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Sailasa Naucukidi was a Fijian Methodist-Wesleyan missionary who volunteered to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ to New Britain, Papua New Guinea in 1876. In 1878, he was martyred and his remains cannibalized. His remains along with other Fijian martyrs lay buried atop the Vunela Fijian martyrs cemetery Kabakada, East New Britain.
The mission to New Britain was launched in 1875. Wesleyan pastor George Brown, the organizer, met with colonial opposition, as a result of British policy after the tragic epidemic which killed 40,000 in Fiji. He finally appealed to the students of Navuloa, the Methodist Theological School at the time, describing the dangers and pointing out that they might well be going to their deaths. Eighty three students were present and heard the appeal and after consulting their wives and families they all volunteered.
The colonial government because of its strict native out-migration policy after the measles epidemic in early 1875 finally relented. By 1876 the new mission field at New Britain had been divided into two areas, one under Aminio Baledrokadroka and the other under Sailasa, and there were 14 teachers’ stations.
Thus began Fiji’s own missionary enterprise. In the year 1878, Sailasa the Fijian minister was journeying inland with a small party south of Kabakada on the Gazelle peninsula, and preaching the Gospel as he went, when they were suddenly attacked, slain and their bodies dismembered and cannibalized.
As Thomas Baker was martyred in Fiji, so was Sailasa Naucukidi in New Britain as a result of the Wesleyan Church's proselytization missions in the latter part of the nineteenth century in the South Pacific.
Lelean Memorial School, at Davuilevu, Nausori, Fiji, honours his memory by naming one of its four houses after him.
Fijian Methodist missionaries have since helped spread the gospel in New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Northern Australia, Vanuatu and recently to the Caribbean.
Methodism, also called the Methodist movement, is a group of historically related denominations of Protestant Christianity whose origins, doctrine and practice derive from the life and teachings of John Wesley. George Whitefield and John's brother Charles Wesley were also significant early leaders in the movement. They were named Methodists for "the methodical way in which they carried out their Christian faith". Methodism originated as a revival movement within the 18th-century Church of England and became a separate denomination after Wesley's death. The movement spread throughout the British Empire, the United States, and beyond because of vigorous missionary work, today claiming approximately 80 million adherents worldwide.
This timeline of Christian missions chronicles the global expansion of Christianity through a listing of the most significant missionary outreach events.
German New Guinea consisted of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea and several nearby island groups and was the first part of the German colonial empire. The mainland part of the territory, called Kaiser-Wilhelmsland, became a German protectorate in 1884. Other island groups were added subsequently. The Bismarck Archipelago, and the North Solomon Islands were declared a German protectorate in 1885; in the same year the Marshall Islands were bought from Spain for $4.5 million by the Hispano-German Protocol of Rome; Nauru was annexed to the Marshall Islands protectorate in 1888, and finally the Caroline Islands, Palau, and the Mariana Islands were bought from Spain in 1899. German Samoa, though part of the German colonial empire, was not part of German New Guinea.
The Tolai are the indigenous people of the Gazelle Peninsula and the Duke of York Islands of East New Britain in the New Guinea Islands region of Papua New Guinea. They are ethnically close kin to the peoples of adjacent New Ireland and tribes like the Tanga people and are thought to have migrated to the Gazelle Peninsula in relatively recent times, displacing the Baining people who were driven westwards.
George Brown was an English Methodist missionary and ethnographer.
Jabez Bunting Waterhouse was an English-born Australian Methodist minister and a leading legislator within Methodist conferences.
The Diocese of Medak is one of the prominent Dioceses in the Church of South India, a Protestant Uniting Church with its headquarters in Medak comprising nearly 200 Presbyters ministering to Telugu, Lambadi, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindustani, English and other linguistic groups numbering nearly 1/3rds of a million spread over 105 pastorates and administered through 3 District Church Councils (DCC), namely, the Town DCC, the Medak DCC and the Godavari DCC geographically located in the erstwhile civil districts of Adilabad, Nizamabad, Medak, Rangareddy, Hyderabad and Mahboobnagar in Telangana.
