In undertaking this topic I will start by examining the missiology of Gisbertus Voetius and then consider how his ideas were modified or expanded upon in the American Presbyterian tradition.

Gisbertus Voetius was an important Dutch Reformed theologian who lived from 1589 to 1676. Although most famous for his participation in the Synod of Dort held in 1618–1619, he is also important as the first Reformed theologian, probably first Protestant theologian, to articulate a comprehensive theology of missions. Amazingly, his missiology four centuries later is extremely relevant to Presbyterian and Reformed mission work today. As Francisca Ireland-Verwoerd points out, he asked and answered five questions about missions[1]:

1. Who sends? This he emphatically answered by saying it is God who sends, and in the post apostolic period, God sends through his true, visible church. In the context of Reformed missions, this means the sending should be through the assemblies of the church, such as sessions, presbyteries and synods, not parachurch organizations.

2. To whom is one sent? His answer is very broad: all those alienated from the church. All unbelievers regardless of where they live and what cultural background they have are the appropriate subjects for the mission work of the church. This is the implication of the great commission given by Jesus, that the gospel should go out to all nations.

3. Why is one sent? Ultimately, as is the case for everything we do, for the glory of God. Specifically, glorifying God by gathering together God’s elect people from around the world into the true church of Christ. This includes evangelizing those ignorant of the gospel and those who have heard and rejected it. It includes gathering and reforming those who profess the Christian faith but do not have a connection with a faithful Bible preaching and practicing church. It includes the establishment of faithful churches wherever there are people who believe the gospel; establishing churches includes properly training and ordaining indigenous leadership to continue the work of the church once the missionaries have departed. Voetius also included helping churches which were persecuted or financially impoverished.

4. Who and what kind of people are sent? Voetius emphasized first and foremost that the church should send well-trained ordained ministers as missionaries. They should not be seminary dropouts but among the best and brightest men that the church has to offer. In addition to theological studies, missionaries should study the local language and the culture and philosophy of the target people group, especially if the society in which they live is literate and has a high level of civilization.

But in addition to the ordained ministers, there need to be assistants and auxiliaries. Assistants would not necessarily need to be highly trained theologically but simply have basic skills for sharing the gospel and engaging in personal relationships with local people. However, these would not normally preach or administer the sacraments.

And finally there were the auxiliaries, doctors, and schoolteachers who would help support the missionaries and their families and who would extend assistance to local people who lack basic medical care and education.

5. According to which method and in which way are people sent? This is really two questions. The first is, how does a missionary get to the mission field and sustain himself and his family there? This he answers simply: by any means necessary which does not require the missionary to disobey Scripture. They may be spread abroad through persecution such as Paul when he was sent to Rome by Roman authorities. Or more intentionally traveling by commercial routes, sometimes having to take up other employment such as being a “tent maker,” as in Paul’s case, or being an employee of a trade company, serving in the army, or being a foreign ambassador.

The second question is, how do the missionaries develop relationships with local people in order to share the gospel with them? Public teaching and preaching of the Bible is of course primarily how the mission engages in its work. However, auxiliaries have an important job of making contact with local people and doing what we might call “pre-evangelism” through teaching in schools and providing medical assistance.

Although Reformed missiologists and missions agencies have expanded on Voetius’s work, the policies and methods of Presbyterian and Reformed mission work has not changed greatly since Voetius’s day, even though it would take about two-hundred years before Reformed and Presbyterian churches would begin to engage widely in foreign missions work beyond the areas where Europeans established colonies. Until the late eighteenth century, Protestant mission work was largely focused on reaching Europeans who were either unchurched or members of apostate churches like the Roman Catholic church. Non-Europeans were evangelized, but mostly in areas near where European colonists had established churches among their own people. The Dutch Reformed Church was quite vigorous in implementing some of Voetius’s ideas, especially in establishing schools throughout Dutch colonies. These schools had evangelistic objectives.

For example, by the 1660s, more than twenty thousand native students were enrolled in hundreds of Dutch Reformed Schools in places like Jakarta, Malaysia, Taiwan, Sri Lanka, India, South Africa, Brazil, New York, West Africa, and the Caribbean. In these schools, the local people were not only taught to read but also learned the basics of the Christian faith. Many churches were established as a result of this.[2]

One of the troubles with this work was that it was closely associated with colonialism. So, when Dutch colonialism started to wane and other powers took over Dutch colonies, the churches which the Dutch had established either disappeared or were absorbed into other church traditions associated with new colonial powers.

