- Missions
Steve Wilkinson, a project engineer in Ohio in the early 1980s, yearned for God to send him a blueprint.
He didn’t need divine assistance to design water pumps. What Wilkinson couldn’t reconcile was God’s revelation of redirection into ministry.
“How does all this training in engineering, how does the success in engineering, how does this bright future in engineering get left behind to go into ministry, which I have no training for?” he said with a freshness that defies the decades. “As an engineer, I wanted a blueprint to know exactly how things go together and God wasn’t giving me one.”
The clarity to untangle his confusion came when Wilkinson visited his college roommate in Indiana. During worship at his friend’s church, the pastor said, “God uses those who make themselves available.”
That’s when the engineer made peace with his puzzle.
“I wasn’t going to get a blueprint,” he realized, “and I didn’t need a blueprint to move forward.”
There’s a blueprint, even if you can’t see it
Within a few months, he resigned from his engineering job and started full-time academic work at Ashland Seminary. As graduation approached, the Lord’s blueprint included a trip recommended by his pastor, David Pound of Berean Baptist Church in Mansfield, Ohio.
Seminary seniors had been invited to Converge’s national office, then located in Arlington Heights, Illinois, to learn about ministry opportunities. There, Wilkinson heard that Baptist Theological College in Cebu, Philippines, needed a teacher for undergraduate Bible, theology and Greek classes.
“That’s exactly what I’d been training for,” Wilkinson said.
Wilkinson had an easy enough time embracing the excitement of discovering what was next. Yet, God wasn’t done surprising him.
To go to Cebu, the Ohio man needed to raise $11,000 within a few months of his 1986 graduation. However, he’d never raised support and didn’t have many connections beyond his church.
Berean Baptist was only 5 years old, plus the congregation was responsible for a brand-new building. Nevertheless, the deacons and Pastor Pound invited Wilkinson to share his opportunity with the church for four Sundays. The church’s entire offering would go to Wilkinson on the last Sunday.
“The amount raised in one day was $18,000,” he said.
That money, added to funds he’d raised elsewhere, meant he could invest 2 years to equipping pastors from Southeast Asia. Following that time there, he spent 12 years as a Fuller student and adjunct teacher before returning as a career global worker in 2001.
He first educated undergraduate students, then earned a Ph.D. and started teaching graduate students at Cebu Graduate School of Theology, where he still teaches.
A new degree for Wilkinson would mean a new school for thousands
At the end of Wilkinson’s third year, the college’s president said they wanted to start a seminary. The Filipinos believed more advanced training would raise thousands of pastors and missionaries to better disciple many across the region.
So, Wilkinson returned to the United States to begin work on a Ph.D. from Fuller Seminary in 1989. Five years later, God decided to manufacture the next part of his plan while Wilkinson was teaching New Testament Greek.
A full-time teacher named Barbara was a part-time seminary student who happened to be taking New Testament Greek, which Wilkinson taught. Additionally, she was attracted to missions.
The two were married a year and a half later. Then, in 2001, they went to Cebu, where they raised two sons, Paul and Timothy.
Surprise — these people have never seen a Bible
God orchestrated a perfectly timed — but never predictable — sequence of ministries for Barbara in the Philippines. First, she started a Christian education program for Filipino children in their church when Steve was its interim pastor. The Filipino adults learned how to lead and grew into mature believers ready to lead this program by themselves.
A few years later, she connected with a group of expat mothers from other Southeast Asian countries. These Korean and Japanese women wanted to learn English. Since Barbara was leading a Bible study, she invited them so they could learn English and hear about Christ.
In response, she said those women looked at the Bible with awe and fear because they’d never seen one before.
“How often do you get to be with people who’ve never seen a Bible?” she said.
Two of those women eventually committed their lives to Christ. Years later, they shared with Barbara how the English lessons and Bible study were some of their best and most unforgettable times.
Barbara’s friendships with and influence on people who were deaf were similarly unforeseen. She and her son Paul started taking sign language classes, and a ministry among Deaf people gradually developed.
A few years later, after another furlough, God surprised Barbara with relationships at a leprosy hospital. The opportunity developed because other missionaries had started to serve the people with leprosy.
When that family left the Philippines, Barbara felt an acute concern they needed the gospel. So, she began serving the people who often endured emotional and physical pain. Over time, Filipino believers joined Barbara in that act of love. They now continue to bring Christ into the leprosy hospital.
“You feel like you’re being called for one reason and then these other things just pop up out of the blue,” she said. “It was always the perfect season for them.”
To Steve, his wife’s influence and relationships with unbelievers show how much God was ready to use them, even if his plans meant steady surprises.
“God has opened a number of doors for her to be involved in outreaches that were quite different from the experiences I was having,” he said. “She was the one out there with the unchurched and the unbelievers.”
The teaching continues and a new part appears in the blueprint
The Wilkinsons settled in Pennsylvania in 2019. Steve Wilkinson still teaches at the seminary and joined Converge’s Asia Impact Team. This team, led by David J., seeks to catalyze gospel movements that make disciples where American missionaries can’t go.
The cultural values and spiritual realities in much of Asia mean thousands of people groups and billions of people who’ve never heard about Christ.
“Nobody has written the book on how to do this,” Wilkinson explained. “Geographical, cultural and demographic issues abound.”
Yet, God has supplied the Asia Impact Team with an avenue: Disciples have begun asking for pastor-training seminars. These conferences are bridges that reveal leaders who can engage the unreached around them.
For example, the team has identified a pastor from a people group that is nearly 50% Christian. These believers live in a restricted nation surrounded by 25 unreached people groups.
“They’re feeling the burden to reach outside,” he said of this pastor and disciples in this large Asian country. “What about the tribes around us that are completely unreached?”
That’s the same burden of the Filipinos who’ve been part of the Wilkinsons’ life for more than 20 years. The same God who didn’t give Steve a blueprint has grown the college and seminary to impact the country’s churches through the disciples the Wilkinsons helped make. Plus, nearly all the college and seminary faculty are Filipinos with legitimate academic credentials.
In addition, the church of the Philippines has become strong enough to send its missionaries around the world. That accomplishment of God must have been in the blueprint somewhere, even if Wilkinson didn’t see it coming.
“In my lifetime, what we’ve seen is the Philippines go from a missionary-receiving country to a missionary-sending country,” Steve said. “We’ve been able to be part of that.”
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.
