The missionary movement of the nineteenth century

Dorothy Bulln

From Greenlands icy mountains, from Indias coral strand,

where Africs sunny fountains roll down their golden sand.From many a palmy plain, they call us to deliver their land from errors chain (Reginald Heber, Bishop of Calcutta 1823)

The nineteenth century was baptized by Kenneth Scott LaTourette as the Great Century of Christian missions. For practical reasons in this essay we are going to start in 1793, the date when William Carey arrived in India, and continue until 1910 with the Edinburgh World Missionary Conference. Stephen Neill in his History of Christian Mission divides the century in two parts: The first half devoted to pioneer missionary work and the latter part in building on these foundations a strong Protestant missionary movement.

Our first task will be a description of the context of the nineteenth century and how this contributed to the spreading of the gospel. In such a short essay we will have to just skim the surface. Rather than describe each missionary effort we briefly describe some main events in key world areas, look at the effect of religious revivals on mission, illustrate the different models that were developed, the general effect of missions on society, and point out the things that can be learned from this century of reaching out to the world with the message of the gospel. First we need to look at some of the preceding protestant missionary endeavors briefly.I. Mission after the Protestant Reformation

Christianity became the first religion to spread around the world from 1500 till 1750. With the Catholic Counter Reformation, renewed vigor saw missionaries many of whom were Jesuits, push the boundaries of Christendom. The Protestant Reformation coincided with the Age of Exploration led initially by Spain and Portugal. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Europeans were traveling the seas to almost every part of the globe. Where colonist went missionaries followed most of whom were Catholic monks and priests.

In 1542, the Jesuit, Francis Xavier, became known as the Apostle of the Indies. Over the next 10 years, he started many missions in India and other parts of Asia. Another Jesuit, Matteo Ricci, started a mission in China. One of the most successful Jesuit mission stations was in Paraguay on the Iguau falls where the priests helped the Guarani indigenous people to live in communities which protected them from slave traders. With the decline of the Spanish and Portuguese empires and the shutting down of the Jesuit missions the zenith of Catholic missions started to fade. Protestants accompanied their colonial expeditions and often set up churches for the expatriates but did very little to evangelize the peoples of the world. There were exception such as John Eliot and David Brainerd who worked with Native Americans.

Why did the Protestant Reformation have to wait two hundred years before embarking on a worldwide missionary movement? David Bosch gives us some insights into some of the reasons. A lot of energy was used in formulating protestant doctrine which involved on occasions conflicts even with other protestant groups. The emphasis on the sovereignty of God led many to believe that God would seek those he had chosen for salvation. The Catholics had their monastic movements which were organizations at the forefront of missions. The Protestants had not been able to develop equivalents. The Catholic missionaries worked hand in hand with their governments whereas the protestant rulers didnt send out missionaries alongside their soldiers.

Pietism and Christian missions

By the end of the seventeenth century the German Lutheran Church had lost a great deal of the dynamism of the first moments of the Reformation. Much time was spent in intellectual theological discussions which could be observed Sunday by Sunday in the long and often boring discourses that were preached from the pulpits. It seems that the ministers were more interested in ideas then in caring for their members. The warm lively heart faith of Luther had been replaced by cold intellectual pursuits. The priesthood of all believers had been sabotaged by autocratic Lutheran pastors.

It was to this stage that two important actors played a pivotal role in bringing renewed life to the church and in stimulating the beginning of the protestant missionary movement. These two men were the founders of the pietist movement. As a pastor in Frankfurt, Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705), appealed for moral reform in the city. He introduced the idea of members meeting in small groups called Collegia pietatis ("pious assembly") on Wednesdays and Sundays to pray, to discuss the previous week's sermon, and to apply passages from Scripture and devotional writings to individual lives. These groups are the forerunners of John Wesleys classes and bands. Spener was interested in promoting real spiritual experience on a day to day basis through these small groups.

In 1675 Spener published his Pia desideria or Earnest Desires for a Reform of the True Evangelical Church in which he made the following six proposals. He wrote about: (1) the need for earnest and thorough study of the Bible in small groups; (2) that the Christian priesthood is universal and thus the laity should share in the spiritual government of the Church; (3) Christians must practice their faith; (4) there must be tolerance and kindness for people who might think differently; (5) more prominence should be given to the devotional life in theological training in universities, and (6) that preaching must be less rhetorical and put more emphasis on the development of the practical Christian life and its fruits. The tract was an immediate sensation.

Spener emphasized the need for individual conversion, for a devotional walk with the Lord on a daily basis. The Bible became a book to be obeyed in practical terms. What followed was a renewed focus on holy living, spreading the gospel, and providing for the needy. According to Herbert Kane, the pietists believed that there can be no missionary vision without evangelistic zeal; there can be no evangelistic zeal without personal piety; there can be no personal piety without a genuine conversion experience. True religion for the pietists is a matter for the heart, hence the emphasis in the cultivation of the spiritual life.

