linguistic work was not only did he learn the language for his own sake to reach the local people but by turning an oral language into a written language was a classic missionary move you're able to put the bible right into that language so the local who can read the bible in their native tongue not only do you do that you set up a framework for education in the future and you leave behind materials for future missionaries to benefit from in your work so many jesuits as they went to the ends of the earth and these pioneering places did things like this this is just one of many examples of pioneering work uh jose de ancienta is known as the father of brazilian literature because not only did he turn this language into written language he wrote literature he wrote plays he wrote songs he wrote poems he wrote stories in the 2p language so he could teach christian doctrine teach christian morality to locals he wrote music in the local melodies but he would add christian content and there's so many things we could say about this remarkable missionary to brazil this pioneering jesuit missionary to brazil but i think the thing we need to keep in mind is that though missionary work is always cross-cultural also is hard it's hard to describe the radical cross-cultural nature of the work he was doing he was ministering in the brazilian jungles a man from western europe in the brazilian jungles among cannibalistic tribes and he knew they're cannibalistic and he knew that he was risking his life every single time he walked barefoot with nothing but a staff and a shoulder bag into a new village he knew he was courting martyrdom when he did these kinds of things and not only did was he successful in setting up these missions successful and setting up school successful and preaching the gospel uh he somehow lived to a very old age was never was never eaten by cannibals and the locals loved him because this remarkable humility in many ways he was a jesuit right uh he was sort of channeling this franciscan humility and simplicity in his life and this is contrasted with the rapacious oppressive conquistador colonial administrators or conquistador backed colony administrators who are working with the portuguese and spanish in these same areas we could talk much more about jose danciat and brazil remarkable story let's move to china to matteo richie he in many ways was a contemporary of the ancient they were the second generation they didn't know uh loyola personally but they were just that generation right after they were second generation jesuit missionaries but richie was one of the first if not the first jesuit to end up in mainland china there had been jesuit missionaries to macau right which is a an island a very important trading port right off the coast of mainland china and for a while most europeans thought the closest they'd get to china was macau that was more of an open global trading city as it as it is today and the portuguese had a lot of power there so the assumption was that's the closer you get to china but the jesuits really wanted to get in to mainland china they wanted to get into ming china it was a very very powerful land empire prominent and very sophisticated long-standing culture that people knew a lot about but not people had experienced in person from western europe so richie was sent by the jesuits to macau to learn chinese but the goal was as soon as you get a window get into mainland china not only did not only did richie study chinese but he also as part of a missional strategy studied and maybe this is again this is the time of the scientific revolution right this time of the renaissance he studies clock making and map making which were two very innovative sciences at the time there were remarkable advances in map-making of this time in the age of exploration right and in clock making and the idea was these would be uh you might say secular or neutral skills scientific enterprises that would that would help them uh receive acceptance or help give give them some sort of in in mainland china so in 1583 at the age of 30 mateo richie gets his chance to come into china he first he's allowed to to live in a certain provincial capital and a few decades uh about it 15 years later he moves the imperial capital in beijing lives there until his death but richie was this innovative missionary this pioneering western missionary trying to keep in mind right and well this is the important thing to remember the layers of history in the seventh century you had an astoria missionaries to china that was the free the first entrance of christianity period they are successful for a few centuries then it dies out then in the 13th century who comes the franciscans right they're they're in some sense building on prior work but most of that prior work has has died so there they're bringing this new effort in christianity and then who's the third wave of christians three centuries later the jesuits the jesuits bring christianity china and there's been so much persecution and so much death of christianity in china the jesuits when they come in 16th century think they're the only christians they don't find christians and in fairness they're almost a thousand years after the first missionaries had come and three years after the next group had come so there are there are ebbs and flows and missionary activity but it's interesting when the jesuits get there with richie as the the the point of the spear uh they labor and pioneer and ritchie's for as far as he knows the first christian who's ever been in a chinese culture it's not true but that's what he thinks there's no they don't have any chinese bibles right all the chinese texts from the seventh century eighth ninth century those are buried in caves only to be discovered a few you know in the 20th century he doesn't know there's been this theological work this time he doesn't know there's been this translation work and he doesn't know there have been people before him doing contextualization that's been forgotten and lost at the time so he becomes this very very innovative contextualizer within chinese culture right he gains access to the ming imperial court primarily because he's a clock maker and a map maker and they think it's a very useful