Devotion runs parallel to passion for missions

The icicles in Larry Caldwell’s beard showed Dana Olson the fire in Caldwell’s belly.

It was the dead of a Minnesota winter when Olson first saw Caldwell running with frozen follicles. The two were students and Larry was on the track team at Bethel College (now University).

All winter long, Olson saw Caldwell, a few years older, run mile after mile around the campus on the shores of Lake Valentine.

“I admired him,” Olson said. “We knew then how devoted Larry was to being a champion.”

Caldwell went on to earn nine records for the university’s track team before he graduated.

Today, Olson is a pastor in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, where January temperatures can still freeze a beard. He regularly sees Caldwell running around town.

Caldwell came back to his hometown to embrace a different strategy for his same life purpose. Caldwell’s fire in the belly still burns, Olson said. It’s just for another purpose.

“That devotion to being a champion in running is similar to Larry’s passion for reaching the unreached peoples with the gospel,” Olson said.

A mentor and marriage unite a missional couple

In 1976, there were 17,000 people at Urbana, a conference to stimulate people to serve God across Earth.

Larry and Mary went to the conference separately. She knew of Larry because of ― you guessed it ― his running. But he didn’t know her as they listened to speakers and mingled among the thousands.

One of those speakers would become a significant person for their entire life. But before they met that speaker, different people introduced Larry and Mary on three separate occasions.

Six weeks later, they were engaged.

At the same Urbana conference they attended together, the two Bethel students met Ralph Winter. He was a keynote speaker at the event.

“We just sat at his feet, literally, in those sessions and learned all we could,” Caldwell said.

Two years earlier, Winter spoke to missionaries in Switzerland. What he said pressed a whole new concept into the priorities of missions. At Urbana, Winter introduced that same idea of focusing on unreached people groups to an American audience.

Related: How you can become a missionary

After the Caldwells completed their undergraduate studies at Bethel, Larry went to Bethel Seminary. Before he graduated, they taught at Baptist Theological College in the Philippines for one year.

When they returned to the states, Larry pursued advanced degrees and Mary earned a master's degree in English as a Second Language. Next, she and Larry went to China to gain experience to complete her degree.

After China, he and Mary also served alongside Winter at William Carey International University, which is the training arm of the U.S. Center of World Missions.

“He’s why we ended up in missions doing what we’re doing,” Caldwell noted.

What methods should the missional couple use?

The two knew they were going into missions. They always thought they’d be doing evangelistic work. But Winter’s influence shifted their thinking.

“One of his sayings was, ‘You could become a missionary yourself or you could mobilize one hundred others to become missionaries,’” Caldwell said.

So, in the early 1990s, Converge sent the Caldwells to the Philippines. Larry spent 20 years teaching at Asian Theological Seminary in Manila, five of those years as academic dean. Mary started and led an ESL program at Faith Academy, which became an effective ministry at what was then the world's largest missionary kids school.

“She’s able to relate to [other people groups] having lived overseas in different places,” Caldwell said. “She has a strong heart for empowering and helping people.”

When the Caldwells arrived, the Philippines church was already sending missionaries of their own. Even so, the church hadn’t yet formed a missions sending movement. 

Related: ‘Teach us and train us, and we’ll share the gospel.’

Larry worked at the seminary, training students to share their faith worldwide. At the same time, he traveled to Filipino churches again and again to form and fuel a movement.

“It was pretty fun to see it happen,” he said. “The Filipinos have sent out thousands of their own missionaries.”

Altogether, during those 20 years at Asian Theological Seminary, Caldwell had the opportunity to help train over two thousand Filipinos and other Asians to become missionaries, primarily to unreached peoples.

Many Filipinos live outside their home country, usually for education or work. That means those people can be tentmakers, like the Apostle Paul who made and sold tents while traveling to share the gospel.

Missionary training centers could be around the world

Caldwell’s seminary students from around the world learned about making disciples and doing ministry well. Then they went back to their home countries.

Now, in about 10 countries, his former students have helped start missionary training programs worldwide. There are centers in India, Pakistan and Brazil, plus a second location in the Philippines.

“We’re trying to help the national churches everywhere become the ones doing the training and the sending,” he said. “I’ve got students in over 50 different countries. When I visit them, it’s really fun to see what they’re doing.”

Caldwell, now the senior missiologist for Converge global missions, is also the academic dean at Sioux Falls Seminary. While students sometimes credit him for teaching them, he’s quick to shift the focus off himself.

“I’m a professor. I teach. I write,” he explains to his former students. “You are on the front lines. You are the true missionaries. You are the apostles. You are the sent ones to these people.”