The second actor to come onto this German stage was August Hermann Francke (1663-1677). The movement grew rapidly in 1694 when Francke made the new University of Halle a Pietist center where classes were taught based on the conception that Christianity had to take into account a change of heart and consequent holiness of life and not just doctrinal correctness.

Francke's missionary influence was felt directly through missionaries who went from Halle to foreign fields. King Frederick IV of Denmark was instrumental in forming the first Protestant mission, known as the Danish-Halle mission. The inspiration and the training took place in Halle while Copenhagen was the administrative center. The first trainees of Halle, Bartholomaeus Ziegenbalg and Heinrich Plutschau arrived in India on July 9, 1706, marking the beginning of the first Protestant mission work. This work would go on to lead many in India to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Two British organizations, the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and the Society for the Propagation of Gospel (SPG), supported the mission.

Ziegenbalg showed great sensitivity to the language and culture of South India. He translated the New Testament into Tamil, founded schools where children could learn the Bible as well as science and other subjects, and inspired missionary efforts in other parts of the world. Another Halle missionary to India, Benjamin Schultze, translated Scripture into Telugu.

The University of Halle established a center for Oriental languages and also encouraged efforts at translating the Bible into new languages. Francke also founded the Oriental College of Theology in 1702 to train students in both biblical and modern languages. The long term effect on missions of the Halle University can be seen in that Gustav Warneck, the founder of the discipline of Missiology, was invited to be the chair of Missionary Science at the university in 1897.

Nicolas Von Zinzendorf (1700-1760), Speners godson, studied at the Halle University and later organized the Moravian Church. This group of 300 Moravian refugees who lived on Count Zinzendorfs lands in Herrnhut, East Germany, was visited by God in a mighty revival in 1727 after which they decided to go to the neediest people of the world to tell them about Jesus thus pioneering the great protestant missionary enterprise. During the next 30 years hundreds of missionary volunteers left Herrnhut to serve God in many different countries in the Caribbean, North and South America, the Arctic, Africa, and the Far East. A group in Herrnhut prayed continuously for missions 24 hours a day, for 100 years. They were also first to send lay" people to serve as missionaries. A group of Moravians made a deep impression on John Wesley. Pietism exerted its influence through Wesley in England in the eighteenth century.

Pietism was, and continues to be, a source of powerful renewal in the church. It encouraged lay people in the work of Christian ministry and stimulated concern for missions. The University of Halle speaks of the opportunity that educational institutions have to influence the course of the history of the church, and in this case to inspire the modern protestant missionary movement. The University of Halle became an international centre for the dissemination of pietist literature, missionaries and beliefs, to Russia, Scandinavia, Britain and the New World.

David Bosch in his careful study states that pietism had abiding effects on world mission. No longer would it be necessary for mission to be a duty of colonial governments. pietist missionaries were very often laypeople rather than clergymen or monks. Pietism encouraged ecumenism. During the eighteenth century Germany became the leading country to send missionaries and finally the pietist missionaries showed how to serve with dedication.

II. The context of the nineteenth century

With the tumultuous years of 1789-1815, European culture was transformed by the French Revolution and the Napoleonic wars. With the victory over Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, Britain became the new imperial power, replacing France, Spain and Portugal. Between 1815 and 1914, around 10,000,000 square miles of territory and roughly 400 million people were added to the British Empire. At its peak, the British Empire was the largest formal empire in history and, for over a century, was the foremost global power. Britain with its steamships ruled the waves. It was often said that "the sun never set on the British Empire because its span across the globe ensured that the sun was always shining on at least one of its numerous territories. In the middle of the 19th century Britain was the richest and most powerful nation in the world. Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 until 1901. In 1876 she was acclaimed Empress of India.

Just as Iberian colonial expansion had facilitated the spread of Catholic Christianity in hands of the Conquistadores, the British colonial expansion facilitated Protestant Christian mission. Though at first the colonial powers were hostile to missionary activity because they feared it would hinder trade. In this sense the missionaries went in spite of the governors in the colonies.

On July 4th 1776 the United States of America was born. This new Republic pushed its frontiers towards the West and became established as an important player on the world scene during the nineteenth century. Many missionaries that served during this century were Americans.

During this century western nations including the new American nation build on the idea of their manifest destiny. The West believed that they were the chosen people and they were to rule over other nations. This was especially seen in the last twenty years, the Heyday of colonialism. The writer Rudyard Kipling summarized the perceived responsibility to develop the underprivileged in these famous lines from one of his poems: Take up the White Mans burden. Send forth the best ye breed. Go bind your sons to exile to serve your captives need. Although this was never their primary purpose, missionaries also sometimes became agents of western imperialism. Colonialism, commerce and Christianity

As William Carey discovered when he arrived in India, the East India Company did not approve of missionaries. "The sending out of missionaries into our Eastern possessions (is) the maddest, most extravagant, most costly, most indefensible project which has ever been suggested by a moon struck fanatic! Such a scheme is pernicious, imprudent, useless, harmful, dangerous, profitless, and fantastic. In 1813, after a resounding speech in the House of Commons in support of missionary work in India by William Wilberforce (1759-1833), permission was given.