Presbyterians were a little slower than the Dutch to begin foreign missions works but also took a similar kind of form. Scotland, the birthplace of Presbyterianism, never had a colonial system like that of the Netherlands or England. However, after the Scottish began to immigrate to America and Francis Makemie helped to establish the first Presbyterian churches in America in the early eighteenth-century, Presbyterians started to evangelize American Indians. The Presbytery of New York seems to have taken the lead in doing this work. Early examples of missionaries they commissioned were Azariah Horton in 1741 to work among the Indians of Long Island and David Brainerd in 1743 to work among the Algonquin Indians along the Delaware River.[3]

Efforts such as these continued for almost two centuries. However, it would not be until after the Reformed Baptist William Carey’s work in India, which began in 1793, and the so-called “haystack prayer meeting” for foreign missions, which occurred in 1806 in New England among Congregationalists, that the PCUSA would begin sending missionaries to lands greatly separated from European colonies where organized Presbyterian churches already existed.

It is important to point out here that in 1801 the PCUSA entered into the Plan of Union with American Congregationalists. So, when the so-called “Haystack Revival” occurred among New England Congregationalists and resulted in the formation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in 1810, Presbyterians had a natural connection to this parachurch organization. Although it was initially formed by Congregationalists, Presbyterians and German Reformed churches soon started to support and send missionaries through this organization.

However, as can be imagined, this organization was not committed to Presbyterian polity, and at this time the Puritan Calvinism of New England Congregationalism was also becoming quite diluted. The board members of the American Board oversaw the work of its missionaries. The board took responsibility for selecting, training, and sending out ordained missionaries and sometimes even ordaining the missionaries themselves, but the board was not exclusively composed of ordained ministers and elders. Often they were simply prominent, sometimes wealthy, Congregationalists. While ministers would have conducted ordinations, they did so under the auspices of the board, not a local church, presbytery, or association of ministers.

At this time, the PCUSA was struggling internally between the more strictly Presbyterian and Calvinistic Old School and more theologically lax and even openly Arminian New School parties within the denomination. The New School was, unsurprisingly, quite comfortable with the American Board. But just as unsurprisingly, there was significant discontent among Old School Presbyterians within the PCUSA about this organization. And so, in 1812, 1828, and 1831, overtures came to the general assembly requesting that the PCUSA would establish its own missions organization. These assemblies voted against doing so and encouraged Presbyterians interested in becoming foreign missionaries to do so by being sent out through the American Board.

This did not satisfy Old School Presbyterians, especially those in Western Pennsylvania. And so, the Synod of Pittsburgh of the PCUSA organized its own missions organization called the “Western Foreign Missions Society” in 1831, which had the goal of doing foreign missions in a particularly Reformed and Presbyterian manner. Those in this synod maintained hope that eventually the general assembly of the PCUSA would establish its own foreign missions agency. That eventually happened.

Tensions between the Old School and New School Presbyterians continued to grow until 1837 when the denomination split into two separate general assemblies. Once the Old School had its own general assembly, it immediately voted 108 to 29 to organize its own missions board with eighty members, forty ministers, and forty elders. It met for the first time on October 31, 1837.[4]

Besides deciding to absorb the missionaries from the Western Foreign Missions Society and take on its work, the board decided to choose China as its new main field. The reasons for choosing this field were (1) its giant population which was (2) almost completely without the knowledge of the true God, despite (3) the fact that this great nation had a common written language and (4) seemed to be “open and waiting for the gospel.” On December 6, 1837, only a little more than a month after the first meeting of the PCUSA missions board, the first missionaries under the newly organized board left for China. (Presumably, missionaries were being prepared for this field already under the auspices of the Western Foreign Missions Society.)

