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Abbreviation | BMS |
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Formation | 1792 |
Type | Missionary Society |
Headquarters | Didcot, Great Britain |
General Director | Kang San-Tan |
Website | Official website |
BMS World Mission, officially Baptist Missionary Society, is a Christian missionary society founded by Baptists from England in 1792. The headquarters is in Didcot, England.
The BMS was formed in 1792 as the Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amongst the Heathen at a meeting in Kettering, England, where twelve Particular Baptist ministers signed an agreement. [1] [2] They were; Thomas Blundel, Joshua Burton, John Eayres, Andrew Fuller, Abraham Greenwood, William Heighton, Reynold Hogg, Samuel Pearce, John Ryland, Edward Sherman, John Sutcliff, Joseph Timms. [3] William Staughton, present at the meeting, did not sign since he was not a minister. [4] The first missionaries, William Carey and John Thomas, were sent to Bengal, India in 1793. [5] [6] They were followed by many co-workers, firstly to India, and subsequently to other countries in Asia, the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, and South America. BMS opened missions in China in 1860. It began operating in China's Shanxi province in 1877, despite local hostility toward “foreign devils.” In the Boxer Rebellion of 1900 all its missionaries there were killed, along with all 120 converts . [7] Timothy Richard is one of the most well-known Baptist missionaries to China.
Francis Augustus Cox wrote a history of the Baptist Missionary Society from its formation until 1842. [6] Brian Stanley was commissioned to write a history of the society for its bicentenary (1992). [8]
It is also known as BMS World Mission since 2000. [9]
BMS works in many ways around the world, including church planting, development, disaster relief, education, health, and media and advocacy. Mission personnel can go long-term, mid-term, short-term or as part of a team.[ citation needed ]
Baptists Together, formally the Baptist Union of Great Britain, is a Baptist Christian denomination in England and Wales. It is affiliated with the Baptist World Alliance and Churches Together in England. The headquarters is in Didcot.
William Carey was an English Christian missionary, Particular Baptist minister, translator, social reformer and cultural anthropologist who founded the Serampore College and the Serampore University, the first degree-awarding university in India.
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Arthur Gostick Shorrock (1861–1945) was a Baptist missionary who worked in China for 40 years. Arthur was born in 1861 in Blackburn, Lancashire, England. He entered Spurgeon's College and as a student preacher took services at the Baptist Chapel in Wraysbury. There he met his future wife, Maud Doulton, a relative of both Henry Doulton the pottery manufacturer and William Thomas Buckland the Wraysbury auctioneer. Arthur then left to become a missionary in China before returning to live in Wraysbury after his retirement.
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Robert Arthington was a British investor, philanthropist and premillennialist. He was the son of a wealthy brewery owner from whom he inherited his fortune. He was brought up in a prosperous Quaker family, but later moved to become a member of a Baptist Church. Although an excellent student at University of Cambridge, he left without a degree. He devoted his life and wealth to Christian evangelism, committing himself to a life of a tramp and recluse, minimising his entire expenditure on his own welfare. This was due to his strong premillennialist belief that when the Gospel of Jesus is spread to the entire world, then the Second Coming of Christ would happen. He was the benefactor to the success of Baptist Missionary Society and London Missionary Society, thereby becoming the principal factor in the spread of Protestantism, modernisation and formal education in the remotest parts of the world.
Stanley George Browne, also called "Bonganga" by the community members with whom he worked, was a British medical missionary and leprologist known for his work and his many research achievements throughout the 20th century in the Belgian Congo, Nigeria, and India including his early use of Dapsone. He received numerous awards throughout his academic and professional career. He is also known as an academic for his early publications surrounding his findings of leprosy of which he published about 150 articles and five books.
Clement Clapton Chesterman OBE was an English writer, humanitarian and physician. He was a medical missionary for the Baptist Missionary Society that served in the Belgian Congo, more specifically Yakusu. He was responsible for the establishment of a hospital, community-based dispensaries and training centres of medical auxiliaries. Chesterman's network of health dispensaries employed preventive medicine using the new drug tryparsamide to combat the prevalent issue of sleeping sickness in the area. His implementation of mass chemotherapy was extremely successful in eliminating the disease. Such success led to his methods being widely adopted in Africa, making Chesterman a prominent contributor to the field of tropical medicine. In 1974 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
Dr Ernest Woodward Price MD, FRCSE, DTM&H, OBE was a missionary doctor, orthopaedic surgeon, leprosy specialist and the discoverer of podoconiosis, one of the neglected tropical diseases. A list of his publications is available online.
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