Through the indefatigable lobbying of the Clapham fraternity, traffic in slaves became illegal in 1807 and slavery was abolished in British colonies in 1834. British ships began to patrol the Atlantic intercepting slave ships from other countries. However it soon became obvious that slavery was a long practiced custom within Africa. David Livingstone (1813-1873) maintained that one of his primary aims was to stamp out the slave trade and one way to do this was to introduce other areas of trade so that commerce and Christianity could reinforce one another. However, it is important to point out that most missionaries risked disease and death to share the gospel with people that they loved and enterprise and trade were not their first interest. While the colonial governments traded, the missionaries evangelized and trained and educated leaders for government service.III. The missionary work in different world areasMission in India, the jewel of the crown

During what is known as the British "Raj" India was under the rule of the East India Company for almost forty years (1818-1857). The British East India Company was still private, even though the British government supported it. After the Sepoy Rebellion of 1857 Britain removed the Company from control and declared India a British colony. British officials poured into India to keep control of its valuable raw materials, especially tea, cotton and poppies for opium which was exported to China. They expanded production, built factories in India, and built huge railroad, irrigation, and telegraph systems.

On 31 May 1792 in Kettering, Northampton, England, William Carey (1761-1834) a Baptist pastor and a rural cobbler, preached one of the most influential sermons in history. Along with his book, An Inquiry into the Obligation of Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, Careys sermon on Isaiah 54:2-3 and his challenge: Expect great things from God, attempt great things for God literally launched the modern missionary movement. Carey with the promise of support of Baptist churches set out for India with his family in 1792.

When William Carey arrived in Calcutta India in 1793, it marked a major milestone in the history of Christian missions and in the history of India. He did not receive the backing of the East India Company or the British colonial government at first. After passing some really hard times in which one of his young sons died and his wife Dorothy Carey suffered a mental collapse, Carey was successful in establishing the Baptist work in Serampore, a small Danish colony in India. Carey had a real gift for languages and translated the Bible into Bengali, Sanskrit, and many other major languages and dialects. With the arrival of Joshua Marshman, a teacher, and William Ward a printer, Carey was able to achieve his vision of setting up schools as well as translating the scriptures into the language of the people.

After thirty four years of singular work in India, William Carey left his mark: he campaigned for improved treatment for people with leprosy; he established the first Indian newspaper, The Statesman; he began several schools and established the first Christian University in Serampore; he successfully campaigned against the way that Indian widows were burned in the funeral pyres with their husbands. Because of his work, this practice was abolished. He was named by some leading Indians the friend of India and someone who contributed to the renaissance of their culture.

By founding the Baptist Missionary Society (BMS) he is the pioneer of the modern denominational missionary society, with a base in the home country which supports missionaries on the field. He set a pattern of Bible Translation, education, medical work, church planting which inspired a remarkable upsurge in missionary vision which resulted in the commencement of new denominational missionary societies who began to send hundreds of missionaries to the diverse places of the Globe.

From Scotland, Alexander Duff (18061878) played an important part in the development of higher education in India. He was firmly convinced that education was the key to responsible missionary work and nation building and insisted that lessons in schools should be taught in English. Also as a result of his work, a number of Protestant colleges were founded in India.

Although not missionaries to India, a special mention needs to be made of Adoniram Judson (1788 1850) and his wife Ann, who were the first American missionaries to go overseas. They suffered from tropical diseases and vicious opposition and imprisonment under the cruel king of Burma. Ann died at the age of 36. The work in Burma under George Dana Boardman (1801-1831) left a group of 100,000 baptized believers of the Karen tribe. His mission and work led to the formation of the first Baptist Association in America, inspired many Americans to become or support missionaries, translated the Bible into Burmese, and established a number of Baptist churches in Burma.Mission and the emergence of modern China

It is important to understand the political situation in China as a backdrop to missionary endeavors. The British Empire via private companies, tried to control China through trade especially the opium trade. Opium was grown in India and exported to China where the people became more and more addicted to it. The Chinese government tried to stop this trade and opposed foreign intervention. This gave rise to two conflicts known as the anglo-chinese opium wars (1839-1842 and 1856-1860). In response, the British government sent expeditionary forces from India which ravaged the Chinese coast and dictated the terms of settlement in the Treaty of Nanking (1842). China was forced to pay an indemnity to Britain, open four ports to Britain, and cede Hong Kong to Queen Victoria.

In 1807, Robert Morrison (1782-1834) the first modern missionary arrived in China. He dedicated time to translate the Bible into Chinese and compiled a Chinese dictionary for the use of Westerners. European and American missions responded immediately to the new freedom for missionary enterprise following the Nanking treaty. By 1865 there were already thirty different Protestant groups at work in China.