Although I am not aware of evidence that Voetius’s missiology directly influenced the policies of the board, it is hard not to see their similarity, because the policies which the nineteenth-century PCUSA board adopted were essentially in line with those promoted by Voetius two centuries earlier. In particular, that it was the responsibility of the church through her regularly organized assemblies, and not organizations outside the church, to send out foreign missionaries with the goal of establishing indigenous Reformed and Presbyterian churches on foreign lands. Maybe there was no direct influence of Voetius on the PCUSA at this time and this was just the logical outworking of their common commitment to the Reformed Faith and the principles of Presbyterian polity. But it is striking that Voetius also encouraged the use of medical and educational mission work alongside the preaching of the gospel. This work became a hallmark of the PCUSA missions, in contrast with many other missions organizations which did not choose to engage in such work, or engaged in it to only a small degree.

But that is not to say that the PCUSA agreed with Voetius at every point. For example, Voetius did not believe that the missionary sending church should establish native churches which were subject to the ecclesiastical assemblies of the missionary sending church. In the nineteenth century there were three different models used by Reformed churches for the relationship between the missionary-sending church and the native churches. These can be illustrated in their mission work in China.

The PCUSA determined to establish churches in foreign mission fields which were organically related to the sending church. In other words, PCUSA missionaries established PCUSA congregations in other countries, and indeed presbyteries and synods as well. These were all subject to the jurisdiction of the PCUSA general assembly held in America. Generally, the PCUSA sent at least three ordained ministers to serve in any particular mission station who would then immediately form a presbytery on the foreign mission field. Consequently, even before there were local churches with any Chinese converts there were PCUSA presbyteries in places like Shanghai, Ningbo, and Guangdong which were organized under the PCUSA synod of New York. (The PCUSA foreign missions board had their offices in New York City.) As Chinese converts were made, they actually became members of the PCUSA. As Chinese elders were ordained, they became members of the same sessions and presbyteries as the foreign missionaries and held equal authority with them. This meant that the newly established local churches were organized with the same confessional standards, book of church order, book of discipline, and directory for public worship as the PCUSA. Chinese translations of these documents were needed, therefore, in order for the Chinese ministers to fully participate in the life of the church on the same footing as the foreign missionaries.

The advantages of this method were that it provided doctrinal standards, church structure, and accountability from the beginning of the work on which to build. It put in place a scheme which made foreign missionaries equal counterparts to their native Chinese church leaders. The problem was that, given the distance and slow rate of communication and the occasional confusion over dates between the western solar calendar and the traditional Chinese lunar calendar, the organic union with the American church proved to be more of a hassle than a practical help. When matters from China particularly related to peculiarities in Chinese culture—such as how to handle the arranged marriages of believers with unbelievers, the practice of foot binding, whether other alcoholic beverages could be substituted for grape juice when grape juice was not available from local sources, and establishing presbytery boundaries—came before the America assemblies, these assemblies almost never knew how best to handle them and simply referred them back to the missionaries and the local church.

Another model was used by the Southern Presbyterian Church (PCUS) which was more in line with Voetius’s view on the topic. Initially, they thought to follow the example of the PCUSA. However, they ultimately adopted somewhat of an opposite method. While missionaries would oversee the churches they established until native elders and pastors were ordained, these churches would never be a part of the PCUS. Once native sessions were established, the missionaries would relinquish all authority for oversight to their native counterparts.

Part of the reason for this was racism, because they felt it was inappropriate for a white man to be placed in position of equal authority with a member of an inferior race,[5] but they also believed that it removed obstacles from the native church which made it difficult for her to unite with other churches in China which were established by Presbyterian missionaries of other denominations. It also encouraged the local church to develop her own leadership and take part in evangelism and missions herself from the earliest stages of the church. However, the method left the missionaries “coaching from the sidelines” and delayed any transfer of authority to native officers until entire sessions could be established.