skill in this air the late renaissance era early modern period that's a very attractive thing so he gets an in because of these scientific skills he has but he begins to preach the confucian scholars intellectuals in the main court he decides to adopt local dress this is actually a painting made by a chinese man shortly after uh with contemporary in the life of richie but he adopts local dress he uh sort of adopts the manner of a confucian scholar and he really attempts to contextualize confucian concepts to explain christian theology he has to decide where are you going to sort of be a cultural accommodationist where you're going to draw hard lines one of the more interesting ones and richie himself is this remarkable case study and contextualization hugely controversial in his own era and after there there's a thing called the rights controversy that prime referred to in the textbook which we can read about it more but one of the things he does is when he's deciding what s elements of confucian chinese culture you have to let go of to be a christian or what can you hold on to one of the things that's really really central in many east asian cultures is the veneration of your ancestors and he determines that's okay right there's a biblical way of understanding venerating your ancestors it's not idolatrous and i'm sure there's a lot of negotiating but that was one of his more controversial moves that he makes ultimately in his lifetime he was very successful reaching scholars and intellectuals and other people in elite circles in the ming court and by the end of his life there are 2 000 converts which is a remarkable thing several decades were in a lifetime administering time at 2000 it's not you know all of china is transformed by the gospel but 2 000 converts in his lifetime some of the members of the royal family he explicitly tried to train and empower local clergy so the church could continue and the chinese the catholic church we have today in china which is really thriving it's not as prominent as the protestant church for a variety of reasons historically but the catholic church we have today is founded by ritchie right it's the disciples of the disciples of the disciples from 400 years ago when richie goes to china by 16 and we talked about this this principle of a pioneering leader making a cross-cultural move and having some fruit but then generations later that fruit really bears more fruit whether you think about the hundred japanese disciples who turned to a hundred thousand within a generation with the case of richie there were about two thousand converts in his lifetime but within uh about 50 years and again a generation after zest there are about 250 000 converts to christianity so you see these exponential growth curves after the death right after a long life of sowing and planting and discipling by a pioneering missionary it's the next generation where you see a rapid growth and this is a principle we see all throughout church history i can't not talk about these last two the first is roberto de nobili i'm sure i'm pronouncing it wrong probably depends on depends on which which version of his name you want to do the the latinized version or the uh the spanish version or the americanized version which is what i'm doing but roberto nobili was a jesuit missionary to india he's part of a third generation of jesuit missionaries so you think xavier and loyola then you think uh richie and ancienta this is another generation they all kind of know about the other but they were in in distinct uh generations across about 100 years he goes to india in 1605 as a young man and he's not the first jesuit missionary india we know that xavier was there you know almost a half a century earlier but what he finds when he arrives is that most missionaries jesuit missionaries and franciscan missionaries to india had done a great deal of cultural importation of portuguese and western european uh cultural styles in the in the in the efforts of discipleship right that had become such a a prominent element of making disciples sort of making them more european nobility was really disturbed by this and he was inspired by richie's model in china of really deep contextualization and accommodating as many cultural things as you possibly can like okay this is definitely off-limits but all these other things that may make europeans feel uncomfortable they're fine right so there's this strong effort after richie's groundbreaking work with nobili in in india to do a similar thing this time in hindu culture so you think about him when he arrives yes he arrives in a european ship yes he's associated with the portuguese but he begins to as soon as he can disassociate himself from that immigrant community there right from the merchant community of europeans and really adopt the local context so first he dressed like a hindu holy man right he adopted the local dress next he adopted the vegetarian diet because hindus don't eat meat so he said if i'm going to reach these people i need to adopt a vegetarian diet he also did not wear any leather next of course he learned the local language he learned tamil he learned telugu he learned sanskrit he became a very very skilled linguist in a variety of languages in the region he learned beyond learning language he learned hindu literature he came well versed with hindu theology hindu culture hindu literature and in an effort to really reach the locals he disassociated himself with the uh the catholic churches that were just primarily foreign international churches what he did is he had a little hut he lived in and he would organize public discussions open forums with the locals and talk about theology and talk about the nature of god the nature of creation sort of compare and contrast hindu theology with christian theology though he was open to dialoguing he made strong appeals to reject idolatry to reject polytheism he said you can retain a great deal about your culture you can remain a vegetarian you can keep your dress your language but there are certain things right we worship one god who created heaven and earth who revealed himself in jesus right he he preached a very clear gospel uh one of the interesting things about his accommodation local culture