Hudson Taylor a young medical student from Yorkshire, England, arrived in Shanghai, China in 1854 with a clear call to do missionary work in the interior of that great nation. He preferred to adopt the Chinese way of dress, learnt the local dialects, and distanced himself from the more paternalistic style of mission carried out by established missions in China along the coast. He decided to live without the guarantee of material support trusting God for his resources and for over fifty years God proved His faithfulness to him. He returned to England with his wife Maria and daughter Gracie in 1860, to rest and to finish his medical degree and to look for likeminded volunteers.

With the recruitment of the first group of volunteers, the first faith Mission, the China Inland Mission was officially set up in 1865 under the direction of Rev. James Hudson Taylor and William Thomas Berger. The missionaries could come from different denominational backgrounds to work together for the church in China. Most faith missionaries are not financially supported by denominations. By the time of his death, Hudson Taylor had accomplished bringing over 800 missionaries to China.

One tragic incident which needs to be mentioned was the Boxer rising at the end of the Nineteenth century (1899-1901). A peasant group rose up against Christians taking them for imperial agents of the West. It is estimated that 30,000 Chinese Roman Catholics, 2,000 Chinese Protestants, 93 protestant missionaries, 53 children and 47 Roman Catholic priests and nuns were killed.

In 1907 one hundred years after Morrisons arrival there were around five thousand missionaries representing eighty-six societies at work in China.Mission in Africa, the dark continent or the white mans grave

For the first part of the century Africa remained the unknown and mysterious continent. Europeans had become familiar with the coast lands but were afraid to go inland because of fear of contracting malaria. It seemed that the Africans had been legally freed by the Emancipation Act of 1833, but in the western mind they were still mentally, morally and physically slaves. Africa was called the Dark Continent, which had not been enlightened by the light of Western civilization. In the second half of the century many inroads were made to the interior of this great continent and towards the end of the century the colonial powers began mapping out their colonies in Africa. This was known as the Scramble for Africa (1880-1900). In the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, European countries and Turkey, laid down ground rules for the further partitioning of Africa. By 1900, only Liberia and Ethiopia were free of European control.

Africa was the center of much missionary work. Established in 1795, the London Missionary Society (LMS) was very active in Africa. The Clapham fraternity set up a colony in Sierra Leone for freed slaves. Dr. David Livingstone, the most famous missionary of the Great Century, joined the LMS in 1838. Livingstone's goal was to open up more of the African continent to Christianity, trade and civilization. The discovery of quinine (1820) to ease the symptoms of malaria heralded an age of Western exploration in Africa. Livingstone combined medical work with Bible teaching. He published his Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa in 1857 which stimulated a great renewal of interest in and enthusiasm for missions in Africa; missionaries pushed rapidly into the remaining forest coastal areas of West Africa and increasingly into Central and East Africa.

Not all missionaries who traveled to Africa were European. Lott Carey (1780-1828), was an African-American Baptist minister, who was instrumental in the founding of the Colony of Liberia in Africa. Born into slavery, he purchased his freedom. He was one of the first black American missionaries as well as the first American Baptist missionary to Africa. Similarly Samuel Ajayi Crowther (1809 1891), a freed slave became first African Anglican bishop in Nigeria. By 1841, the Anglican Church Missionary Society under Henry Venns leadership had 230 European missionaries, and 148 African and Asian missionaries recognizing the importance of the role of nationals in the extension of the gospel.

Women played an important role in missions. The strongly evangelical London Missionary Society (LMS) and Church Missionary Society (CMS) were the first societies explicitly to enlist the aid of women. One of the best known single lady missionaries was the Scottish Mary Slessor (1848 1915) who served God for nearly forty years in Calabar, Nigeria. By 1900 women often outnumbered men who were serving with faith missions to a ratio of three to one.

Mission in Latin America The forgotten continent

Roman Catholicism reached Latin America with the Spanish and Portuguese conquistadores in the fifteenth century. During the second and third decades of the nineteenth century Latin American countries rebelled, obtaining independence from Spain. Brazil became a Republic in 1891.

At first the liberal new governments were sympathetic to Protestants allowing James Thompson of the Bible Society freedom to sell Bibles. But the more orthodox Catholic clergy reacted and restrictions were resumed. In many of the major cities Anglican churches were set up only for the expatriate population.

There were attempts to work in South America. The South American Missionary Society (SAMS) was founded at Brighton in 1844 as the Patagonian Mission. Captain Allen Gardiner (1794-1850) was the first secretary. The strategy they chose was to work with those peoples who were not Catholics. While working with indigenous people in Tierra del Fuego, the team died of hunger waiting for the provision ship to arrive. Charles Darwin years later wrote to the South America Mission : The success of the Tierra del Fuego Mission is most wonderful and charms me I shall feel proud if your committee think fit to elect me and honorary member of your society.