The third method, which Voetius also likely would have approved, was developed by the Reformed Church in America (RCA) and the Presbyterian Church of England (PCE). In Amoy (Xiamen in modern Mandarin), both denominations had a mission station. Neither mission desired to propagate their particular denomination in China and felt that it was important that ministers from both denominations could work together on equal footing with the local church leaders in the same church assemblies. The result was the creation of the “Amoy plan.” It consisted of five points:

1. the native churches established in China would neither be under the general synod of the RCA or the general assembly of the PCE;
2. missionaries would retain their membership in and remain under the discipline of their home churches, but also have full voting rights in the assemblies of the native church;
3. the native assemblies would have the right to eject missionaries from their assemblies for improper behavior, though this would not be considered formal church discipline or necessarily require full disciplinary process;
4. only native men whose churches called them to serve with the promise of full financial support were eligible for ordination as pastors;
5. funds from America and England would be overseen and distributed by their respective missions, whereas funds collected locally would be overseen by the assemblies of the native church.[6]

This policy ultimately became quite favored of not only Reformed and Presbyterian missionaries in China but of other denominations as well. Although the name “Amoy Plan” is no longer well known among modern missionaries, the OPC, PCA, and other Reformed denominations follow similar policies today.

Another way in which the nineteenth-century PCUSA differed from Voetius was in regard to the focus of the church on the societal transformation of non-Christian lands. To be sure, both expected that as the gospel went forward into lands which had never heard the gospel the culture and society of that land would be impacted. But it seems that in Voetius’s missiology social transformation was just a biproduct of the main goal, which was to gather God’s elect from the nation and organize them into native Reformed churches.

To be sure, in the nineteenth century, PCUSA missions similarly emphasized ensuring that all efforts of the mission, including educational and medical work, were subservient to the main cause of gospel proclamation and the conversion of God’s elect throughout the world. However, it seems that the postmillennialism of Old School American Presbyterianism had also had an impact on the goals of the nineteenth-century missionaries. For example, Calvin W. Mateer is quoted in his biography as having said, “I expect to die in heathen China, but I expect to rise in Christian China.”[7] While we can appreciate his faith in the power of the gospel and the confidence which he had that his Savior would achieve His goals, one wonders if the hope of “Christianizing heathen nations” may have sidetracked the PCUSA mission.

At the end of the nineteenth century and certainly in the early twentieth century, the PCUSA China mission increasingly gave attention to developing the medical, educational, and even political efforts of the mission. It seemed these efforts were a common point of interest between the more conservative Old School missionaries and the newer liberal missionaries who came in great numbers after the year 1900. Both desired to impact the nation and culture of China for the glory of Christ’s name, even if in the case of the liberal missionaries the conversion of God’s elect and the establishment of orthodox Presbyterian and Reformed churches became less emphasized.

Ironically, many of those who led the atheist, communist revolution in China were educated in missionary schools and introduced to socialist ideas from the West.[8] This ultimately resulted in a nation which is overtly hostile to the church and regularly persecutes and imprisons Christian pastors.

In fact, this emphasis on social transformation proved not only a detriment to the PCUSA mission but also seems to have helped the PCUSA along its way to its radical corruption today. It cannot be denied that the educational and medical endeavors of the PCUSA mission provided many lasting benefits to China as well as other nations, but they required a great deal of funding. Much of that funding came from wealthy doners who tended to be rather liberal in their theological outlook.

In 1925, as a result of the concerted effort of men who faithfully contended for the gospel, such as J. Gresham Machen, the liberal party within the generally conservative PCUSA almost walked out of the general assembly and would then likely have left the denomination with many liberal congregations. However, this would have resulted in the loss of many wealthy doners upon which the many programs of the PCUSA, including foreign missions, depended. As it happened then, just before the liberal party of the denomination intended to express their determination to leave, the theologically moderate moderator of the general assembly that year called for a study committee to discuss what was causing disunity within the PCUSA. The next year the committee gave their report: Disunity was being caused by conservative theologians of Princeton Seminary, the most vocal of whom was J. Gresham Machen. This, in effect, led to the liberal faction within the PCUSA to remain within the denomination, and from that point on they increasingly controlled denominational boards, including the board of foreign missions.

Not surprisingly, the PCUSA increasingly sent out theologically liberal missionaries, including the notorious unbeliever Pearl Buck. In protest of this, in 1933 Machen did something rather un-Presbyterian in order to preserve orthodox presbyterian missions: He established the Independent Board for Presbyterian Missions and then refused to support the PCUSA denominational missions board. This is pointed out not so much to criticize Machen but only to focus on the irony that the Old School Presbyterians labored hard one hundred years earlier to establish a distinctly Reformed and Presbyterian missions board under the oversight of the general assembly of the PCUSA. Machen labored to establish an independent parachurch organization to do this same work.

