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The 'Church Mission Society', known as the Church Missionary Society in Australia and New Zealand, 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.

Contents

Church Mission Society, Britain

Church Missionary Society, Australia

New Zealand Church Missionary Society

See also

Notes

Bibliography

External links

Church Mission Society, Britain

On 1 February 2007 CMS had 186 mission partners serving in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Middle East. When study partners, exchange programme participants and other people in mission are included, the Society supported 704 workers. Mission projects are supported in over 50 countries. A budget of almost £9 million p.a. is drawn primarily from donations by individuals and parishes, supplemented by historic investments.^[1]
The Society for Missions to Africa and the East (as it was first called) was founded on 12 April 1799 at a meeting of the Eclectic Society, supported by members of the Clapham Sect, a group of activist evangelical Christians whose number included Henry Thornton and William Wilberforce. Wilberforce was asked to be the first president of the Society, but he declined to take on this extra, significant role, and became a vice president. The founding Secretary was the Rev. Thomas Scott, the biblical commentator. He made way in 1803 for Josiah Pratt who was Secretary for 21 years and an early driving force. The first missionaries - who came from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Wurttemberg, and had trained at the Berlin Seminary - went out in 1804. In 1812 the Society was renamed The Church Missionary Society for Africa and the East, and the first English clergy to work as the Society's missionaries went out in 1815.
During the early twentieth century, the Society's theology moved in a liberal direction under the leadership of Eugene Stock.^[2] There was considerable debate over the possible introduction of a doctrinal test for missionaries, which advocates claimed would restore the Society's original evangelical theology. In 1922, the Society split, with the liberal evangelicals remaining in control of CMS headquarters, whilst conservative evangelicals established the ''Bible Churchmen's Missionary Society'' (BCMS, now Crosslinks).
Significant General Secretaries of the Society later in the 20th century were Max Warren, and John Vernon Taylor.
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).
In June 2007, CMS in Britain moved the administrative office out of London for the first time. It is now based with the new Crowther Centre for Mission Education in east Oxford.
The Church Mission Society Archive is housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.

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.
The British-based Church Missionary Society began operations in Sydney in 1825, with the intention of bringing the gospel to the aboriginal population. 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.
The organisation now known as CMS-Australia effectively dates from 1916, when the individual CMS associations in the Australian states were amalgamated into a national organisation. 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.

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 on Christmas Day in 1814, at Oihi Bay in 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.

See also

★ Protestant missionary societies in China during the 19th Century

★ History of Christian missions

★ List of Protestant missionaries in China

★ C.M.S. College

★ Frank Lake

★ Crosslinks

Notes

1. CMS: Annual Review 2007 (PDF).
2.

Bibliography

★ .

★ .

External links

★ CMS Britain

★ CMS Australia

★ New Zealand CMS

★ CMS Ireland