Moravian presence in Nicaragua dates back to 1847, when German Moravian missionaries started work in Bluefields on the Atlantic Coast. The Moravians worked among the Afro-Caribbeans, and Miskito, Sumu and Rama Indians on the Caribbean coast. In 1899 the first Nicaraguan pastor was ordained. This work continues to the present.

By the beginning of the twentieth century Protestant work had been established in all of the Latin American countries but with very small beginnings. Although discussion about Latin America was largely ignored at the Edinburgh World Mission Conference of 1910, the next century was to see exponential growth of the Evangelical church.Mission in the Middle East and Muslim lands

Muslim lands have tended to be neglected in Christian Mission. Missionaries were present in small numbers in many countries, the most successful chapter being Lebanon where the Bible was translated into Arabic in 1846, by Samuel Lee (17831852) who invited the Lebanese scholar Ahmad Faris Shidyaq to participate in the translation. In 1866 American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, started the Syrian Protestant College (now American University of Beirut). Today many Lebanese people consider themselves Christians.IV. Theology and praxis of nineteenth century Christian mission

It was during this century that the models for protestant/evangelical missionary work were established. The Moravians had established the paradigm for volunteerism. They were mostly lay people who went to different countries to earn their own living in the trade that they had experience in. In this section we will consider some of the theological frameworks for mission developed in this century.God is a missionary God

First we must acknowledge that God is a missionary God and He was primary at work rising up a people for himself from the tribes of the world. Gods reviving power in the church was at the heart of the nineteenth century missionary outreach. Men and women were touched by God, empowered by His spirit and motivated to go to the ends of the Earth to tell people about a God who is love. They knew that very probably there would be difficulties and for many disease and death would take them prematurely to Heaven, but they were constrained by love and thousands of missionaries responded to the call. Revivals stimulate mission

The first Great Evangelical Awakening of the eighteenth century started in Herrnhut in 1727 which as we have seen gave birth to a truly noble group of volunteer missionaries. In 1735 revival broke out in Massachusetts under the ministry of Jonathan Edwards and in 1738 the revival started in Great Britain under the influence of George Whitefield and the Wesley brothers. These revivals brought new life to the churches, thousands of people accepted Christ, and they opened the way for lay people to get involved. Following the pietistic model the need for personal conversion was taught, Bible study was encouraged, small groups for discipleship set up, the laity were permitted to serve and use their gifts. The revivals stimulated missionary work and also humanitarian efforts of different kinds.

The Second Evangelical Awakening according to Edwin Orr, a leading authority on the history of revivals, occurred between 1792 and 1820. This revival mainly affected the United States and Great Britain. The Methodist church was greatly blessed. It was at this time that the evangelical Anglicans whose most famous representatives are probably the Clapham Sect began to influence the Anglican churches. There was a revival in the University of Yale in 1802. Other colleges soon followed. In Williams College Samuel John Mills formed their famous resolution in the haystack prayer meeting to commit themselves to missionary work abroad. In 1810 the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was formed and in 1812 the first missionaries set sail for India. Davies says that the modern Protestant missionary movement began as a direct result of the second evangelical revival.

According to Orr the third Evangelical Awakening took place in the middle of the century from 1857 to 1859. The revival started in America and spread to Great Britain. In the United States, Davies says that within two years over a million people had been added to the churches at the rate of 10,000 each week. A similar number were converted in Britain during this period. Davies notes that many new ministries arose at this time such as the YMCA, the Salvation Army, the Keswick Movement, the Christian Union University movements, and the Sunday school movement. The missionary movement received an injection of new candidates.

The fourth Great Evangelical Awakening started in Wales in 1904 and spread around the globe deeply affecting missionary endeavors and birthing the Pentecostal church and other denominations in the holiness tradition such as the Church of the Nazarene. In conclusion, we have to say that, when God revives his church she is given a renewed vision to reach the lost in the four corners of the globe.

Christianity is translatable globally

Whereas Catholic missionaries did not often translate the Bible, the first task of many Protestants was to learn the language and put the Scriptures into the language of the people they were serving. William Carey, with his incredible gift for languages set the scene. Henry Martyn (17811812) a linguist sent out to India by the Clapham Sect translated the New Testament into Urdo, and revised the Persian New Testament before his death still as a young man. British and Foreign Bible Society was founded in 1804 at the urging of Thomas Charles and members of the Clapham Sect. The society provided cheap editions of the Bible in different languages as well as colporteurs some of whom were renowned missionaries such as James Thompson (1788-1854) and Francisco Penzotti (1851-1925), both missionaries in Latin America in the nineteenth century. As Neill says: No language has been found in which it was impossible to communicate the gospel. A new paradigm of organization: The society model

The monasteries had provided the Catholic Church with thousands of missionary monks throughout the Middle Ages. It wasnt till William Carey founded the Baptist Missionary Society (1793) that the Protestants found their tool for doing mission borrowed from the company model used in commerce with a board of directors in the home land who looked for and processed new volunteers and received and administered the funds needed by the missionaries on the field. Alongside the trained clergy the missions accepted families, lay people and single women. The Protestant missionaries were financed by voluntary donations and only advanced by the power of prayer and persuasion. A series of missionary societies were founded within a few years as the London Missionary Society in 1795, the Scottish Missionary Society (SMS) in 1796, and the Church Missionary Society (CMS) in 1799 (among lots of others).Interdenominational faith missions

