Empowering Spirit, Empowering Structures: The Contributions of Noel Perkin to Assemblies of God World Missions

By Stephen Charles McKnight

Noel Perkin, a banker-turned-missionary, led Assemblies of God World Missions (AGWM) for more than thirty years (1927-59). His life exemplifies the missionary zeal historians have noted within the early Pentecostal movement. Perkin's experience of the Holy Spirit and his experiences as a missionary in Argentina led him to create systems intended to empower others to fulfill Christ's commission to make disciples of all nations.
Perkin's empowering leadership played a significant part in AGWM's remarkable growth into a leading Pentecostal mission-sending agency which currently sends over 2,000 missionaries to 140 countries. As one of the principal architects of AGWM's missiology and operation, Perkin transformed a two-person office relying on envelope boxes for its accounting system into a well-structured, strategic mission agency and laid a foundation for AGWM's continued growth. Empowering Spirit, Empowering Structures uses the foundation of a biographical study to examine the concept of empowerment through Perkin's life and the impact that Perkin and his missiology had and continues to have upon AGWM.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Aug 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781666768930

Stephen Charles McKnight

Stephen Charles McKnight is an Assemblies of God missionary with more than twenty years of experience. He holds a PhD in intercultural studies from the Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and has taught intercultural studies at Evangel University as missionary-in-residence. Currently, Stephen and his family serve in the Philippines, partnering with local churches to minister to impoverished communities.

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Introduction

When Noel Perkin became the Missionary Secretary for the Assemblies of God of the United States (AGUSA) in 1927, the Missionary Department, now known as Assemblies of God World Missions (AGWM), sat under a cloud of scandal. In late 1926, the executive leadership of the AGUSA charged William Faux, then Missionary Secretary, with misappropriation of funds, relieved him of his duties as Missionary Secretary, and withdrew his ministerial credentials.¹ Seeking a new Missionary Secretary, AGUSA executives turned to Noel Perkin, a young former banker turned missionary and pastor. What began as a temporary appointment to fill the vacancy left by William Faux’s abrupt departure developed into Perkin’s decades-long administration marked by growth in size, organizational structure, and a willingness to innovate for the sake of furthering the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Perkin’s long tenure brought stability to the Foreign Missions Department (FMD).² Initially, the small department operated as little more than a clearing house for missionary support. At the time of Perkin’s permanent appointment as Missionary Secretary in 1927, two staff members ran the FMD which supported 277 missionaries.³ By the time Perkin retired in 1959 the FMD office held forty-four workers.⁴ It supported 753 missionaries with a budget of $6,734,780 and reported 61 foreign Bible institutes, 11,338 [foreign] national ministers, 13,795 churches, and 627,443 converts.⁵ This growth required new organizational structures that the FMD had not previously needed. Perkin rose to the challenge. He implemented innovative and practical changes to the FMD’s organizational structure which allowed the department to grow and better serve the AGWM missionary body. However, practical planning alone would not be the hallmark of Perkin’s leadership. He insisted that the ultimate success of the AGWM missionary relied primarily on the empowering work of the Holy Spirit rather than mere human effort.

The concept of empowerment runs throughout Perkin’s life and leadership. Empowered by the Holy Spirit and through interpersonal relationships, Perkin in turn empowered others through his leadership at the FMD. His leadership not only emphasized supernatural empowerment for mission but also introduced policies and structures intended to empower others to fulfill their God-given callings to missionary service. Perkin desired that his policies, structures, and innovations would increase the FMD’s capacity, empower others, and facilitate greater participation and effectiveness in AGUSA efforts to fulfill the Great Commission to, Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you (Matt. 28:19–20).⁶

This book presents the life and work of Noel Perkin as a case study in empowerment for mission. Perkin experienced natural and supernatural empowerment for mission then spent decades in an effort to empower his mission agency and its missionaries so that both would become more effective in the missionary task. The remainder of this chapter briefly presents precedent literature related to the problem under consideration, my background, the purpose statement, problem statement, and research questions. Finally, I state the significance, delimitations, definitions, and my assumptions and methodology for this book.

