March in global missions history: It happened today!

On this date in world missions outreach

"Since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses . . ." -- Hebrews 12:1

Ends-of-the-earth outreach: Significant events, locations, people and movements in world evangelism

• March 1, 1854 -- Hudson Taylor, the eventual founder of the China Inland Mission (now OMF), landed in Shanghai, China.
• March 2, 1971 -- E.W. "Hatch" Hatcher, Missionary Aviation Fellowship's technical training, evaluation, and orientation director, was killed in an airplane accident near Corona, California. Also killed in the accident was John Wilson, a potential MAF recruit. Wilson was being given a check-out flight by Hatcher.
• March 3, 1870 -- Lettie B. Cowman, American missionary and author, was born in Iowa. In 1901 Lettie and her husband went to Japan as missionaries where they founded the Oriental Missionary Society. After her husband's death (1924), Lettie became president of OMS and led the work until her retirement in 1949. Her devotional guide, Streams in the Desert, first published in 1925, has been translated into at least fifteen different languages.
• March 4, 1970 -- The Theological Convention of Confessing Fellowships published a declaration to counter relativistic positions being promoted within the World Council of Churches. Peter Beyerhaus was a primary author of that document which was titled "Frankfurt Declaration on the Fundamental Crisis of Missions."
• March 5, 1797 -- After a 207-day voyage from London, the three-masted Duff arrived in Tahiti's Matavai Bay. The ship, commanded by Captain John Wilson, carried 37 lay and clerical missionaries of the London Missionary Society (L.M.S.) along with their families. Their plan was to settle on the South Pacific islands of Tahiti, Tonga and the Marquesas.
• March 6, 1901 -- Amy Carmichael took in her first temple runaway, a young girl dedicated to the Hindu gods and forced into prostitution to earn money for the priests.
• March 7, 1804 -- The British and Foreign Bible Society was formed.
• March 8, 1698 -- British missionary Thomas Bray and four laymen founded the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (S.P.C.K.) "to advance the honor of God and the good of mankind by promoting Christian knowledge both at home and in the other parts of the world by the best methods that should offer."
• March 9, 1931 -- The World Radio Missionary Fellowship (TWR) was incorporated in Lima, Ohio, by Clarence W. Jones and Reuben Larson. Today, this interdenominational mission organization, now headquartered in Florida, broadcasts the Gospel in fifteen languages to South America and throughout Europe.
• March 10, 1557 -- French Hugenots preached the first Protestant sermon (based on Psalm 27:3) to be heard in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
• March 11, 1812 -- Fire engulfed missionary William Carey's print shop in Serampore, India. The fire destroyed Carey's massive polyglot dictionary, two grammar books, sets of type for 14 eastern languages, and whole versions of the Bible. Undaunted, Carey said, "The loss is heavy, but as traveling a road the second time is usually done with greater ease and certainty than the first time, so I trust the work will lose nothing of real value . . . We are cast down but not in despair." News of the fire catapulted Carey to fame, bringing in funds and volunteer labor.
  
  "I will remember William Carey and the impact he had. One person might seem unimportant, but the resulting ripples can be gigantic." -- Melony P., Nazarene Bible College student
   
• March 12, 1887 -- James Read Eckard, missionary to Ceylon, dies.
• March 13, 1815 -- Presbyterian medical missionary James Hepburn was born in Milton, Pennsylvania. Hepburn compiled the first Japanese-English dictionary and supervised the first complete translation of the Bible into Japanese. It was eventually was published in 1888.
• March 14, 1949 -- Robert P. Evans founded the European Bible Institute in Chicago, Illinois. In 1952, its name was changed to Greater Europe Mission. Today, this interdenominational evangelical organization engages primarily in evangelism, theological education and literature distribution. GEM has helped establish new churches in a dozen European nations.
• March 15, 1645 -- Eusebio Francisco Kino, an Italian Jesuit missionary and explorer was born. Kino would become noted for his success in converting the Pima Indians while respecting their customs, and for the historical value of his letters, journals, and maps. From 1687 to the end of his life Kino worked in Pimeria Alta (now southern Arizona and northern Sonora in Mexico).
• March 16, 1700 -- French missionaries reported that lightning had struck a pagan temple in the Taensa village on Lake Saint Joseph near modern Newellton, Louisiana. When the building caught fire, the tribal shaman told the women of the tribe to throw their small children into the fire to appease the angry god who had started the fire. French priest Francois Joliet de Montigny attempted to stop the women.
• March 17, 461 -- Patrick, missionary to Ireland and that country's patron saint, died. Irish raiders captured Patrick, a Romanized Briton, and enslaved him as a youth. Patrick eventually escaped to Gaul (modern France) but returned to Ireland after a vision called him back to preach. Patrick had great success as a missionary, and, at his death, only the far south of Ireland remained predominantly pagan.
  
