Biography
Paget Wilkes was born in 1871, in England, in a family of the middle class. He grew up in a respectable Anglican home and was educated at a good school. As a young man, he was drawn to the church but did not have a vital faith. He was a thoughtful and sensitive person who suffered from a sense of emptiness. In his early twenties, he came into contact with the evangelical movement and was converted. He said that he came to see that Christ was the answer to the longing of his heart. He felt a call to the mission field, and he was drawn to Japan.
In 1897, he sailed for Japan, where he joined Barclay Buxton and the Japan Evangelistic Band. He was twenty-six years old. He settled in the southern part of the country, and he began to learn the language. He worked for a number of years in the region of Matsuyama and Kobe, as an evangelist and a Bible teacher. He was a sincere and gentle man, who made friends among the Japanese. He gave much time to the study of the Scriptures, and he developed a gift for teaching. He took part in conferences for the deeper life and was a friend of the Keswick movement.
In the early years, he went through a time of discouragement. He was dissatisfied with the lack of power in his own life and ministry. He felt that he was working in his own strength. He had a deep experience in which he came to a new surrender to Christ. He said that he learned the secret of the Spirit-filled life. From that time, his ministry was marked by a new fruitfulness. He saw many Japanese come to faith, and he trained a number of Japanese evangelists. He also took up the work of preaching and writing.
His best-known work is The Dynamic of Service, published in 1920. It is a book on the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Christian worker. In it, he argued that the secret of effective service is not human effort or organization but the fullness of the Spirit. He wrote with simplicity and with a deep sense of the cost of discipleship. The book was widely read, and it has been reprinted many times. He also wrote Missionary Joys in Japan, in which he told of the work among the Japanese, and Sacrifice: God's Provision, on the cross. His writing was clear and warm.
He took part in the great revival that began in Japan in the 1920s, in which the Japan Evangelistic Band was at the center. He worked with a group of Japanese leaders, including Juji Nakada, and he took part in conferences and campaigns. In the 1920s, he visited Britain and spoke at conferences. He also made a number of trips to other parts of Asia. He was a man who traveled much and was often away from his family.
His later years were affected by ill health. He suffered from the effects of the climate and the strain of the work. He kept on until the end. He died in 1934, in Japan, at the age of about sixty-three. The record of his life is limited, and the details given here, including the dates, should be checked against fuller sources. What can be said with confidence is that he was among the leading missionaries in Japan in the early twentieth century and that his book on service has guided many. His life shows the effect of a man who learned to rely on the Spirit and who passed on what he had learned.