Church Mission Society

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The Church Mission Society (formerly the Church Missionary Society) is an evangelistic society working with the Anglican Church and other Protestant Christians around the world. Founded in 1799, CMS has attracted upwards of nine thousand men and women to serve as mission partners during its 200-year history. Its founding Secretary was the Rev. Thomas Scott, the biblical commentator, who also trained its first missionaries - who initially came from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Wurttemberg.

1 Church Mission Society, Britain
2 Church Missionary Society, Australia
3 New Zealand Church Missionary Society
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Church Mission Society, Britain

Today there are over 250 people in mission serving in countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Mission projects are supported in over 50 countries. A budget of over £7 million a year is needed to maintain and expand this work.

The Society was founded on 12 April 1799 by members of the Clapham Sect, a group of activist evangelical Christians who met in each other's homes around Clapham, south of London. Their number included Henry Thornton and William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was asked to be the first president of the Society, initially named the Society for Missions to Africa and the East, but he declined to take on this extra, significant role, and became a vice president. Josiah Pratt soon emerged as an early driving force.

The contribution made by the society in spreading education in Kerala, the most literate state in India, is very significant. Many colleges and schools in Kerala and Tamil Nadu still have CMS in their names. The CMS College in Kottayam may be one of the pioneers in popularising Higher Education in India (former Indian President K.R. Narayanan is an alumnus).

The Church Mission Society Archive is housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

[edit] Church Missionary Society, Australia

CMS-Australia is committed to proclaiming the gospel and serving God's people around the world to see lives transformed by Christ.

CMS-Australia was brought into being in 1799 by a small group of thinking evangelicals, who had met as the 'Eclectic Society' for three years at the 'Castle and Falcon' pub in London.

The group included John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace and William Wilberforce who had slave trading abolished in England. The group first started talking about mission in 1786. The question they were discussing was: "What is the best method of planting and promulgating the gospel in Botany Bay?".

CMS-Britain and the Eclectic Society were responsible for sending the first chaplains to Australia. A CMS Auxiliary was set up in Sydney in 1825, primarily to engage in work amongst Aboriginal people. In 1830 the first missionaries arrived from England to establish a mission venture in Wellington Valley. Three Aboriginal people were baptised before CMS discontinued the work in 1842.

CMS Associations were set up around Australia, and the first Australian missionary, Helen Philips, sailed for Ceylon in 1892.

In 1916 the states came together and what would later become the Church Missionary Society of Australia was formed. CMS had sent missionaries to many countries by this time, including China, India, Palestine and Iran, but by 1927 they had particular interest in North Australia and Tanganyika.

Today CMS-Australia is Australia's largest evangelical mission organisation with 150 missionaries serving in 30 countries worldwide.

[edit] New Zealand Church Missionary Society

The Church Missionary Society sent the first Missionaries to New Zealand, its agent the Rev. Samuel Marsden performed the first Christian service in that country in 1814, at the bay of Islands, while rogue CMS missionary Thomas Kendall brought Māori war chief Hongi Hika to London in 1819, creating a small sensation. The CMS funded its activities through trade, unfortunately including muskets, which fueled the Musket Wars. The CMS founded a trading settlement at Kerikeri, near the secular whaling and trading settlement of Kororareka, and a farm, the Te Waimate mission, but failed to obtain any converts until the 1830s with the death of Hongi Hika. Concern about European impact upon Māori, particularly lawlessness in Kororareka and the death toll in the Musket Wars lead the CMS to use its influence - and the fact the Colonial Secretary was a member - to successfully lobby for the United Kingdom's annexation of New Zealand in January 1840 (an act subsequently justified by the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi). The CMS Mission House, in Kerikeri, is New Zealand's oldest building built by Europeans.