Background

At the beginning of my doctoral program, Noel Perkin’s name was almost completely unfamiliar to me. I had skimmed through multiple AGUSA histories and referenced Gary McGee’s history of AGUSA foreign missions,⁷ but until moving to the Philippines, Perkin seemed to hold little relevance for my missionary ministry.

Upon transferring to the Philippines, I began reading historical accounts of the AGWM work in the islands in Dave Johnson’s Led by the Spirit.⁸ Perkin’s name appeared again and again as I read the stories of AGUSA missionaries from years past. The accounts of his efforts to protect, serve, and minister to AGUSA missionaries during the Second World War (WWII) stood out. His work during the years of WWII led me to further examine his life and leadership of the AGUSA missions efforts as Missionary Secretary from 1927 to 1959. As I studied, the forward-thinking nature of Perkin’s leadership struck me as did the organization he brought to the FMD throughout his ministry. Perkin’s administration laid many of the foundations upon which AGWM operates to this day. I discovered that without a better understanding of Perkin’s life, context, and ministry my understanding of AGWM and its missionary work in the Philippines would remain incomplete.

Precedent Literature

Histories of the modern Pentecostal movement and the AGUSA which focus on themes of restoration, origins, organization, and missionary outreach have become readily available in the years since 1958 when Henry Van Dusen proclaimed Pentecostalism as the Third Force in Christendom.⁹ At the time of Van Dusen’s article [n]o serious history of the movement even existed.¹⁰ Within a few years, however, serious attempts to produce histories of the modern Pentecostal movement began to appear. As a prominent Pentecostal group within North America, the AGUSA featured heavily in several of these works. Since 1961, when attempts at scholarly histories of the AGUSA and of North American Pentecostalism began to appear, the body of Pentecostal scholarship has grown dramatically. Yet gaps remain, including a gap in understanding and evaluating Perkin’s missiology and leadership.

Although Perkin held a position of significant influence within the AGUSA for more than thirty years, his life and leadership received little attention in early denominational histories, and early historians largely neglected his role in the growth and development of the AGUSA. In 1961, Klaude Kendrick’s The Promise Fulfilled sought to present a history of the broader Pentecostal movement, but nearly one-third of the volume covered the organization and growth of the AGUSA.¹¹ Despite his long service to the AGUSA, Perkin’s name only appears once in the body of that text and twice in appendices which list the AGUSA’s executive officers. The sole description of Perkin’s leadership as Missionary Secretary reads, In 1926 the office was filled by Noel Perkin, who retained the position until his retirement in 1959.¹²

Published in the same year as Kendrick’s The Promise Fulfilled, Carl Brumback’s Suddenly . . . From Heaven represents the first attempt at a scholarly denominational history of the AGUSA.¹³ Brumback gives scarcely more attention to Perkin than Kendrick. Perkin appears only sporadically in Brumback’s text, largely in lists of names—in a list of leaders connected to the Christian and Missionary Alliance (CMA), influential leaders from Canada, and prominent people connected with the Elim Bible Institute in Rochester, New York.¹⁴ Brumback’s entire evaluation of Perkin’s ministry reads,

If ever an office and a man were made for each other, such was true of this foreign missions secretariat and Noel Perkin. For thirty-three years Perkin brought total dedication to this ministry: he lived, ate, drank, talked, dreamed, and sacrificed for missions. Perkin’s spiritual vision, his grasp of the problems of the field, his business acumen, his compassion and understanding have spearheaded the phenomenal growth of Assemblies of God missions around the globe. Is it any wonder that the respect and affection for Noel Perkin within the fellowship is not one whit less than for any other man?¹⁵

William Menzies’ Anointed to Serve, published in 1971, provides greater discussion of Perkin’s life and leadership than the previous works but still lacks depth.¹⁶ He refers to Perkin as a farsighted strategist.¹⁷ Menzies also notes the respect that the growth and development of the FMD had garnered for the AGUSA with several Evangelical leaders through the leadership of men like Perkin.¹⁸ Yet, Anointed to Serve still leaves a gap in understanding Perkin’s missiology and leadership of the FMD.

