Redefining Success: What William Carey Can Teach Us About True Ministry Impact

What contributes to true success? Talk to a Gen Z-er, and they will tell you success depends on your number of followers or videos viewed. Talk to someone from Generation X, and they might attribute true success to the longevity of a career and a retirement portfolio. Is this true success? No, unfortunately, many generations have been misguided about true success.

Success in our service for Jesus is also misconstrued. We might not necessarily attribute success to income or retirement, but we attribute it to souls saved or the number of churches planted. Is that real success in the eyes of God?

If William Carey had authored a book called The Secrets to Ministry Success, it might have been the number one seller on Amazon. Such a book does not exist. Why? For most of his ministry, Carey felt he was everything but a success. He felt he had failed to succeed in missions and his work in India.

There were many days Carey was ready to give up. “I am in a strange land,” he wrote, “alone, no Christian friend, a large family, and nothing to supply their wants. My heart bleeds for the success of mission, which must receive a sad blow from all this…”

I genuinely believe Carey struggled because:

  1. The easy became difficult.

If Carey had given a missionary presentation before leaving for India, it would have sounded like what most missionaries would present today. His goal seemed simple: to learn the language and the culture. This would be an easy first step for him. Carey was a master of language and culture. He had studied a variety of world cultures from the time he was a child. Christopher Columbus was his hero. He loved the world and its variety of people.

While working as a shoe cobbler as a teen, he taught himself Greek, Hebrew, Latin, Italian, Dutch, and French. Bengali was different. Balancing life, ministry, sickness, and family and adapting to India proved arduous. There were many days that this frustration over learning the language showed itself in other areas as well. There were many days that he felt worthless and dejected. He wrote: “I anxiously desire the time when I shall so far know the language as to preach in earnest to these poor people. I make so little progress in the Bengali language and am so unsettled and so barren that it seems as if I should never be of any use at all.”

  1. His standard of success was not God’s.

We can be, at times, our most critical critic. We have ideas and standards we live up to that God has never demanded or expected of us. There is no quota with Jesus. There are no hidden expectations with Him. For most who feel they are not doing enough, they are usually the ones doing more than enough. Too many of our missionaries neglect family, live in difficult situations, and abandon necessary needs because they are too busy living up to a self-established standard.

The ‘oxygen mask’ analogy is true in life and on an airplane. If there is an incident of low cabin pressure, the flight attendant will instruct you to put your oxygen mask on yourself before you try to help others put their masks on. By not doing this, you could both pass out from lack of oxygen. Too many are “passing out” in ministries all over the world!

Rest is not a rejection of our calling. It results from accepting Jesus’ invitation to “Come unto me” (Matt. 11:28).

  1. He underestimated man’s depravity.

The many Hindu practices Carey witnessed kept him awake at night. He described them as demonic and barbaric. He grieved over the Hindu and Islamic people. The spiritual deprivation was overwhelming for Carey. When he first encountered a suttee (widow burning), he said, “I talked till reasoning was of no use, and then began to exclaim with all my might against what they were doing, telling them it was a shocking murder. They told me it was a great act of holiness. I exhorted the widow not to throw her life away, to fear nothing, for no evil would follow her refusal to be burned. But in the most calm manner, she mounted the pile and danced on it with her hands extended as if in the utmost tranquility of spirit.”

From the first days Carey stepped off the boat in India until he stepped into glory, he fought for the welfare of the Indian people and their physical and spiritual betterment. He was devastated, but he didn’t quit. He continued, not because of his willpower, pride, or any human trait but because of the gospel.

While reflecting on the activities of a Hindu holy day, he reflected, “Who would grudge to spend his life, and his all, to deliver an otherwise amenable people from the misery and darkness of their present wretched state, and how should we praise that gospel which delivered us from hell, and our country from such a dreadful marks of Satan’s cruel dominion as theses. May God put on His great Power and attend His Word with great success.”

This last sentence should serve as a motto and a true definition of success. May our prayer for missionaries be that God would grant them His great power and allow His Word to have free course and run with great success!


Treg Spicer is pastor of Faith Baptist Church – Morgantown, WV. Follow his blog here. We republish his articles by permission.

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