Lessons from the Life and Missions of John G. Paton

If we think of missions, and more specifically, missions to unreached language groups, John Gibson Paton looms large. [1] Paton is a towering figure, primarily because of what the Lord allowed him to accomplish through unbelievable hostility and the level of suffering that God asked of him. He spoke to US Presidents, Senators, members of the English Parliament, and churches up and down the US, Australia, Canada, and the UK. Charles Spurgeon once introduced him to a group of his parishioners as “the King of the Cannibals,” and those going to the ends of the earth today still find great encouragement in his life. [2]

Paton’s Life

Paton was born in Dumfrieshire, Scotland, on May 24, 1824, the eldest of 11 children. It should be noted that Scotland was unusually blessed in the late 18th and 19th centuries to have so many notable men and women of character representing her in faraway lands. Among the better-known are Robert Moffat, born 1795; Alexander Duff (1806); David Livingston (1813); William Chalmers Burns (1815); and Mary Slessor (1848). On one of his trips home, Paton would share the need in the South Seas to such effect that 1 in 6 pastors in his Reformed Presbyterian Church of Scotland would rise to the challenge and depart for missions work overseas. It’s remarkable to contemplate what the sons and daughters of Scotland were hearing in their pulpits during this period that made them so ready to lay down their lives in service overseas.

Paton departed from his parent’s house in 1841 at seventeen years of age and spent ten years in Glasgow in medical and theological studies. He would see great success in his ministry at the Green Street Mission but remain immovable in his conviction that God was calling him to ministry in the South Seas. On March 23, 1858, he was ordained to ministry. Eight days later, he married Mary Ann Robson, and fourteen days later, he set sail for the New Hebrides islands. 

Three months after arriving on the island of Tanna, his son was born. Nineteen days later, his wife Mary Ann died of tropical fever, and 17 days later, his son Peter Robert Robson also died. He would endure two and a half years of limited progress on Tanna and end up forced off the island under threat of death. In June of 1864, he returned to Scotland to raise money for the work in the New Hebrides. While in Scotland, he met and married Margret Whitecross. In August 1866, he returned to the New Hebrides but settled in Aniwa rather than Tanna. He and Margret would have 10 children, but only four would live past childhood. 

John and Margret learned the language, developed an orthography (alphabet), taught the Aniwans how to read and write, translated the Scriptures, established churches, and sent teachers to all the villages that spoke the Aniwan dialect and beyond. Eventually, the entire Island of Aniwa would profess Christianity.

Paton would mobilize thousands for the cause of missions, specifically to the unreached, many to the South Seas. In 1899, the Scripture translation was completed and brought into Aniwa in bound form, and 25 of the 30 islands that make up the New Hebrides had missionary teams on them. Many of those teams were a result of Paton’s tireless advocation for missions in the South Seas. 

Margret Paton died in Victoria, Australia, in May 1905. She and John had been married for 41 years. John Paton died two years later, in January 1907. Their earthly remains are buried at Boorunda Cemetery in Victoria, Australia. 

Lessons Learned

It’s impossible to drill too deeply into a life so fully lived in such a short article, but let me propose three takeaways or lessons from what we know of the man. 

1. His upbringing fueled the rest of his life.

Paton was raised in a home that took church and family worship seriously. His parents were devout church members who practiced family worship and prayers twice daily. Paton embraced the value of the gathering of the saints on the Lord’s Day.

He would say of him and his ten siblings, “There were eleven of us brought up in a home like that; and never one of the eleven, boy or a girl, man or woman, has been heard, or ever will be heard, saying that Sabbath was dull or worrisome for us.”[3] 

Paton’s relationship with his father was remarkably close. There is scant information about how he was raised, but we know that he was no stranger to hard work, Bible memorization, and having the cause of the missions put front and center. He frequently speaks of the “God of his Father” and, in a touching point, gives credit to the memory of the first time he left his father for keeping him from sin in his early years, “…the memory of that scene not only helped to keep me pure from the prevailing sins, but also stimulated me in all my studies, that I might not fall short of his hopes, and in all my Christian duties, that I might faithfully follow his shining example.”[4]

But to measure the total influence of Paton’s upbringing, it must extend past John Paton himself and onto his children and grandchildren. The flame lit in Paton for world missions would pass to three of his four children, two of his grandsons, and one of his great-grandsons, spanning over one hundred years of missionary service, nearly all of it in the South Seas. 

