Some world missions organizations focus tightly on one or two specific areas of ministry.  For instance, some focus on relief and development.  Others occupy themselves solely with Scripture distribution.  A few minister exclusively to children.  Some concentrate on gospel radio broadcasting.

On the other hand, there are mission boards, including that of the Church of the Nazarene, whose holistic philosophy pushes them to conducting a wide spectrum of programs and activities. In terms of missionary strategy, holistic means ministry that takes into account the whole person -- not only spiritually, but also physically, emotionally, socially, artistically and intellectually.

Such holistic ministry can be seen in what William Carey did during his 40 years in India.  A pioneer Baptist missionary in the early 1800s, Carey launched a variety of ministries and activities.

Carey had left his native England to go to India in response to Jesus’ Great Commission.  He wanted India to come to Christ.  Thus, he plunged into open-air evangelism and into Bible translation projects for several of India’s languages.  Seven years would pass, however, before William Carey had his first Indian convert.  When the breakthrough finally came, Carey added discipleship and church planting to his evangelistic efforts.

Carey’s focus was never limited, however, to just trying to “save souls.”  He wanted the people of India to be all that God had created them to be. So, during his four decades in India, Carey fiercely battled social evils like the caste system, infanticide, discrimination against females, and the practice of burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their late husbands.

While Carey himself did not have a lot of formal education, he founded a university in India as well as starting some primary and secondary schools.  His holistic approach also drove him to spend time and energy on things like horticulture, agriculture and economic development.

Carey certainly lived out a motto he expressed in a sermon even before he went to India: “Expect great things from God; attempt great things for God.”  Carey did attempt a lot of great things for God. One must wonder where he found the time to learn about and then to get involved in the wide range of holistic ministries that he initiated.

For Carey, the gospel was a transformative force for all of life: spiritually, socially, culturally, intellectually, and even economically.  This thought led him to form a holistic missionary strategy that makes people point back to him as a model for missionary activity.  Indeed, for more than 200 years, William Carey’s holistic approach has set the tone for missionaries and missionary organizations.

People often refer to William Carey as “the father of the modern missionary movement.”  That is not because he was the first Protestant missionary.  He was not.  Others had been going out from Western Europe for 150 years before Carey set sail for India.  That title is ascribed to Carey largely because he was a pacesetter for the holistic way missionary work is done around the world today.

-- Howard Culbertson served as a missionary in Haiti and Italy for 15 years, and spent the past 25 years as a professor of mission at Southern Nazarene University.