How a Local Church Pastor Became an Essential Cog in a Missionary Machine

Editor’s note: Aaron Menikoff is the co-author of 9Marks’s new book Prioritizing Missions in the Church, published by Crossway.

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Late in 1831, a young Illinois farmer wondered what to do with his life. Whatever he would do, he trusted God could use a lowly frontiersman: “I had become convinced, that every Christian, however limited his ability or opportunity, may be useful in his appropriate sphere; and that (the) our Divine Master has an appropriate work in his vineyard.” He longed to plant seeds as a gospel minister: “The more I thought and prayed about it the stronger the impression was that I must some time try to preach the Blessed Gospel.”^{11 .} “The ‘Religious Experience’ of a Candidate for the Ministry as Related Before the Church” in Religion on the American Frontier: The Baptists (1783–1830), ed. William Warren Sweet (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1931), 235–36.

What stirred this farmer’s thinking? What shaped his prayer life? What led him to aspire to pastoral ministry? God’s Word, Spirit, and church deserve most of the credit. But he’d also come across a copy of Andrew Fuller’s account of the life of Samuel Pearce. After spending several fall and winter months poring over its pages, he came to desire pastoral ministry.

It is time for a new generation to find Andrew Fuller’s A Heart for Missions: The Classic Memoir of Samuel Pearce.^{22 .} Andrew Fuller, A Heart for Missions: The Classic Memoir of Samuel Pearce (Birmingham, AL: Solid Ground Christian Books, 2006. First published in 1800. All capitalizations and italics in the original text have been standardized for readability. The Solid Ground edition, with a wonderful introduction by Michael Haykin, will lead Christian readers to marvel at the grace of God on display in the ministry of this eighteenth-century British pastor.

An All-Too-Short Biography

Born in 1766, Pearce grew up with faithful Christian parents. His family and church perceived in him tremendous maturity and gifting and encouraged young Pearce to attend Bristol Baptist Academy in 1786. Upon graduation, now just 24 years old, he began to pastor Cannon Street Baptist Church in Birmingham.

Pearce ministered with great care and love. He preached, evangelized, and shepherded the saints entrusted to his care. Yet his pastorate lasted just ten years. He contracted tuberculosis, a terrible disease that took his voice and then his life. He died in 1799, leaving behind his wife Sarah, their five children, and a grieving congregation of approximately 400 members.

How did Pearce’s tragic life change the course of an Illinois farmer decades later? To understand, one simply needs to read A Heart for Missions. Andrew Fuller compiled several letters from Pearce and included his own personal commentary; Fuller was one of Pearce’s dearest friends. This collection of letters highlights his personal holiness, pastoral heart, and missionary zeal.

Personal Holiness

Up until 1765, the Bristol Baptist Academy was the only Baptist training institution in the world.^{33 .} David Bebbington, Baptists Through the Centuries: A History of a Global People (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2010), 75. The school benefited from a wave of evangelical renewal and revival in England that showered blessings on the small but growing Baptist family. Pearce graduated with more than a theological foundation and sturdy Calvinistic convictions. He left Bristol with a Christian character that commended him to Baptist leaders like Caleb Evans and Robert Hall Sr. It was Hall who encouraged Cannon Street to call young Pearce as their pastor.

From the earliest days of his work, Pearce recognized that personal devotions fuel public ministry. His writings are marked by exclamations about the goodness of a careful walk with the Lord: “Oh how sweet it is, my dear friend, to exercise a lively faith in a living Savior! May you and I do this daily” (8). At other times, he counseled through his pen, sharing the type of wisdom that typically comes from a much older saint: “I am more and more convinced that our private devotion, or want of devotion, will materially affect the tenor of our deportment” (9).

Often, Pearce demonstrated the type of honesty and transparency that marks someone who fears God more than man: “There is nothing that grieves me so much, or brings me so much darkness on my soul, as my little spirituality, and frequent wanderings in secret prayer” (18). Pearce had no idea his private confessions would one day be publicly consumed. I doubt he would have minded. Though aware of his “little spirituality,” he sought to live with a sense of self-forgetfulness.

Personal holiness is about more than simply doing good. The true Christian is wholly overcome with the goodness of his Savior. The character of God compelled Pearce to heights of joy that, in turn, thrust him into greater degrees of Christian service: “It has pleased God also lately to teach me, more than ever, that [God] himself is the fountain of happiness; that likeness to him, friendship for him, and communion with him, form the basis of all true enjoyment . . . I do feel a daily panting after more devotedness to his service” (47). Passages like this undoubtedly stirred the affections of that Illinois farmer.

