Von and Marge Worten

In one year, 27 Southern Baptist missionary families lost their visas to stay in Indonesia. The Wortens had been there for 23 years, so they felt the heavy and significant loss. What did God have in store for them now?

DECADES OF SERVICE
1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s

MINISTRY EMPHASIS
Evangelism & Church Planting, Theological Education, Writing

In one year, 27 Southern Baptist missionary families lost their visas to stay in Indonesia. The Wortens had been there for 23 years, so they felt the heavy and significant loss. What did God have in store for them now?

For more than two decades, the Wortens faithfully served in Indonesia. They were active in church planting, seminary leadership and writing. If they couldn’t find an appropriate textbook, Von or Marge wrote it themselves. When the Indonesian government denied their visas to stay in the country at the end of the 1980s, they felt a deep sadness but remained confident in what God had planned for their future ministry.

The new opportunity was joining the South Asia and Pacific Itinerant Mission (SAPIM) — a job much different from the one they had known in Indonesia. Their new roles included a great deal of traveling to lead seminars for church planters, pastors and lay leaders across the region. In newsletters, they described the work as rewarding but also physically exhausting. In one year, they slept in 78 beds, often next to scorpions, spiders and rats.

Marge described a particularly trying season when she found herself asking God to change her circumstances. “The first part of the month I lived for several days in the spiritual wilderness that accompanies a grumbling spirit,” she wrote. But after she considered how Christ became a man and suffered on the cross, she humbly embraced her calling and the work she and Von were given. “Who was I to insist on reasonable demands concerning the lifestyle that goes with this ministry?”

God continued to teach them, even as they taught others.