Related: Experience life change through a global missions service internship

The pandemic limited Caldwell’s ability to visit students for a couple years. But Zoom didn’t dim the zeal.

For example, the Sioux Falls Seminary professor serves twenty students in the Persian Gulf area, several who are living in Saudi Arabia. They started underground churches around their Muslim country alongside their day jobs. Becoming a Christ-follower there involves straightforward and harsh consequences.

“You may be killed if you proselytize and you may be killed if you convert,” Caldwell explains.

However, even as Caldwell listens in a Zoom class, he sees the same God he followed for decades in the Philippines. The God of the Bible saves the lost, trains people to make disciples and sends out workers into the harvest field.

That’s why Caldwell has always been a teacher focused on equipping believers in least-reached countries to start and strengthen churches.

What’s the state of least-reached missions today?

In 1994, Caldwell’s book Missions and You was published in the Philippines. The book championed missions to unreached peoples locally and globally.

Over 25 years later, he updated the book. Yet, Caldwell said the most significant change isn’t the statistics about least-reached peoples. Instead, what’s changed is the increase in the number of missionaries from outside the West.

While populations among least-reached people groups have increased, the number of missionaries hasn’t kept pace, something a competitive runner is quick to notice.

The number of missionaries has stayed about the same, Caldwell said. The number of missionaries focused on unreached people groups is still about 5%.

“Most [missionaries] are reaching reached peoples,” he said. Reached peoples refer to a country or group with a percentage of believers that allows for a self-sustaining, self-reproducing church. 

There’s another major shift beyond missionaries from non-Western backgrounds: the people of least-reached societies are coming to reached countries such as the U.S.

For example, the recent U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan has increased the number of refugees.

Resettlement creates pain and promise for least-reached peoples

“There’s a bad side to it and there’s a good side that can be used for gospel purposes,” Caldwell explained. “Peoples are on the move. God’s moving people from everywhere to everywhere. This is unprecedented in world history.”

Related: How a Converge church planter in Kentucky is reaching the least-reached people across the street.

He sees the change in Sioux Falls. The city where he grew up was 98 percent Anglo when he was a boy.

Now, one out of every 10 people in the city of 200,000 was born outside the United States. Moreover, the school systems in Sioux Falls have students speaking almost 100 languages.

“This is happening everywhere in North America and Europe,” he added. “Missions is now next door if we take the opportunity to build relationships with people who differ from ourselves.”

Caldwell said the North American church usually couldn’t go to these unreached countries. But now, the least-reached have come to America. So, the churches here can make disciples who make disciples among them.

“All people are reachable, but we’ve got to change our methods of how we approach them,” Caldwell said.

Many pastors around the world can’t seek training at a formal theological school. So, Caldwell and others are changing how Sioux Falls Seminary educates pastors and global workers.

Missions is now next door if we take the opportunity to build relationships with people who differ from ourselves.

Larry Caldwell

Caldwell and his colleagues offer affordable and accessible training through digital technology. That means pastors can stay in their homes and ministry while being equipped.

For example, Ethiopian students pay Sioux Falls Seminary $25 per month for a fully accredited degree. Caldwell said an American could get a Master of Divinity degree for $10,000, which equals $300 a month.

Caldwell’s ministry teaches people to interpret Scripture according to their local culture.

“Everything is adaptable to their local context,” he said. “They learn the theology appropriate to their context.”

In addition, the emphasis on pastors’ cultures means seminary students learn the history of the church in their region. Most church history courses at seminary emphasize the history of the Western church.

“It’s a whole different way of doing it,” he said. “We’re thinking outside the box.”

And God is working outside the boundaries of most missions aimed in countries with self-sustaining, self-reproducing churches.

“We are seeing a responsiveness to the gospel today that we have never seen before,” Caldwell said.

He recognizes many Americans might not see that responsiveness. Yet Christianity is growing among Muslims, citing one example among least-reached peoples. There is a considerable turning to Jesus, especially among young people.

That’s why, whether global workers are going or the least-reached are coming to American communities, Caldwell’s fire stays lit.

“The day of the missionary is not over. Missions is not dead,” he said. “We desperately need more missionaries if we want to obey the great commission.”

Pastor Dana Olson isn’t surprised when he sees Caldwell jogging around Sioux Falls. The record holder at Bethel is still running on his feet and racing in his heart.

“There are reached people groups because of Larry’s passion and instruction,” Olson said. “People groups are now reached because of Larry’s ministry and others will be reached because of it. That’s awesome to think about.”

Converge is asking God for a gospel movement among every least-reached people group – in our generation. Learn how we are playing a role in accomplishing the Great Commission and how you can be involved.