Paton was never shy about wanting to see his children go into missions. He saw it as the “noblest service in which any human being could spend or be spent.”[5] Remember that Paton lost 6 of his 10 children, and at least four of those who died stood a much better chance of living if he had not been a missionary. And yet, Paton weighed this cost, presumably not just for him but for all his future family members, and encouraged them on the path he had taken! “I deeply rejoice — when I breathe that prayer that it may please the blessed Lord to turn the hearts of all my children to the mission field; and that he may open up their way and make it their pride and joy to live and die in carrying Jesus and his gospel into the heart of the heathen world.”[6]

Paton’s upbringing steeled him for the challenges ahead, gave him love for God and hatred of sin, and helped him see how to live and die with absolute clarity. 

2. He saw missions through the prism of Gospel opportunity.

Many people don’t understand that Paton’s ministry at his church and the Green Street Mission was incredibly successful before he left for the South Seas. This was one of the major pushbacks to his leaving. How could someone seeing such fruit in ministry leave it behind for a most likely quick and gruesome death? 

But Paton saw the disparity in gospel opportunity as the dominating issue in where his gifts should be used and trusted God with the results. He would say, “Happy in my work as I felt, and successful by the blessing of God, yet I continually heard, and chiefly during my last ten years in the Divinity Hall, the wail of a perishing Heathen in the South Seas; and I saw that few were caring for them, while I well knew that many would be ready to take up my work in Carlton, and carry it forward perhaps with more efficiency than myself.”[7] Gospel opportunity was paramount to Paton. If someone had access to the Bible, and even more so if they had a church in their area, they had “all the means of grace within easy reach.” He felt duty-bound to get to those who had no such access to the message of life. 

This clarity and singlemindedness would later lead some to label him derisively as a “one-idea man.” Paton’s retort is sharper than our modern ears are used to. “When pleading the cause of the Heathen and the claims of Jesus on His followers, I have often been taunted with being “a man of one idea.” Sometimes I have thought that this came from the lives of those who had not even one idea! – Unless it were how to kill time or to save their own skin. But seriously speaking, is it not better to have one good idea and to live for that and succeed in it, than to scatter one’s life away on many things and leave a mark on nothing!” 

“One idea men” in missions are rare in our days. Missions in these times is an ever-rotating kaleidoscope of the new, the creative, and whatever someone wants it to be. Paton’s view harkens back to Paul’s in Romans 15, to the idea of gospel opportunity animating them to the end of their days. 

3. God gave him the grace to see past his world.

I’m convinced that those who can overcome immense obstacles in missions and life are those who are given eyes to see past this world by the power of the Holy Spirit. The obstacles that Paton faced were too great for someone who measured success or fulfillment by this world’s standards. Other than surviving, the early part of his ministry was a failure. But he persevered. He believed the Lord had him there for a purpose, and he pressed on, no matter the results. 

The most telling quote that Paton saw past this world is also his most famous. When the leaders of his church were trying to convince him to stay or cannibals would eat him, he famously shifted the gravity of the discussion from this world to the world to come. 

“Finally, they begged him to stay due to the prospects of danger and death. The famous missionary John Williams had been killed and eaten less than two decades earlier, the tragedy still fresh on everyone’s minds. One dear Christian saint cried: ‘The cannibals, you will be eaten by the cannibals!’ Paton responded, ‘Mr. Dickson, you are advanced in years now, and your own prospect is soon to be laid in the grave, there to be eaten by worms.

I confess to you, that if I can but live and die serving and honoring the Lord Jesus, it will make no difference to me whether I am eaten by cannibals or by worms; and in the Great Day my resurrection body will arise as fair as yours in the likeness of our risen Redeemer.’”[8]

Even before he began his ministry in the South Seas, Paton was graced with eyes that saw past this world and to the world that truly matters. In many ways, he represents so well the saints that the author of Hebrews speaks of in Chapter 11. These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.

Paton made an indelible impact on me and my wife as we prepared to leave for Papua New Guinea over 100 years after he died. And if the King should tarry another 100 years, Paton’s legacy and lessons will be no less relevant to those leaving home to take the gospel message to the ends of the earth.  

[1] The group of pastors worked through the Autobiography of John Paton, published by Banner of Truth.

[2] The Autobiography is excellent, but Paul Schlehlein’s smaller biography is remarkable in the gems it brings out. John Piper’s synopsis of his life in his 27 Servants of Sovereign Joy is also helpful.

[3] John G. Paton: John G. Paton: Missionary to the New Hebrides, (The Banner of Truth Trust, Edinburgh, UK, 2016), pg. 17

[4] Ibid pg. 25 (The first time he left his father is quite touching and worth reading in full.) 

[5] Ibid pg. 97

[6] Ibid pg. 97

[7] Ibid pg. 52

[8] Paul Schlehlein, John G Paton: Missionary to the Cannibals of the South Seas, (Edinburgh, UK: The Banner of Trust, 2017), pg. 18-19

©2023 Brooks Buser. Used with permission.