Prior to the 1980s, the most extensive discussion of Perkin’s ministry came in Inez Spence’s Mr. Missions: Director Emeritus, Noel Perkin, a noncritical tribute to Perkin following his retirement from the FMD which was published in 1964.¹⁹ Spence offers inspirational reflections upon Perkin’s life and career calling him a man of vision, a man of example, a man of understanding, and a man of prayer.²⁰ Perkin, according to Spence, always looked ahead and recognized upcoming weakness in the missionary program-structure and continuously sought new and better methods to benefit the missionaries.²¹

In the 1980s, a new group of Pentecostal scholars began publishing histories of the AGUSA including works which focused specifically on the foreign missions enterprise of the denomination. This period represents a high point for Perkin in scholarly literature. Edith Blumhofer published four historical volumes in less than ten years. Her works include the denominationally sponsored two-volume work The Assemblies of God: A Chapter in the Story of American Pentecostalism²² as well as two histories not commissioned by the AGUSA, The Assemblies of God: A Popular History²³ and Restoring the Faith: The Assemblies of God, Pentecostalism, and American Culture.²⁴ When compared to the earlier histories, Perkin draws significantly more attention from Blumhofer²⁵ than he did from any of her predecessors. Nevertheless, she focused on the formation and development of the AGUSA, so while she drew attention to Perkin’s place in that process, her works lack substantive evaluation of Perkin’s life and leadership.

The most complete treatment of Perkin’s life and ministry comes in Gary McGee’s published dissertation, This Gospel . . . Shall be Preached: A History and Theology of Assemblies of God Foreign Mission to 1959, in which he substantially addresses Perkin’s life and leadership at the FMD.²⁶ The first half of Perkin’s administration constitutes what McGee calls the Maturing Years,²⁷ and he describes the last half of Perkin’s tenure as an Era of Strategic Planning.²⁸ McGee notes the department’s growth in number of missionaries and the development of organizational structure eventually led to AGWM becoming a more strategically oriented missions agency.²⁹ Although McGee’s³⁰ histories and theologies of AGUSA foreign missions close many of the gaps left by earlier literature and include the most comprehensive discussion of Perkin’s leadership and the development of the FMD, the institutional focus of his publications left little room to examine Perkin’s own missiology rather than that of the organization or to address much of Perkin’s life story and spiritual pilgrimage. Evaluating Perkin’s leadership, McGee, in People of the Spirit, notes Perkin’s preference to Spirit-empowerment over academic qualifications and the fit of Perkin’s skills to his leadership role.³¹ He states, Perkin brought several strengths to the office: missionary and pastoral experience, financial skills, a warm and winning personality, and a capacity to adjust to new situations and move ahead with the times.³²

From the earliest AGUSA histories which mention Perkin only in passing to McGee³³ and Blumhofer³⁴ who deal more extensively with Perkin’s life and ministry, the general scholarly consensus concludes that Perkin represented a stabilizing influence which guided the FMD through a maturing process from financial clearing house to a strategic missions agency. Only the basics of a biographical sketch emerge in the literature. The institutional missiology of the AGUSA eclipses any in-depth investigation into Perkin’s missiological thought. His tenure as Missionary Secretary demonstrates growth and innovation. Yet, despite this, Perkin receives minimal attention from most historians and scholars of Pentecostalism. McGee³⁵ and Blumhofer³⁶ offer the most comprehensive discussions of Perkin’s life and leadership, covering the major institutional developments of the AGUSA throughout his career at the FMD. Yet, Perkin’s missiology, his spiritual journey, or the impact his leadership had on the FMD, and its missionaries has not yet been fully explicated even with Blumhofer’s and McGee’s substantial contributions.