With the founding of the China Inland Mission (CIM) by Hudson Taylor in 1865 a new paradigm was established - the faith missions. The society that Taylor proposed was different to other missions. The mission was to be interdenominational. Volunteers could come form different churches as long as they were sincere Christians and could sign a simple declaration of faith. CIM insisted on radical volunteerism going to the mission field with no financial guarantee. People of all walks of life were welcome, the highly educated as well as people with practical skills as long as they had a sincere call. The direction of the mission would be in China not in England. Missionaries would have to wear the national dress of the Chinese in order to be a part of the Chinese community. The primary aim of the mission was widespread evangelism in the interior provinces of China. Less emphasis would be placed on institutions or missionaries pastoring churches.

Indigenous church mission theory and the three self formula

Henry Venn (1796-1873), an Anglican priest and leader of the home front of the Church Missionary Society (CMS) and Rufus Anderson (1796-1880) a Congregationalist minister and leader of the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Mission Board, simultaneously developed a strategy to respond to some of the paternalistic practices of some western missionaries early in the 19th century. They both argued for churches on the mission field that were able to govern themselves, propagate themselves and support themselves. According to this program the role of the missionary was always to train nationals and work himself out of a job stimulating indigenous church growth and leadership. Underlying this theory was a deep respect and trust of indigenous peoples, an attitude that unfortunately was to diminish in the more imperialistic stage of the nineteenth century.

John Livingstone Nevius (1829-1893) served as a Presbyterian missionary to China in the late 1800s. After questioning the methods of western missionaries of his time, he wrote a book published in 1886, "The Planting and Development of Missionary Churches," which called for discarding old-style missions and the adoption of his new plan to foster an independent, self-supporting local church. Nevius visited Korea and shared his ideas with the church there. Many of these principles were applied in 1990 to the work in Korea. Nevius stipulated that each Korean Christian should support himself with the trade he was accustomed to; The Church should be developed in Korea only as far as the nationals were able to be responsible for it; the national church should call out leaders who they feel were suitable and the churches were to be built in the native stile by the Koreans with their own resources.

Roland Allen (1868-1947) also attempted to apply indigenous church principles to the missions of his day. After serving as an Anglican missionary in China from 1895 to 1903, he returned to England and spent 40 years writing about missions principles. Allen taught that Gods Spirit was at work in the churches and that there should be a spontaneous expansion of the church as in the case of St Paul during his missionary journeys.Postmillennial theology

The enlightenment had given birth to a dream of development and progress which science and education was about to usher in. With more missionaries serving in all the corners of the Globe the church began to believe that the world would be converted and that this would usher in the millennial reign of God in earth, through the church. The vast number of people accepting Christianity seemed to be a sign that the promise of Jesus the gospel of the kingdom will be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all nations, and then the end will come (Matthew 24:14 NIV) was possible and about to take place. This made missionary work more urgent.

The birth of the science of missiology

In 1867 Alexander Duff on returning to Scotland was appointed as chair of Evangelistic Theology in Edinburgh University where he developed a systematic theory of mission. However the founding of the discipline of missiology takes us back to the University of Halle where Gustav Warneck (1834-1910) was appointed to the Chair of Missionary Science. He is widely regarded as the founder of Protestant missionary science. He produced a three volume work on Protestant mission theory and he surveyed the history of Protestant missionary work. Warneck emphasized the need for putting down roots, developing the national church, for a more holistic mission and criticized superficial high speed efforts which could be easily quantified but did not necessarily bring lasting growth. These works were very important for the establishing of missiology as a discipline in its own right.

Missionary methods and styles

The nineteenth century missionaries carried out holistic mission: preaching, teaching, healing and working in development projects. Standing on the shoulders of the Protestant Reformation one of the urgent first steps was translation of the Bible and getting it printed and into the hands of the people. In order for them to read it some village schools were set up which included lessons from western education. Some of these schools progressed to become important centers of learning like the College in Serampore and the American University in Beirut.

Missionaries tended to live in compounds or mission stations. This had the advantage of fellowship and mutual support although often living in close quarters produced conflict. One disadvantage of this system was that missionaries did not live among the nationals and this hindered their total incarnation in society. Many medicals centers and agricultural farm institutions served the people. Sometimes missionaries fought for human rights. William Carey brought about the abolition of Sati (widows dying in the funeral pyres of their husbands). Henry Grattan Guinness (1835-1910), founder of the North Africa Mission protested the Congo atrocities, perpetrated by Leopold II of Belgium, in which whole villages were depopulated to get more rubber.Missionaries in South Africa opposed the racial segregation of apartheid.

