I have come to understand why Paul found a preference for ministering at the far edges of Christendom…. with an “ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that he would not be building on someone else’s foundation……” (that being an uncomfortable place of sometimes having to deconstruct a lot of syncretistic folk religion, religious abuse, and concreted-in dogma…. facilitating purging before illuminating.) His own experience of 180 degree salvation reorientation out of self-righteousness was such a soul-snatching, eyes-blinding experience, he seems to prefer to avoid putting upon others what he went through!
It makes me laugh, too, to think of an eccentric, roughshod John the Baptist ministering in the wilderness areas where disciples had to come find him to get pummeled with his message of baptism of repentance.
Romans 15:14-22
Paul the Minister to the Gentiles:
14 I myself am convinced, my brothers and sisters, that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with knowledge and competent to instruct one another. 15 Yet I have written you quite boldly on some points to remind you of them again, because of the grace God gave me 16 to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles. He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit. 17 Therefore I glory in Christ Jesus in my service to God. 18 I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished through me in leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done— 19 by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit of God. So from Jerusalem all the way around to Illyricum, I have fully proclaimed the gospel of Christ. 20 It has always been my ambition to preach the gospel where Christ was not known, so that I would not be building on someone else’s foundation. 21 Rather, as it is written: “Those who were not told about him will see, and those who have not heard will understand.” 22 This is why I have often been hindered from coming to you.