Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things Quotes

“She regretted her decision almost from the time the ship departed. Dorothy did not adjust to missionary life; the climate challenges, cultural adaptations, grinding poverty, strange sicknesses, and the death of a child took their toll. After about three years, she lapsed into a deep depression. She lived her final thirteen years in a padded room behind a locked door.”
― Allen Yen, Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things: William Carey and Adoniram Judson, Missionary Pioneers

“The means Carey initiated for global outreach, the mission society, is a core strategy for Baptists around the world. Much good has come from using this method, but perhaps at the expense of keeping all believers in local churches lashed to the burden of global mission responsibility. The proliferation of mission societies on every continent, in almost every country and for every conceivable purpose, has diversified missionary outreach. It has also, perhaps to the detriment of Baptist churches, diluted efforts by expending so much money on administration, promotion, fundraising, and management of thousands of well-meaning organizations, rather than investing more resources directly in the field.”
― Allen Yen, Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things: William Carey and Adoniram Judson, Missionary Pioneers

“Carey called for a new extra-biblical ecclesiastical structure—a society—to establish policies, commission missionaries, and provide their financial support.250 While councils, committees, societies, and mission boards are too numerous today to count, most Christians who read Carey’s pamphlet or heard him speak had never conceived of an organization with global missional responsibility.”
― Allen Yen, Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things: William Carey and Adoniram Judson, Missionary Pioneers

“Today we face many challenges similar to those faced by the Judsons, such as whether or not we will sacrifice our personal plans for the sake of a larger vision of reaching the world for Christ. A central characteristic of both ages is courage. Deciding to live among peoples previously unreached with the gospel requires courage and faith, no matter where that might be. In fact, it is a rare individual who is willing to give up life, home, and liberty for the sake of others. Surprisingly, Christian family and friends in our globalized world still greet such aspirations with incredulity, despair, and even ridicule.”
― Allen Yen, Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things: William Carey and Adoniram Judson, Missionary Pioneers

“I have now to ask, whether you can consent to part with your daughter early next spring, to see her no more in this world; whether you can consent to her departure, and her subjection to the hardships and sufferings of a missionary life; whether you can consent to her exposure to the dangers of the ocean; to the fatal influence of the southern climate of India [Judson’s first destination]; to every kind of want and distress; to degradation, insult, persecution, and perhaps a violent death.153”
― Allen Yen, Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things: William Carey and Adoniram Judson, Missionary Pioneers

“North American church continues to blur the meaning of the word “missions” such that it encompasses anything the church does outside the four walls of its building. The problem with calling everything the church does by the term “missions” is that it dilutes the urgency of prioritizing the church’s task toward those who currently have no access to the gospel.”
― Allen Yen, Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things: William Carey and Adoniram Judson, Missionary Pioneers

“Carey wisely understood that missions appropriately begins with our expectation of God to act prior to our plans or actions.”
― Allen Yen, Expect Great Things, Attempt Great Things: William Carey and Adoniram Judson, Missionary Pioneers