The Plodding Life

More than half of Gen Zers (people born between 1997 and 2012) aspire to be influencers. I get it. Who wouldn’t want to get rich by being famous and posting about your curated life online for the world to see? Of course, Gen Z isn’t the first generation to want wealth and fame without a lot of effort. That generation just happens to coincide with an age that has made that dream seem attainable for anyone with an iPhone and Instagram.

We live in an age that celebrates talent but ignores character. For generations now, we’ve told children they can be anything they want to be without emphasizing work and virtue formation. Wealth and fame have become goals to pursue by any means necessary. However, striving to be the kind of person who could responsibly handle fortune and celebrity doesn’t usually register high on the priority list.

William Carey (1761–1834) likely lacked the dynamic charisma typically associated with celebrity. By all accounts, he did not even stand out among his Baptist peers for oratorical giftedness or personal magnetism. In fact, in his mid-20s he preached a trial sermon before the Baptist church of Olney, England, seeking commissioning as a preacher of the gospel. After hearing Carey preach, the church agreed that they would not commission him and asked to hear him preach again before making any final decision. The young preacher failed to prove himself, and the congregation clearly refused to flatter him.

However, true to form, Carey did not give up. He returned to Olney one year later, preached again, and, although Carey called it “as weak and crude as anything ever called a sermon,” the church commissioned him to preach. They must’ve sensed something not previously evident. He was ordained by the Northamptonshire Association one year later, began pastoring in Moulton, and initiated the friendships with Andrew Fuller (1754–1815) and other notable Baptist pastors that would result in the launch of the modern mission movement. Carey would spend the remainder of his life laboring as a missionary in India.

Carey shouldn’t be celebrated as a flawless hero. He deserves scrutiny for several things, most notably his treatment of his first wife, Dorothy Plackett, who hesitatingly followed him to India but died on the mission field after going insane. His evident flaws remind us that God draws straight lines with crooked sticks. In fact, Carey’s shortcomings ought to encourage those of us who battle daily against our own deficiencies and weaknesses. I draw more inspiration from flawed historical figures who still found a way to make a difference in the world than I do from unrealistic presentations of historical heroes who didn’t seem to possess any shortcomings.

Not blessed with relational magnetism or dynamic charisma, how did Carey accomplish so much? How did he come to be remembered as the “father of modern missions”? Carey once described the key to his success to his nephew, Eustace: “If, after my removal anyone should think it worth his while to write my life, I will give you a criterion by which you may judge of its correctness. If he gives me credit for being a plodder, he will describe me justly. Anything beyond this will be too much. I can plod. I can persevere in any definite pursuit. To this I owe everything.”

According to Carey, his success as a missionary was the result of his ability to plod. In case you’re unfamiliar with this concept, it means to monotonously grind away at a tedious task. Carey woke up day after day and made unexciting progress on the same tasks until they were completed. He plodded. When I was writing my dissertation, I often returned to Carey’s description for inspiration. As a husband, father, and church-planting pastor, I did not have the luxury of sabbaticals or retiring to my study for long periods of time to write. However, cuing Carey, I determined that I could plod. I could wake up day after day and make some amount of progress, no matter how small. Sometimes, I read a source. Sometimes, I wrote a paragraph or even a sentence. But I plodded until the dissertation was completed. Carey provided a model for me to follow.

I love Carey’s self-description because plodding is available to anyone willing to give it a try. It doesn’t matter how gifted you are or how much charisma you possess. You can plod. Anyone can. You can wake up day after day, motivated by God’s love through Christ, and make progress on the things God has called you to pursue. Plodding may not induce influencer levels of excitement, wealth, and fame, but a plodding life is much more conducive to virtue formation. I guess it just depends on priorities.