There is no godliness without prayer. Pearce devoted himself to a constant pleading with the Lord. Though an able man filled with youthful vigor, he refused to rely upon his own strength: “Closed this season with reading the 61^st and 62^nd chapters of Isaiah, and prayer for the church of God at large, my own congregation, the heathen, the [Missionary] Society, brethren Thomas and Carey, all missionaries whom God hath sent of every denomination, my own case, my wife and family, and for assistance in my work” (61). At times, he prayed as if to a brassy sky. But he kept at it, knowing that in time the Lord would reward his persistence. He described a moment of prayer when, just as he prepared to close with a word of lamentation for his own hard-heartedness, the Lord made his prayer time sweet. Pearce remembered how “it pleased God to smite the rock with the rod of his Spirit, and immediately the waters began to flow. Oh what a heavenly, glorious, melting power was it! My eyes, almost closed with weeping, hardly suffer me to write” (64).

Death robbed Pearce of his best years. Thankfully, Scripture had prepared the young pastor well. He had himself counseled others to plan for the worst and to see the kindness of God in the darkness of suffering. “Love transforms thorns to roses,” wrote Pearce, “and makes pain itself a pleasure” (60). Pearce never wanted trials, but like the martyr Ignatius, he saw in suffering a unique opportunity to magnify his loving Father: “‘God is love.’ That makes me happy. I rejoice that God reigns; that he reigns over all; that he reigns over me; over my crosses, my comforts, my family, my friends, my senses, my mental powers, my designs, my words, my preaching, my conduct, that he is God over all, blessed forever” (88).

Scripture is sufficient for faith and practice. However, God in his abundant kindness has given us examples from history to spur us on to greater degrees of righteousness. Pearce is evidence that one does not need gray hair to be godly. A young heart is fertile soil for spiritual fruit.

Pastoral Heart

Though he served for only a decade, Pearce demonstrated a sincere affection for Cannon Street Baptist Church. At the start of his pastorate, it numbered around 250 members and nearly doubled before his death ten years later. Whether preaching to fifteen or 500, pastoral ministry is a weighty burden and Pearce treated it as a precious privilege.

He knew that pastoral ministry can tempt a man, young or old, to spiritual pride. One moment, he preached with freedom, concerned only about the welfare of his congregation. The next moment, he felt himself a hypocrite, overly concerned about his reputation. Whenever this happened, he fought through it. He even wondered aloud that if his hypocrisy proved himself disqualified, he would still labor to save his hearers: “If I go to hell myself, I will do what I can to keep others from going thither; and so in the strength of the Lord I will” (18). Pearce’s awareness of his sin is evidence of his genuine salvation.

God blessed his preaching and Pearce saw great growth in his congregation. Around a hundred joined the church after just a year’s ministry, and he baptized 40 in just five months (29).

He labored hard at preaching, typically delivering four messages a week. But he also tended to the organization of Cannon Street. When the church grew to nearly 400 members, he decided to re-think how to help the members minister well to one another. In 1798, he proposed members talk and pray more about evangelism and missions. He did this by encouraging those traveling throughout England or even Europe to return home with reports about the gospel work in those places. Church members could then pray for spiritual fruit. He labored to help a growing church keep a family feel by dividing the congregation into units of about ten families each. Pearce appointed a brother to visit each household regularly to give and get updates. Finally, when a member left the area, he proposed a committee to stay in touch until the departed found another church to join (103). In all these ways, Pearce labored for the spiritual good of his congregation.

Pearce knew himself to be a shepherd called by God to feed the sheep. He preached the Bible since “there is no other book in which God is revealed: so that to reject the Bible is to immerse ourselves in darkness” (89). It is God’s Word that brings light and life to the soul. Pearce relished that God graciously uses fallible men to build his churches through an infallible Word: “how often has it been found that when ministers have felt themselves most embarrassed, the most effectual good has been done to the people!” (107).

This logic rightly led Pearce to conclude that Cannon Street didn’t need him. They could live without Pearce as their pastor and should trust that when the Lord takes him, another shepherd will come who will likewise give the people the Word of God: “if I am to depart hence to be no more seen, I know the Lord can carry on his work as well without me as with me. He who redeemed the sheep with his blood, will never suffer them to perish for want of a shepherd, especially since he himself is the Chief Shepherd of souls” (111). He penned those very words just a few months before he died.

