This timeline of Christian missions chronicles the global expansion of Christianity through a listing of the most significant missionary outreach events.
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was among the first American Christian missionary organizations. It was created in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College. In the 19th century it was the largest and most important of American missionary organizations and consisted of participants from Protestant Reformed traditions such as Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and German Reformed churches.
The London Missionary Society was an interdenominational evangelical missionary society formed in England in 1795 at the instigation of Welsh Congregationalist minister Edward Williams. It was largely Reformed in outlook, with Congregational missions in Oceania, Africa, and the Americas, although there were also Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists, and various other Protestants involved. It now forms part of the Council for World Mission.
Peter Parker was an American physician and a missionary who introduced Western medical techniques into Qing dynasty China, at the city of Canton. It was said that Parker "opened China to the gospel at the point of a lancet."
The Church Mission Society (CMS), formerly known as the Church Missionary Society, is a British Anglican mission society working with Christians around the world. Founded in 1799, CMS has attracted over nine thousand men and women to serve as mission partners during its 200-year history. The society has also given its name "CMS" to a number of daughter organisations around the world, including Australia and New Zealand, which have now become independent.
Joseph Crane Hartzell was an American Missionary Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church who served in the United States and in Africa. Hartzell missionary work included presiding over four Annual Sessions of the Liberia Annual Conference, organized the Congo Mission Conference and presided over the first sessions of the East Central Africa and West Central Africa Mission Conferences for which he was made a Knight Commander of the Order for the Redemption of Africa.
United Society Partners in the Gospel (USPG) is a United Kingdom-based charitable organization.
Tao Fong Shan, officially known as To Fung Shan, is a hill with a height of 130 metres (430 ft). It is in Sha Tin, New Territories, Hong Kong. A road called To Fung Shan Road leads to the summit, where a Christian Centre can be found.
The Protestant Episcopal Church Mission was a Christian missionary initiative of the Episcopal Church that was involved in sending and providing financial support to lay and ordained mission workers in growing population centers in the west of the United States as well as overseas in China, Liberia and Japan during the second half of the 19th Century.
The Kinki Evangelical Lutheran Church or KELC is a Lutheran church in Japan. It currently has approximately 2,600 baptized members in 29 congregations nationwide.
The Malagasy Lutheran Church is one of the most important Christian churches in Madagascar, established in 1950 by the unification of 1,800 Lutheran congregations in central and southern Madagascar. The oldest of these congregations was founded in the early 19th century with the arrival of missionaries from the Norwegian Missionary Society (NMS).
The Church's Ministry Among Jewish People (CMJ) is an Anglican missionary society founded in 1809.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Cameroon (EELC) is a Lutheran denomination in Cameroon. The EELC was registered as a religious body in Cameroon in 1965 and currently has approximately 253,000 members in 1,300 congregations nationwide.
Karl Ludvig Reichelt was a Norwegian Lutheran missionary and religious scholar who worked in China. He was a missionary for the Norwegian Missionary Society from 1903 to 1922. In 1922 he established the Nordic Christian Buddhist Mission. He also founded the institution Tao Fong Shan in Hong Kong. He became most known for his work among Buddhists and writings about Buddhism.
Sverre Holth was a Norwegian missionary in China. He was first associated with the Norwegian Missionary Society (Lutheran) and later ordained an Anglican priest.
Christianity is a minority religion in the southwestern Chinese province of Sichuan. The Eastern Lipo, Kadu people and A-Hmao are ethnic groups present in the province.
Thomas Torrance (1871–1959) was a Scottish Presbyterian minister and Protestant missionary to Sichuan, western China. He was first sent there by the China Inland Mission (CIM), and later by The American Bible Society. He married Annie Elizabeth Sharpe (1883–1980) of the CIM in 1911. He was the father of the 20th century theologian, Thomas F. Torrance.
The three-self formula or three-self principle is a missiological strategy to establish indigenous churches. Its principles are: self-governance, self-support, and self-propagation. It was first coined in the late-19th century by various missions theorists, and is still used today in certain contexts such as in the Three-Self Patriotic Movement in mainland China.
Ephraim Weston Clark was an American pastor and translator most remembered for his decades of work helping to translate the Bible into the Hawaiian language, and his subsequent work on the 1868 revision of the translation. He was the third Kahu (pastor) of Kawaiahaʻo Church in Honolulu, and served in that position 15 years. His early years as a missionary were spent on the Hawaiian island of Maui; while serving as Kahu of Kawaiahaʻo, he also spent several months with the Hawaiian Missionary Society in Micronesia.
Donald Fraser was a Free Church of Scotland missionary in Africa and author of six non-fiction books about his almost three decades of work there.