Sione Lātūkefu was a Tongan academic and historian, and the author of several significant works on Tongan history.
Robert Clark Morgan was an English sea captain, whaler, diarist, and, in later life, a missionary. He captained the Duke of York, bringing the first settlers to South Australia in 1836. His life in the British whaling industry has been recorded in the book The Man Who Hunted Whales (2011) by Dorothy M. Heinrich. His diaries are held in the State Library of New South Wales.
Characteristic of Christianity in the 19th century were evangelical revivals in some largely Protestant countries and later the effects of modern biblical scholarship on the churches. Liberal or modernist theology was one consequence of this. In Europe, the Roman Catholic Church strongly opposed liberalism and culture wars launched in Germany, Italy, Belgium and France. It strongly emphasized personal piety. In Europe there was a general move away from religious observance and belief in Christian teachings and a move towards secularism. In Protestantism, pietistic revivals were common.
World Gospel Mission (WGM) is an interdenominational Christian holiness missionary agency headquartered in Marion, Indiana, United States. Aligned with the Wesleyan Holiness tradition of Protestantism, WGM was founded on 10 July 1910 in University Park, Iowa as the Missionary Department of the National Association for the Promotion of Holiness. As of 2018, WGM operates in 23 countries and supports 236 full-time missionaries, in addition to short-term team members and volunteers.
Thomas Birch Freeman was an Anglo-African Wesleyan minister, missionary, botanist and colonial official in West Africa. He is widely regarded as a pioneer of the Methodist Church in colonial West Africa, where he also established multiple schools. Some scholars view him as the “Founder of Ghana Methodism”. Freeman's missionary activities took him to Dahomey, now Benin as well as to Western Nigeria.
Thomas Baker was a Methodist missionary in Fiji, known as being the only missionary in the archipelago to be killed and eaten, along with seven of his Fijian followers. The incident occurred in the Navosa Highlands of western Viti Levu in July 1867, and the rock used to kill Baker is still displayed in the village of Nabutatau. The soles of his leather sandals, which were also cooked by the cannibal tribe, are preserved at the Fiji Museum in Suva. Records show that Baker was killed and eaten as a result of him touching a chief's head, which is considered disrespectful in Fijian culture.
Aminio Baledrokadroka was the charismatic leader of Fiji's Methodist (Wesleyan) missionary band to New Britain Island, Papua New Guinea in the latter part of the nineteenth century. He displayed excellent qualities of leadership in adversity and paved the way for later generations of native Fijian missionaries in spreading Christianity to other parts of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
Davuilevu, the name of the site of three Methodist Church of Fiji institutions: Davuilevu Theological College, the Bible School for Catechist training, and Lelean Memorial School. It can be translated as "the large conch shell."
Lelean Memorial School is one of the largest co-ed schools in Fiji. It was established in 1943 and is run by the Methodist Church of Fiji and Rotuma. It is co-located at the Davuilevu Methodist Compound with the Davuilevu Theological College and the Young People's Department, which runs training for Methodist catechists.
William Harris Rule was a British Methodist missionary and writer. Rule and his wife started schools building to 400 pupils in Gibraltar. He tried to establish missions in Spain.
Benjamin Henry Arthur Margoschis was a Protestant Christian missionary in India. He served the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) as an overseas missionary in India. The inhabitants of Nazareth, a small town in Tamil Nadu, called him the "Father of Nazareth" and Margoschis Aiyar. Aiyar means clergyman in the native language. Reverend Margoschis was responsible for the development of the small town of Nazareth, which is situated at the southern part of Tamil Nadu, India.
Mary Ann Lyth was a British missionary, translator, and teacher. She traveled to several countries with her husband, Rev. R. B. Lyth, M.D., the first Medical Missionary sent out by the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society, London. She provided basic European-style education at her various stations, and helped her husband as a nurse. She also assisted in the translation of the Bible, and other literary work.
Institute of Pacific Studies of the University of the South Pacific, Geneva/Suva.
vol.1, eds R.J. May and Hank Nelson, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University, Canberra.