However, this situation did not last long. His support for the Independent Board, his refusal to support the PCUSA foreign missions board, and his encouraging others to do the same resulted in him being deposed from the ministry. After being deposed, he left the PCUSA and helped form the OPC. By the end of 1937, the OPC had established her own Foreign Missions Committee which was directly accountable to the general assembly of the OPC. Four missionary couples who had been associated with the Independent Board left to serve under the auspices of the newly constituted OPC Foreign Missions Committee.

This represented a return to Old School Presbyterianism and, whether consciously or not, a return to the principles of missions outlined by Voetius. In fact, today, the policies of OPC foreign missions more closely resemble that of Voetius than nineteenth-century PCUSA foreign missions, in that the OPC has never sought to establish congregations of the OPC in other lands outside the US, nor has it maintained the social transformationalist tendences of Old School postmillennialism.

Today, the OPC continues very much the same policies which it has had since its inception. The goal is the establishment of indigenous Presbyterian and Reformed churches in other lands through evangelism, church planting, leadership training, and diaconal assistance. Although educational and medical assistance are given through our missions committee, especially in Uganda, these efforts are subservient to the main goal of glorifying God through the gathering of God’s elect into Christ’s church through the proclamation of the gospel. While we continue to make use of “assistants and auxiliaries” as Voetius called them, or “missionary associates” as we call them, missionaries are primarily seminary trained, ordained men called especially to the task of gospel proclamation.

Endnotes

[1] Francisca Ireland-Verwoerd, “Voetius, Gisbertus [Gijsbert Voet] (1589–1676),” BU, Boston University School of Theology, accessed August 21, 2025, www.bu.edu/missiology/missionary-biography/t-u-v/voetius-gisbertus-gijsbert-voet-1589-1676/. See also J. H. Bavinck, An Introduction to the Science of Missions (The Presbyterian and Reformed, 1960), 6–7.

[2] Charles H. Parker, “The Legacy of Calvinism in the Dutch Empire,” Aeon Essays, accessed August 21, 2025, https://aeon.co/essays/the-legacies-of-calvinism-in-the-dutch-empire.

[3] For further details and documentation of the content of this paragraph and much of the remainder of this article, see Michael M., “A Brief History of Western Presbyterian and Reformed Mission to China,” in China’s Reforming Churches: Mission, Polity, and Ministry in the Next Christendom, ed. Bruce P. Baugus (Reformation Heritage Press, 2014), 27–57.

[4] For more information regarding the contents of this and the following paragraph, see G. Thompson Brown, Earthen Vessels and Transcendent Power: American Presbyterians in China, 1837–1953 (Orbis Books, 1997), 11–17.

[5] See for example, M. H. Houston, personal letter “Presbytery of Hangzhou”, The Missionary, vol. 7 (November 1874): 248–249 [39–41 in some editions], and James Bear, The China Mission of the Presbyterian Church in the United States. Vol. 2 (unpublished manuscript located at Union Theological Seminary, Richmond Virgina, n.d.), 229–31. In this letter, M. H. Houston, a Southern Presbyterian missionary, states that while the Chinese are “superior to the negroes,” they are still “an inferior race” to white people.

[6] Michael M., “A Brief History of Western Presbyterian and Reformed Mission to China,” 36.

[7] Daniel Webster Fisher, Calvin Wilson Mateer Forty-Five Years a Missionary in Shantung, China: A Biography (T. French Downie, 1911), 319.

[8] For example, Wang Chia-hsiang who directed the general political department of the Chinese Workers and Peasants Red Army in Kiangsi and headed the Academy for Military and Political Cadres in Yenan was educated in a missionary school of the Episcopal mission. See Howard Borman, Biographical Dictionary of Republican China [online], x-Borman, “Wang Jiaxiang,” accessed August 21, 2025, https://xboorman.enpchina.eu/biographie/wang-jiaxiang/.

Michael M. is a minister of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church who has served as a foreign missionary of the denominational foreign missions committee for more than twenty years and has taught church history and church polity in multiple seminaries in East Asia. Ordained Servant Online, January, 2026