Purpose

This historical study records the influence of Noel Perkin’s empowered life and empowering leadership on Assemblies of God World Missions, its missionaries, and its missiology.

Problem Statement

In what ways were Assemblies of God World Missions and its missionaries empowered through the life, leadership, and missiology of Noel Perkin?

Research Questions

1.What secular and ecclesial historical contexts form the background for Noel Perkin’s life and leadership?

2.In what ways did Noel Perkin experience empowerment for mission in his life and leadership?

3.In what ways did Noel Perkin’s life, leadership and missiology empower Assemblies of God World Missions and its missionaries?

Significance of the Study

This study is significant in the following ways:

1.This study relates to my calling and ministry context by exemplifying how an effective leader can create organizational structures which serve to empower others for mission.

2.My missions agency, AGWM, receives hundreds of applications for missionary service each year and currently sends out more than two thousand missionaries. It seeks to provide structures which empower missionaries to fulfill their God-given callings in their contexts while maintaining orderly operation. This study historically demonstrates how the agency’s longest tenured leader employed organizational structures intended to facilitate and empower its members for mission.

3.Organizational structures are not neutral. They can either empower or restrain their members. The absence of structure or an overly restrictive structure may limit an organization. Structures that empower, on the other hand, can facilitate growth and greater effectiveness. As the churches of the global South increasingly send out more missionaries, this study can offer an example of how organizational structures can positively impact effectiveness and missional engagement.

Limitations and Delimitations

This study is limited by a relatively small number and narrow variety of secondary and tertiary sources available along with the somewhat narrow scope of extant primary sources. Few tertiary sources exist that directly address Noel Perkin, and the number of scholarly secondary sources remains small as well. Noel Perkin wrote and published often throughout the course of his life, so a good number of primary sources remain. However, most of his published writing serves to promote missions, encourage giving, and to present missionaries’ testimonies rather than to explicate his personal leadership, missiology, or rationale for actions taken.

The breadth and span of Noel Perkin’s life (1893–1979) delimits this study. Events prior to Perkin’s birth appear if they influence his life and work. In this book I address contextual issues surrounding Perkin’s growth, development, and ministry, such as cultural shifts, wars, and economic swings as they relate to his life and work. This study summarizes but does not discuss in detail the formation and development of the Assemblies of God in the United States as a whole, and it does not address the various international Assemblies of God organizations AGUSA established during Perkin’s administration.

Definitions

This book uses the following definitions throughout.

Assemblies of God of the United States (AGUSA)—a Pentecostal denomination established in Hot Springs, Arkansas, in 1914 and now headquartered in Springfield, Missouri, which was founded in part to facilitate the sending of missionaries.³⁷

Assemblies of God World Missions (AGWM)—the organizational arm of the Assemblies of God which oversees the denominational missions work taking place outside of the United States.

Empowerment—the concept of empowerment includes two related yet distinct factors, empowerment sourced from and received directly through the work of the Holy Spirit and empowerment sourced in the work of the Holy Spirit but mediated through the actions, words, and decisions of others. For the purposes of this study the following definitions and distinctions apply. Supernatural empowerment refers to the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit empowering believers for witness (Acts 1:8) which is received directly from the Spirit via spiritual experience. Natural empowerment refers to the empowerment of the Spirit received through the mediation of human activity including but not limited to interpersonal relationships and organizational structures which promote the formation of godly character, teaching, training, enabling, facilitating, and releasing Christians into ministry.

Foreign Missions Department (FMD)—the organizational component of the AGUSA which administers the sending of missionaries, also referred to as the Missionary Department, Department of Foreign Missions, Division of Foreign Missions, now known as AGWM.

