Picking up on one of this blog’s themes of late, I recently posted a poll that asked, “What do you need the most to plant a church?” (see archives > polls). I allowed people to add their own responses, but only received two votes for the option “Gifted Leaders.” In the back of my mind I was thinking of J. Hudson Taylor, who was a missionary to mainland China in the mid-to-late 1800′s.

God’s work done in God’s way will never lack God’s supplies.

God isn’t looking for people of great faith, but for individuals ready to follow Him.

— Hudson Taylor (May 21, 1832 – June 3, 1905)

As the story goes, when Taylor felt called to missions in China he went to his minister to borrow his copy of Walter Henry Medhurst’s book, A Dictionary of the Hok-këèn Dialect of the Chinese Language: According to the Reading and Colloquial Idioms: Containing about 12,000 Characters.

” ‘And how do you propose to go there ?’ he inquired.

“I answered that I did not at all know; that it seemed tome [sic] probable that I should need to do as the Twelve and the Seventy had done in Judea, go without purse or scrip, relying on Him who had sent me to supply all my need.

” Kindly placing his hand on my shoulder, the minister replied,’ Ah, my boy, as you grow older you will become wiser than that. Such an idea would do very well in the days when Christ Himself was on earth, but not now.’ #

We now know, as Paul Harvey would say, the rest of the story. Taylor went on to become one of the greatest missionaries of all time. He did it not by reliance on modern business models, worship gimmicks or worse, watering down the Gospel message. Hudson Taylor knew early on, modeling throughout his lifetime of ministry and service, that all you really need to plant a church is a faithful God and an obedient heart.