V. An evaluation of achievements at the close of the century: The Edinburgh World Missionary Conference 1910

This was the fourth conference of this kind (Liverpool 1860, London 1885 and New York 1900). More than 1,200 representatives of missionary societies came together from all over the world. A Methodist, John Raleigh Mott (1865-1955) was the chairman. In 1901 he published a book promoting the evangelization of the world. Arthur Tappan Pierson (1837-1911) coined the phrase: the evangelization of the world in this generation which became the motto of the Edinburgh Conference. Gustav Warneck objected to the slogan and pointed out that the missionary command bids us `go into the world, not fly and that Jesus likened Gods kingdom to a farmers field not to a hothouse. Stephen Neill explains the importance and meaning of this slogan. In essence the implication is that each generation of Christians are responsible for the non-Christians of their generation.

They rejoiced in Edinburgh because twelve important advances had been achieved in Christian mission:-

1. Although some countries like Afghanistan and Tibet were still closed to Christianity missionaries had been able to enter the entire known world

2. A lot of the pioneer work had been carried out. Languages had been learned and reduced to writing and the most important languages of the world had received the at least the New Testament.

3. Due to the fact that medicine had resolved most of the tropical diseases, the missionaries could stay longer in each country

4. People had been converted to Christianity from every major religion of the world

5. Although some were more open than others no groups of people had been found who could not understand the gospel

6. The missionary now was accompanied by national leaders

7. The younger churches were beginning to produce leaders of great intellectual and spiritual stature

8. The home churches were more engaged in supporting the missionaries

9. Financial support had kept pace with the rapid expansion of missionary endeavor

10. The universities in the West were producing graduates with a high potential for missionary work

11. The influence of the gospel was wider than just the groups of people who had accepted it

12. Opposition to the gospel seemed to be on the wane in countries like China and Japan.

Andrew Walls says of the conference:The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh, has passed into Christian legend. It was a land mark in the history of mission; the starting point of the modern theology of mission; the high point of the Western missionary movement and the point from which it declined; the Launchpad of the modern ecumenical movement; the point at which Christians first began to glimpse something of what a world church would be like.

The missionaries in Edinburgh saw themselves at the threshold of something new. In fact however, Edinburgh marks the end of an epoch. From Waterloo (1815) to the 1914 First World War the world had been at peace. The First World War heralded difficult times for Christian Mission, including a serious economic depression, a second major war and the Marxist and Maoist regimes which shut their doors to Christianity. However Gods call to men and women has been heard and the church globally is being built up and strengthened from day to day.Conclusions

The emphasis must be placed here on God and what He has been doing. The pietist movement was crucial to this century of global outreach for Christ. The emphasis on personal salvation, Bible reading and obedience was reinforced by the mighty revivals with which God blessed His church. Pietism and revivals are the keystones to what was made possible in the nineteenth century.

There are some lessons that missions need to learn for today. We need to take a good look at the holistic mission carried out in the different parts of the globe 200 years ago and ask ourselves if Gustav Warneck does not have a good point: quality comes before quantity. It is not possible to move at the speed of Wallmart or Facebook. Communicating the message of love of Jesus to a hurting world, building churches, developing leaders takes time and success cannot be measured in numbers but only by time.

Contemporary missionaries, often from Third World countries, need to be aware of their own racial prejudices and ethnocentricities so that they do not get in the way of the work. Even in the nineteenth century missionary work among Muslims was hard. Tibet and Afghanistan continue to be difficult mission fields although some advances have been made.

Building on the theories of Rufus and Venn, David Bosch suggests a fourth self in his section of Indigenization. Each world area/country has the right to develop autochthonous theology. What would an Indian, Latin American or African holiness movement look like? Is each area of the world free in the Nazarene setting to express themselves theologically?

There is a need for a new generation of God touched, fearless, gifted men and women who are really willing to give up everything and follow the Master to the ends of the Earth even if it means sacrificing their lives for Him. Mission concludes Bosch, is the participation of Christians in the liberating mission of JesusIt is the good news of Gods love, incarnated in the witness of a community, for the sake of the world.

Bibliography Allen, R. (1912). Missionary Methods: St. Paul's or ours. Republished in 1962. Gran Rapids Michigan: William Eerdmans Publishing House.Anderson, G. ed. (1998). Bibliographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. Gran Rapids, Michigan: William Eerdmans publishing Company.Bevans, S. & R. Schroeder (2004.) Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today. New York: Orbis Books.Bosch, D. (1994). Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts on Theology of Mission. New York: Orbis Books.Corrie, J. ed. (2007). Dictionary of Mission Theology: Evangelical Foundations. Nottingham, UK: IVP.Davies, R.E. (1992) I Will Pour Out my Spirit: a History and Theology of Revivals and Evangelical Awakenings. Great Britain: Monarch Books.Ferguson, S. & D. Wright, eds. [1988]. New Dictionary of Theology. Leicester, UK: IVP.Ferguson, N. (2004). Empire, the rise and demise of the British world order and the lessons for global power. New York: ed. Basic Books.Guder, D.L. (2003) From Mission to Theology and Theology to Missional Theology. Princeton Seminary Bulletin. Vol 24. No 1, New Series.Hutchinson, P. & W. E. Garrison (2004). 20 Centuries of Christianity. Harcourt, USA: Brace and Company.Kane, J. H. (1972). A Global view of Christian Missions. Gran Rapids Michigan: Baker Book House.