Pentecostal/Pentecostalism—For the purpose of this study Pentecostal/Pentecostalism refers specifically to classical Pentecostals and Pentecostalism whose diachronous and synchronous links can be shown, originating in the early-twentieth century revival and missionary movements which includes an emphasis on speaking in tongues as the initial physical evidence of the baptism of the Holy Spirit.³⁸

Missions—the specific work of the church and agencies in the task of reaching people for Christ by crossing cultural boundaries³⁹

Missionary—a person who crosses cultural barriers to establish new outreach on behalf of Jesus and plant new bodies of local believers.⁴⁰

Assumptions

Factors that influenced the nature of this study include my personal experience and background. From childhood, I was brought up within the context of the AGUSA. My education and ministry have largely, but not exclusively, been carried out in AGUSA settings. I currently serve as an appointed AGWM missionary, the same sending agency Perkin led for over thirty years. I am a sympathetic insider, and I bring denominational and doctrinal biases with me as I examine Perkin’s life and work. A second factor that influenced this study stems from a view of history from a Christian perspective. Faith in the objective existence of the God of the Bible leads to the acceptance of the existence of a broader objective reality. I believe God has objectively worked in and through the historical process to achieve His purposes for all the created order and continues to do so both inside and outside the natural process (i.e., God works in both natural and supernatural ways).

Methodology

This historical study of Noel Perkin’s life and ministry examines his experience of empowerment, both supernatural and natural, and in turn the ways in which those experiences impacted and contributed to the development and growth of AGWM. To achieve these goals, this book draws primarily upon the work of Augustus Cerillo and Grant Wacker’s Bibliography and Historiography of Pentecostalism in the United States,⁴¹ James McClendon’s Biography as Theology,⁴² and Ruth Tucker’s Biography as Missiology: Mining the Lives of Missionaries for Cross-Cultural Effectiveness.⁴³ This study combines aspects of recent interpretive approaches together with a method for utilizing Perkin’s life story as a means to discover theological and missiological themes to reveal his experience of empowerment and the ways he sought to empower others for missional action. In addition to the following discussion of the methodology for this study, Appendix A offers a generalized supplemental discussion of Pentecostal historiography and an evaluative framework which informed the methodology described here.

A Multifaceted Interpretive Approach

Cerillo and Wacker mention four common interpretive approaches to the historical study of Pentecostalism: Providential, Genetic, Multicultural, and Functional.⁴⁴ The presence of four distinct approaches does not mean that historians of Pentecostalism utilized just one approach, but rather Cerillo found that most employed a combination of approaches or switched approaches depending upon audience or which approach(es) best suited the purpose of individual publications.⁴⁵

The providential approach commonly shows up in early histories as one result of the belief that the modern Pentecostal revival fell from heaven with little if any human agency or historical antecedent. This approach combines God’s governance of history with an emphasis on supernatural causation. The perspective of providential histories does not exclude awareness of a natural historical process, but it holds no need or desire to explain the Pentecostal revival within that process.⁴⁶ Simply stated, the Pentecostal revival came directly from heaven so all that had happened in the intervening centuries of Christian history between the close of the apostolic age and 1900 mattered little.⁴⁷ While this approach fails to meet the standards of current historiography, it nevertheless has the benefit of taking the religious experience of early Pentecostals seriously, and William Kay suggests one need not completely rule out providence as an organizing framework.⁴⁸

Where the providential interpretations of Pentecostal origins emphasize historical discontinuity, the historical roots or genetic approach locates the origins of Pentecostalism in the historical antecedents of previous revival and holiness movements. Donald Dayton⁴⁹ and Vinson Synan⁵⁰ examine mainly Wesleyan theology and nineteenth century holiness movements while Edith Blumhofer,⁵¹ Robert Anderson,⁵² and William Menzies⁵³ draw upon Keswick and Reformed theological traditions for their genealogies of the Pentecostal movement.

