Stories of Faith - Episode 14

David Brainerd was born in Connecticut in 1718. He lost both of his parents in his youth. He tried his hand at farming for a bit, but he longed for education and entered Yale University when he was twenty-one. Brainerd believed that God was calling him into ministry; his earnest temperament and scholarly disposition boded well for his success in the pastorate.

While David Brainerd was at Yale, George Whitefield preached there. The fires of the Great Awakening sweeping across the country began to burn among the students, leading to great spiritual zeal and, along with it, controversy. The faculty and administration of the university were suspicious of what was termed “enthusiasm.” The students who, for the first time, had developed a taste for spiritual ardor began to question the genuineness of faith in those who were not swept up in the Awakening. Charges of hypocrisy were leveled at various school officials who retaliated by announcing that any such charges would be greeted with expulsion. David Brainerd was overheard to make several ill-judged remarks about members of the faculty, and the university made good its threat by expelling him.

David Brainerd’s expulsion from Yale ended his career as a minister before it began. No matter how he appealed the decision, he could not get reinstated as a student. A recently passed law forbade any minister from being established in Connecticut who had not graduated from Yale, Harvard, or a European university. David Brainerd gave up his dream of being a pastor and instead became something he had never before considered: a missionary to Native Americans.

Brainerd’s constitution and temperament made him a far from ideal choice to be a pioneer missionary. He contracted tuberculosis while at Yale and had been physically weakened ever since. Brainerd suffered greatly from what was then known as melancholy, which we now call depression. Living alone in remote villages where no one spoke his language exacerbated his tendency toward depression. But what David Brainerd lacked in natural qualifications, he made up for in dedication and earnestness. As Ruth Tucker puts it, “Brainerd was a zealot.”

For several years, David Brainerd had very little success in his mission work. He did not speak the language of the tribes to which he preached, and his interpreters had little spiritual understanding. He moved several times and finally ended up in Crossweeksung, New Jersey, where he found greater openness among the Iroquois of the Susquehanna Valley. In 1745, revival broke out in Crossweeksung, and, over the course of a year and a half, Brainerd saw more than a hundred Native Americans repent and believe the Gospel. He helped start a school and church. But in 1747, Brainerd’s health broke down. He died of tuberculosis in the home of Jonathan Edwards, under the watch care of Edwards’s daughter (whom he had hoped to marry).

One would have expected the memory of David Brainerd’s short stint as a missionary to be relegated to the annals of missiology. But Brainerd kept a journal, and Jonathan Edwards was so inspired by the journal that he published it along with a brief biography of his young friend. The Life of David Brainerd has never since been out of print. It has influenced countless ministers, missionaries, and lay people, including John Wesley, David Livingstone, William Carey, Robert Murray M’Cheyne, Andrew Murray, and Jim Eliot.

David Brainerd’s journal is a record of one long struggle. While one might not expect such an account to inspire missionaries, it gives hope to those who recognize their own weaknesses. Brainerd’s perseverance in the face of depression, loneliness, illness, and perceived failure—obstacles faced so frequently in ministry—gives courage to the downtrodden. Though he was cut off from the life that would have made him comfortable and thrust into a ministry that seemed doomed to failure, God had a plan to use him. I doubt that there are any among us who have not been influenced by someone shaped by the life of David Brainerd.

Culled from "The Well Squandered Life: Influential Lives of Obscurity"