Kipling, R. The White Man's Burden" originally published in the popular magazine McClure's in 1899.

Latourette, K. S. (1967). Historia del Cristianismo. Tomo II. Mxico DF.: Casa Bautista de Publicaciones.Moreau, S. (ed.) (2000). Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions. UK: Baker books and Patternoster press.

Mott, J. R. (1901). The Evangelization of the World. New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions.Neill, S. (1966). A History of Christian Missions United Kingdom: Penguin Books.Orr, E. (1949. The Second Evangelical Awakening in Great Britain. London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott.Spener, P. J. (2002). Pia Desideria. Oregon, USA: Wipf & Stock Publisher.Walls, A. (2000). The missionary movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of the Faith. New York: Maryknoll Orbis Books.Walls, A. (2001) From Christendom to world Christianity: Missions and the demographic transformation of the church The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Vol.22, No.3, New SeriesVerkuyl, J. (1978). Contemporary Missiology: An Introduction. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William Eerdmans Publishing Company. Kenneth S. Latourette (1967) Historia del Cristianismo. Tomo II. Mxico DF.: Casa Bautista de Publicaciones, p.449

Stephen Neill (1966) A History of Christian Missions United Kingdom: Penguin Books (Chapters 9 & 10).

David Bosch (1994) Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts on Theology of Mission. New York: Orbis Books, pp. 248-252

Philip Jacob Spener, (2002). Pia Desideria. Oregon, USA: Wipf & Stock Publishers

J. Herbert Kane (1972) A Global view of Christian Missions. Gran Rapids Michigan: Baker Book House, p. 77.

Stephen Bevans & Roger Schroeder (2004) Constants in Context: A Theology of Mission for Today. New York: Orbis Books, p. 221

D.W. Brown [1988] Pietism in New Dictionary of Theology. Leicester, UK: IVP

Bosch, op.cit. , p.155

Niall Ferguson (2004) Empire, the rise and demise of the British world order and the lessons for global power. New York: ed. Basic Books

The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure's in 1899.

P. Hutchinson & W. E. Garrison (2004). 20 Centuries of Christianity. Harcourt ,USA: Brace and Company, p. 279)

Gary Clayton (2000). Boxer Rebellion Death to the foreigner! . OMF International. Accessed 19.11.12. in http://www.omf.org/omf/singapore/about_omf/omf_history/boxer_rebellion

Neill , op. cit., p.305

Andrew Walls (2000). The missionary movement in Christian History: Studies in the Transmission of the Faith. New York: Maryknoll Orbis Books, p. 87.

D. Roberts (1996) American Women in Mission: The Modern Mission Era 1792-1992. USA: Mercer University Press, p. 191, in Bevans and Schroeder, op.cit.

Neill, op. cit., p. 321

Davies Ron E (1992) I Will Pour Out my Spirit: a History and Theology of Revivals and Evangelical Awakenings. Great Britain: Monarch Books, p. 9.

Ibid p.121

Ibid p. 133

Ibid p.150

Ibid p.154

Edwin Orr (1949) The Second Evangelical Awakening in Great Britain. London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott,

Davies, op.cit., p.163

Neill, op. cit., p. 253

Neill, op.cit., pp. 333-334

Bevans & Schroeder, op.cit., p. 213.

Neill, op.cit. p.343

Roland Allen (1912). Missionary methods : St. Paul's or ours. A study of the church in the four provinces, London : R. Scott.

S. Moreau (ed.) (2000) Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions. Article Gustav Warneck by Klaus Fiedler, p. 2006. See also J. Verkuyl (1978) Contemporary Missiology. An Introduction. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William Eerdmans Publishing House, pp.26-28.

Africa: A Troubled Continent. The Role of Missions in Africa Paragraph 10 accessed 21.11.12 in http://www.reformedreflections.ca/africa-series/2-a-troubled-continent.html

John Raleigh Mott, (1901) The Evangelization of the World. New York: Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions

Hutchinson William (1987). Errand to the World American Protestant Missionary thought and Foreign Missions. Chicago: University of Chicago press, p.131, quoted in Bosch, op cit.

Neill, op.cit p.394

Ibid. pp.394-395

Andrew Walls (2001) From Christendom to world Christianity: Missions and the demographic transformation of the church The Princeton Seminary Bulletin, Vol.22, No.3: 306-330 (p. 310)

Bosch, op.cit pp.441-452

Bosch, op.cit., p. 519.

16