The multicultural approach presents Pentecostalism as a multicultural phenomenon rather than deeming white Pentecostalism as normative.⁵⁴ This approach counters the notion of a monolithic Pentecostal revival and finds the origins of modern Pentecostalism in African American spirituality. It highlights the vital role ethnic minorities played in early Pentecostalism.

Cerillo’s final classification, the functional approach, focuses on understanding Pentecostal thought and practice in order to learn why and how it appealed to those who joined the movement.⁵⁵ Within this approach two opposing hypotheses attempt to explain the ways in which Pentecostalism functioned. One hypothesis, represented by Robert Anderson,⁵⁶ argues that Pentecostalism served as a psychologically unhealthy and socially dysfunctional religious response of marginalized poor farmers, working and lower-class city dwellers, new immigrants, and black Americans to a rapidly industrializing and urbanizing America.⁵⁷ Contrasting the dysfunctional approach, a positive functional approach, represented by Harvey Cox,⁵⁸ argues that Pentecostalism held the power to liberate and empower the disinherited—farmers, workers, and minorities.⁵⁹ Thus, scholars have understood the function of Pentecostalism in both positive and negative terms. While I readily acknowledge the possibility of Pentecostalism serving as an unhealthy response by marginalized peoples, this study reveals that, in Perkin’s life, Pentecostalism functioned positively as a means of empowerment. Through the Pentecostal experience, early Pentecostal missionaries found the power and confidence to missionally engage the world rather than a means of escape from their world.

The emphasis of this study on the experience of empowerment lends itself to a combination of the genetic and functional approaches. Employing the genetic approach to the development of the AGUSA and the FMD means looking for both historical continuity and discontinuity in the organization’s development. This approach recognizes aspects within the AGUSA’s foundation, growth, and development which draw upon the historical antecedents found primarily within the Holiness movements of the nineteenth century. Nonetheless, the genetic approach also highlights the ways early Pentecostalism broke from its roots in the Holiness movements and became a distinct movement. The functional approach focuses on the way Pentecostalism functioned in the life of Perkin, the FMD, and AGUSA missionaries. When viewed in a positive perspective, Pentecostalism allowed its adherents to overcome a sense of disempowerment or marginalization and provide a means to thrive in an environment many early Pentecostals perceived as antithetical or hostile to them and their expression of faith.

Using Biography as Missiology

Having briefly addressed the main interpretive approaches utilized for this study, it becomes necessary to discuss the methodological framework for the biographic component of this study. Russell Spittler lists more than thirty topics relating to Pentecostalism in need of further study.⁶⁰ Among the theological issues, exegetical concerns, regional and denominational histories, he notes, The need for analytic [and interpretive] biographies, in fact, is an acute one in Pentecostal studies, and he calls the area of Pentecostal biography a ripe field for academic harvest.⁶¹ Biography can add a uniquely human aspect to scholarly studies of theology and mission. According to Frances Adeney,

One finds in biographies and autobiographies a window into seeing how God works in the world. Generalizations and statistics about Christian mission can never bring the texture and nuance that understanding theological differences in light of personalities, life situations, and contexts can bring. New theologies can be developed from a study of mission practices found in the narratives of particular people of God.⁶²

Adeney’s point suggests that the study of Perkin’s life and ministry and the impact he had upon the development of AGWM can provide a textured background against which one can interpret his writing and administrative decisions as the AGUSA’s Missionary Secretary.