Pearce loved his flock—he loved them to the very end. In his final letter to his church, he encouraged them to be at peace, to attend their prayer meetings, and to rest in God: “Go on in these good ways, my beloved friends, and assuredly the God of peace will be with you. Yes, if after all I should be taken entirely from you, yet God will surely visit you, and never leave you nor forsake you” (129).

Missionary Zeal

If Pearce is known for one thing, it is for his unfulfilled desire to join William Carey on the mission field of India. He told others that God wanted his name preached everywhere: “May we, like our divine Master, not fail nor be discouraged, until the gospel be established in the earth, and the waiting isles have received the law of him who is the approaching ‘desire of nations!’” (13).

Pearce lamented the church languishing without a heart for the lost while “millions of immortal souls, as precious as our own, drop into hell without an effort for their salvation” (38). Pearce devoted himself to the cause of international missions. He planned to join Carey, even beginning language study while still in England. He thought many men could do his work at Cannon Street, but few would make the long voyage to an uncomfortable land for the sake of the gospel: “If I stay in England, I fear I shall be a useless drone” (65). The people of India stood in greater need of ministers. “Preachers are a thousand times more wanted than people to preach to,” Pearce observed. This reality made him anxious to go, “an anxiety which nothing can remove, and time seems to increase” (47).

However, instead of simply announcing he was leaving for India, Pearce wisely sought counsel from his own congregation and the Baptist Missionary Society. His friends and church family wanted him to stay. They believed he could do more to encourage international missions by preaching and fundraising in England than by joining Carey in India. Pearce’s gifts were so pronounced, those closest to him doubted he could be easily replaced. Though he may have felt like a “useless drone,” they considered him an essential cog in a missionary machine. One friend remarked, “I bless God for your zeal, but surely I think it will hurt the cause [of missions] in various ways if you go” (50). As much as it pained him, he stayed, committed to doing as much good as possible: “One thing, however, I have resolved upon, that, the Lord helping me, if I cannot go abroad, I will do all I can to serve the mission at home” (66).

Upon his death, Andrew Fuller compiled Pearce’s letters to publish as memoirs. He did it with the hope that “a double portion” of Pearce’s spirit may rest upon the reader (1). It is worth our attention that the esteemed Fuller believed Pearce should be remembered and emulated. It was Fuller’s sermon The Gospel Worthy of All Acceptation (1785) that paved the way for the birth of an interest in missions among Particular or Calvinistic Baptist churches. His influence loomed so large that the late eighteenth-century revival among English Baptists was often called “Fullerism.”^{44 .} H. Leon McBeth, The Baptist Heritage: Four Centuries of Baptist Witness (Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1987), 178.

In October of 1792, when a small group of Baptist pastors from the Nottingham Baptist Association met in a widow’s home to organize the Baptist Missionary Society, it was Fuller they elected secretary of the group. When someone asked these pastors to make a donation to the cause, they used Fuller’s snuffbox to collect the money. William Carey and Andrew Fuller may represent the heartbeat of the early missions movement, but no one joined them in their efforts with greater zeal and faithfulness than their younger brother, Samuel Pearce. When the Baptist Missionary Society began, it was Pearce who “had the honor of securing from his people in Birmingham, the first church collection for modern missions.”^{55 .} Richard Cook, The Story of the Baptists in All Ages and Countries (Baltimore, MD: Wharton Publishers, 1885), 305.

Conclusion

A Heart for Missions is not an ordinary book. It’s not a memoir in the classic sense—Pearce did not write an autobiography. It’s not even a biography—Fuller’s comments make up only a tiny fraction of this slim volume. A Heart for Missions are the words of a young pastor preserved for future generations by a loving and devoted friend.

If you are young, you need to read this book to become more convinced that sanctification is not just for the old. If you are old, you need to read this book to be reminded not to look down on the young. If you are a pastor, you need to read this book to see that faithfulness and fruitfulness in ministry are best friends. If you care about missions, you need to read this book to understand that the nations are not reached without great effort on our part. If you are suffering, you need to read this book to see how the love of God in Christ “transforms thorns into roses.” And if you aspire to be a pastor, you need to read this book to see why an Illinois farmer who picked up the life of Pearce might conclude he must “try to preach the Blessed Gospel.”