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Faithfulness & Fruitfulness in Life and Ministry

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I love India. For me, while I have a passion for global missions, I don’t have the bandwidth to know many countries well. Therefore, I have chosen to know one besides my own well, and that one is India. In the few years I’ve spent studying and visiting and praying for the country, I’ve seen firsthand many ministries that seem to be legit but in the end are not. Indians seem, more than other countries I’ve visited and otherwise been aware of, prone to greed and various methods that help them obtain western dollars.

So last week when I saw a blog post on this topic on the Training Leaders International website, I was eager to read it. The author, who is an Indian man, writes at length at the issues involved with missions in India. Then he writes this:

“Let me share with you another personal story, this time, of a foreign missionary. I knew a missionary who lived and worked in India for years—well over a decade. He established a business in a major city and labored slowly and patiently. He barely had any converts—in fact, he probably had only one. He died in India and within months of his death, his business was destroyed.

“By numerical standards and ‘strategic’ considerations for ‘rapid growth,’ he was a total failure. By the standards of many Western mission agencies, the many dollars given to support him over the years were a total waste. So was his ministry a waste?

“I think not. For I was his one convert. He taught me the Gospel. He proclaimed to me the excellencies of Christ. He taught me how to read the Bible and how to discern truth from falsehood. He spent his life in service to his King, and my eternity is changed as a result.”

Wow. Faithfulness and fruitfulness are related to one another, however, we cannot, and should not, prejudge what the fruit is supposed to look like. One labors for a lifetime in obedience to Jesus and harvests thousands of souls and wields a wide influence. Another labors for a lifetime in obedience to Jesus and harvests but a few and wields a narrow influence. But in both cases the glory belongs to the Lord and Savior who saved and sent and empowered and caused to endure. In both cases the laborers will hear “well done, good and faithful servant, enter into your Master’s happiness.”

And if you’re the one who yields but one, you never know what the Lord will do with that one. The person who wrote this article is named Aubrey M. Sequeira. He grew up in Southern India as syncretistic Roman Catholicism. After coming to know and follow Jesus in India, he moved to the U.S. where is an Adjunct Instructor for New Testament Interpretation and a Ph.D. candidate in Biblical Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, KY.

The missionary only won one, but who knows how many this one will influence and win. The size of our harvest is frankly irrelevant. The size of our desire to know Jesus and do his will is all that matters.  


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