is he actually decided to work whereas he rejected idolatry and polytheism he embraced that was too strong of a word but he worked within the current caste system the hindu caste system so he intentionally reached out specific castes and when they would when there be disciples he would do them in churches by cast he didn't say well because of ephesians 2 we were going to break down the barrier and we're going to be a multi-caste church like our multi-editor he actually and this is controversial right he he remained within the caste system and allowed them to remain in their local cast and have local churches and sort of associate with their particular groups about 20 years in like his other pioneering predecessors he only had about 100 converts right 20 years in language work contextualization work wear the clothes engage the culture 100 disciples in 20 years but in the coming years right there would be a flourishing of christianity a flourishing of discipleship that was rooted in those early uh profound moves he made each one of these missionaries we discussed embodies an element of the jesuit missionary impulse but this one may be my favorite and you'll probably see why his name was alexander rhodes alexander or we'll say alexander rhodes right to go pure american he was part of this third generation of i think he's he's a he's a contemporary of the nobili he's a part of this third generation of desert missionaries and he went to vietnam it was talked about his work in vietnam it's a tragically under-told story in church history in my opinion so i'm not going to let that neglect happen to our s s students we can't leave them off inspired by those first and second generations of jesuit missionaries rhodes joins the jesuits at 18 and decides to commit his life to foreign missionary work his first plan was to go to japan and this was the time when missions in japan had really been burgeoning and he had this huge explosive growth but then as he's getting into japan there's significant persecution and he realizes there's no way he's going to go to japan missionaries are being expelled locals are being crucified japan is off the radar so as a backup plan at age of 25 he set sail for what's now modern-day vietnam there are two kingdoms in the north and the south tonkin i'm going to pronounce it wrong and conscient china these are two kingdoms in the north and the south and what's now modern-day vietnam and he set sail there and he he says in this journal i decided to go to the two kingdoms south of china right they hadn't had much missionary presence because there had been a lot of focus on china and india and japan these bigger civilizations as any good jesuit learn to do as soon as he gets there he learns the language commits himself to language studies pioneering and he's preaching in the local animes language within a year there's this deep committed engagement to preaching the local language he had a remarkable 20-year career in the northern southern kingdoms and he's one of the great missionary success stories in all of church history within 20 years of being there right there were over 40 000 converts in the southern kingdom and 80 000 converts in the northern kingdom so remarkable numerical success in his lifetime not just 100 converts and then when he dies those converts do something great significant impact in his lifetime but let's just go into the details of the story because there's a reason why i think his 21 career missionaries was so successful so first i said he was a gifted linguist he preached in the local language he preached four to six times a day every day of the week in the animes language most importantly and we'll understand why in a second he emphasized equipping and empowering local preachers and evangelists that was his thing he was on the lookout for local evangelists early on he picked out four early converts in his ministry and trained them as lay evangelists and those four he kind of sent them out as jesus did you see in the gospels and those four quickly discipled a hundred so i went from four to a hundred by those four he sent out then in 1630 he'd only been there about 10 years he's training some local evangelists and then he's kicked out of the northern kingdom right after being there 10 years he gets expelled because of all the grounds of the work he's doing one of the interesting things here i don't want to go into too much detail is that he was kicked out for preaching against polygamy because some of the elites there he was preaching that that polygamy was wrong and their concubines you know sort of the the harem of wives or sort of sexual partners were very upset thinking that if if any of those um rulers took to heart the message against polygamy they would be they'd lose their position as wives they'd lose their position in the court so it was the concubines who teamed up against uh roads and had him expelled from the northern kingdom what's remarkable though is during rhodes 10 years of exile from vietnam he went and did mission work elsewhere in asia during his 10 years of exile he returns in 1640 right and realized that things have grown while he was gone so this kind of sparked something in his mind so he decides to do is that he sneaks back into the country on multiple occasions that knows and we've actually seen this right in every nation missions around the world in in in creative access nations we have these leaders who begin to have significant work they get kicked out they get a high profile so they have to kind of sneak in and out where they can never really stay they have to empower locals but they have to empower the next generation of leaders who are on the ground they're kind of coming in and up so he was repeatedly banished but in 1640 he returns and what he does is he identifies 10 lay evangelists meaning they're not ordained but he picks 10 evangelists and he trains them he hides during the day and during night he trains them and he sends five to the northern kingdom and five to the southern kingdom and he finds out that while they're uh while he's repeatedly kicked out and while he just says i can't do any more of the evangelistic work you guys have to do it i have to hide and just train you right under these extreme