Furthermore, studies with a biographic character fit nicely when examining the Pentecostal movement. Cecil Robeck notes, Pentecostals have not been totally bereft of interesting biographical and autobiographical works, and he observes that Pentecostal leaders are often willing to share their personal ‘testimonies.’⁶³ His choice to couch that initial statement in the negative seems strange. A quick search reveals multiple biographical and autobiographical works focusing on the lives of Pentecostal leaders, many of them very interesting. Perkin, like many others, attempted to write his Personal Testimony but never completed the task leaving his own account of his life unfinished.⁶⁴ These biographical and autobiographical works provide important material for understanding Pentecostalism and the people identified with that movement. Such stories not only inspire others to missionary service, but they also serve as testimonies to the work of the Holy Spirit in earthen vessels . . . [and] the extension of the church around the world.⁶⁵ More than mere stories of lives lived, such biographies and autobiographies tell stories of what God has done through those lives.⁶⁶

To use the autobiographies and biographies of missionaries or early Pentecostal leaders, however, requires careful attention. Many missionary biographies would more accurately fall into the classification of hagiography, and autobiographies, though helpful in a confessional sense, may be prone to self-deception.⁶⁷ Alan Neely defines hagiography as "sanitized or idealized accounts of missionaries' lives that stress their goodness, sacrifice, success, suffering, and victories over temptation, self, sin, opposition, and death, while minimizing or ignoring altogether their frailties, mistakes, and not infrequent wrongdoing."⁶⁸ Such works may not always be reliable sources of history, but they can still have value to researchers. Even idealized accounts, when evaluated properly, can yield helpful historical and missiological information.⁶⁹

This study uses biography as a methodological foundation for understanding Noel Perkin’s ministry at the AGUSA Missionary Department. McClendon provides a basis for a theological method employing biography as theology.⁷⁰ He argues that to use biography in this fashion, one must first start with understanding that character within an individual was both cause and consequence of what we do.⁷¹ An already kind person would, generally speaking, treat others with kindness and in so doing move toward becoming kinder. He contends that communities also demonstrate this tendency. A community possesses a character which has developed as both cause and consequence of the community’s deeply held convictions. The notion of communities of conviction leads to the study of biography because individual lives can exemplify or run counter to community convictions to such an extent that their lives become remarkable as they are influenced by and influence their communities. As McClendon states,

In or near the community there appear from time to time singular or striking lives, the lives of persons who embody the convictions of the community, but in a new way; who share the vision of the community, but with new scope or power; who exhibit the style of the community, but with significant differences. It is plain that the example of these lives may serve to disclose and perhaps to correct or enlarge the community’s moral vision, at the same time arousing impotent wills within the community to a better fulfillment of the vision already acquired.⁷²

To understand the impact of these singular persons upon their communities, historians or biographers must mine their life stories in search of "dominant or controlling images."⁷³ These images present the manner in which people lived out their convictions and provide data for theologizing based upon their lived experience. In a missiological context, the dominant images of a missionary’s life, or in this case a mission agency leader’s life, provide data revealing the convictions upon which actions, decisions, and leadership philosophy rested.

Tucker modified McClendon’s theme of creating a "theology of character"⁷⁴ to develop the concept a missiology of character.⁷⁵ A missiology of character examines not only the theology of images found within a person’s life, but it will include a more practical component because missiology expressly concerns itself with "how one does mission."⁷⁶ She continues,

With the focus on biography—and more narrowly character that relates to ministry—doctrinal and denominational issues that often divide Christians tend to recede into the background. This is not to suggest that such issues are not of great importance, but when the focus is on the life, the most essential aspect is how that life reflects on the ministry of mission outreach and all that entails in that ministry.⁷⁷

Tucker’s position reveals the underlying conviction of this study: by examining a life of a person, nonessentials tend to fade in comparison to what that individual believed to be essential to life and ministry.⁷⁸ This concept, drawn from McClendon⁷⁹ and Tucker,⁸⁰ comprises a methodological framework to examine Noel Perkin’s life, leadership, and missiology. Perkin stands out as one of the striking lives in the history of the AGUSA. Biography as theology and biography as missiology present a means to study how he did mission and how he empowered others to do mission as well.

In this study, I have attempted to take a step toward following Spittler’s⁸¹ suggestion and utilize certain aspects of biography to illuminate the impact of Perkin’s life and leadership at the FMD, but this project should