discovering missions - Southern Nazarene University

245187 Disc Missions ins 9/6/07 1:04 PM Page 46
46 Christian Mission
been before their time. The missionary efforts of Spener, Francke, and the
Moravians were major Protestant innovations. The zeal displayed by the
Wesleys, Whitefield and a host of unsung Methodist itinerants for carrying
the gospel message to Britain’s miners, soldiers, industrial workers and others
whom the established church ignored was the beginning of massive
evangelical efforts at carrying the gospel to the unreached. . . . By the end
of the eighteenth century, evangelicals in the English-speaking regions
would be imitating their Pietist colleagues from Germany and Scandinavia
in beginning to send representatives overseas to preach the gospel. 11
As Europeans became aware that indigenous peoples inhabited what was often
called the New World, the Roman Catholics, Moravians, and others began
trying to evangelize them. Two important mission societies were founded in
Britain in the 17th century: the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New
England (1649) and the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (1698).
In 1784 Methodist leader Thomas Coke submitted a “Plan for the Society
for the Establishment of Missions Among the Heathen.” Methodist missions
began two years later when Coke set sail for Nova Scotia. Driven far southward
by a storm, Coke’s ship landed on Antigua in the eastern Caribbean. Undeterred,
Coke set to work developing mission outreach to both slaves and
landowners. Within a few years almost every colony in the West Indies had
been reached by the Methodists. Under Coke’s instigation, a mission to West
Africa was undertaken in 1811. Coke also promoted mission ventures in Canada
and on Gibraltar. Hoping to start Methodist missions in India, he set sail
for Ceylon in 1814 but died on the way.
I never made a sacrifice. We ought not to talk of “sacrifice” when
we remember the great sacrifice that He made, who left His Father’s
throne on high to give Himself for us. 12
—David Livingstone, missionary to Africa
William Carey’s Role
It was a bivocational Baptist pastor named William Carey who played
such a pivotal missions mobilization role that he is often called the father of
the modern missionary movement. Carey’s burden for global mission began in
the early 1790s after reading explorer Captain Cook’s writings. Carey started
talking with Baptist church leaders about the need to send missionaries to indigenous
peoples like those Cook had described in Voyages Around the World.
The response Carey got was less than enthusiastic. When he proposed to fellow