circumstances those five northern evangelists five southern evangelists have remarkable remarkable fruit but they also end up being persecuted because of the success so in 1644 one of the original 10 is beheaded by the government rhodes is put in prison all the others all the other nine are put in prison along with rhodes two more of the original ten are executed along with 35 other christian disciples rose is banished permanently and the remaining seven all get one finger chopped off as they're sent home so keep this in mind 1640 rhodes knowing he can't stay long trains 10 evangelists they go out for a few years and they're successful they're all captured one is beheaded right all they're imprisoned then two more are killed rhodes is banished forever and the remaining seven are let free and they only have nine fingers left right sort of this reminder of what will happen to them what do you think happens rhodes is kicked out forever and he's going well i lost i only have three of them are dead seven of them are are are maimed i don't know what's gonna happen i'm gone forever and the results of those versus ten then seven disciples lay preachers was that within a few years within the lifetime of roads there were 300 000 converts to christianity in the northern southern kingdom of vietnam rose never was able to go back again after 1645. he spent his later years as missionaries in other places but it's a remarkable thing because he never had the long time there but because of this repeated banishment repeated imprisonment he had to train a few good lay preachers what's so remarkable that none of them were ever ordained here's the post script to that story we're nearing the end 20 years later after roads had been expelled and roads had recently died the paris foreign mission society decides to follow up on the mission right no one's been there in a while there's been persecution they're concerned uh are there any disciples left 20 years after the fact so they send a french priest louis de gea and he arrives in vietnam disguised as a sailor he knows it's still illegal to be there and his goal is to make contact with christians if there are any left in vietnam and he wants to see if any of those original 10 laid the lay preachers are still around and he actually finds out that some of them are remember three had been executed right out right out of the gun some have died but there are a few who were still left and he makes contact and he finds out the church had still been growing 20 years after roads had been expelled 20 years after there had been zero contact with missionaries and it's remarkable that rhodes original 10 who he discipled as as and trained as lay evangelist they had never been ordained right so they're preaching the gospel they're evangelizing but they have not been trained in how to they're not you know providing the sacraments or baptism in any sort of official capacity i'm sure they did still participate in the lord's supper but dedicate goes there's this remarkable growth that's happening and there's not much support system so he just he decides to keep in mind so the jesuit the jesuit hallmark start a secret seminary to train these lay evangelists and sort of next second third fourth generation evangelists so what he does is he would hide on the ship in the port during the day and then at night different groups evangelists would come on to that ship and they would have their seminary classes there and he would train them he'd also do baptisms on the ship because they were within that first year 10 thousand were baptized clearly some were evangelized during that time but many of them they they think they were sort of this backlog a few who had gotten saved but hadn't been baptized because there hadn't been any uh missionary or ultimately local clergy trained they were just preaching it's really a remarkable story by the 1660s there were half a million christians right shortly after the death of rhodes but he hadn't been there in 20 years there were half a million christians in the northern sun king of vietnam and it's a remarkable testimony to this this by necessity training of evangelists and disciple makers whether or not they're ordained whether or not they have any support system just sending them out letting them go and i think there's nothing that encapsulates the jesuit missionary impulse and also right the franciscan missionary impulse then seeing what rhodes did in vietnam and i just it's such a remarkable every nation story and i'll say this the catholic church in vietnam besides the philippines the catholic church in vietnam is one of the strongest centers of catholicism in all of asia and it goes back even through the communist area goes back to the work of rhodes in vietnam and these lay preachers who be trained so when you think about these five mini missionary biographies i hope that we're inspired i hope there are elements of their stories elements of the way they embodied the jesuit missionary impulse and ultimately the call of jesus to make disciples of all nations i hope there are things we find you go oh i want to dig deeper into that or oh that story uh is exactly what i want to see in my disciples or in my movement or in my city or in my nation so i pray that i'm going to close and pray i pray that these stories would be more than just bits of history but things that god uses in the way that god used the life of saint francis in the life of ignatius to start further movements of people who make disciples to the ends of the earth let's pray lord i thank you for this opportunity to look at these remarkable stories from the 13th century from the 16th century from the 17th century i think for the great cloud of witnesses of missionaries in the franciscan and jesuit orders who have gone before us and have followed a radical call to discipleship a radical call to preach the gospel and go to the ends of the earth and make every sacrifice necessary that we might win some i pray that everyone watching this video pray that every e s student would be stirred by that risk-taking faith that we find in francis and his followers and ignatius and his followers would i pray that we would learn and i pray that we would do likewise jesus name amen [Music] you