  "I find it really cool that Patrick used the three-leaf clover to help people in Ireland understand God being three in one." -- Eric H., Nazarene Bible College student
   
• March 18, 1885 -- The "Cambridge Seven" -- young British aristocrats who decided to become missionaries to China, and thus became celebrities back home -- arrived in Shanghai.
• March 19, 1955 -- Billy Graham began All-Scotland Crusade.
• March 20, 1747 -- David Brainerd, colonial American missionary, ended his labors among the Indians of New Jersey and Delaware because of his deteriorating health. He had started two and a half years earlier but was continually plagued with illness. Brainerd died of tuberculosis seven months later. His diary, published by Jonathan Edwards, became a major force in promoting missions work, inspiring missionaries like William Carey, Henry Martyn, and Thomas Coke.
• March 21, 1863 -- Davis Griffiths, missionary to Madagascar who translated the Bible into the Malagasy language, died.
• March 22, 1901 -- "Mark Twain" brought down upon his head the wrath of the Peking Missionary Association and the American Board of Foreign Missions. Both organizations demanded that the author-humorist retract statements he made in the February issue of The North American Review attacking missionary W. S. Ament of the American Board of Foreign Missions concerning monies he collected from rural Chinese in payment for properties destroyed and people killed during the Boxer rebellion.
• March 23, 332 -- Gregory the Illuminator, who converted a nation before Constantine even embraced Christianity, died. Under Gregory's ministry, King Tiridates of Armenia was converted. When much of the kingdom followed suit, Christianity was established as the national religion with Gregory as bishop.
• March 24, 1927 -- Chinese Communists seize Nanking. Missionary John E. Williams was killed. A little more than twenty years later the communists took control of the whole country and banned Christianity.
• March 25, 2004 -- Funeral in Cary, North Carolina for Baptist missionaries Larry and Jean Elliott. The Elliotts, along with two other missionaries, were killed in a drive-by shooting in Iraq.
• March 26, 809 -- Liudger, missionary to the Friesians and Saxons, died at about age 66. Born near Utrecht (Modern Holland), Liudger felt called to missionary work as a result of the death of Boniface whose work he wished to continue. Ordained a priest in 777, Liudger began a missionary work near the mouth of the Ems river (in modern day Germany) in 787. Knowing the language of the peoples there, he was very effective. In 793 Charlemagne offered him the bishopric of Trier, but Liudger declined, preferring to continue his missionary work among the Saxons.
• March 27, 710 -- Rupert of Salzburg (also known as Hrodbert, Robert, Rupprecht) died in Salzburg. Either a Frankish nobleman or an Irishman, he began his missionary work in southern Bavaria and Austria. Instead of knocking down pagan temples, as many missionaries did, Rupert preferred to consecrate them as Christian churches.
• March 28, 1867 -- A missionary sailing ship called Morning Star began its work in the Pacific under the command of Rev. Hiram Bingham. It replaced a older ship which carried the same name. To finance the new ship, children in two thousand Sunday schools over a period of two years gave more than $28,000. Indeed, when the ship first arrived in Hawai, two thousand Hawaiian Sunday school children flocked to the wharf to see "their ship" since three or four thousand of the 150,000 Morning Star "stockholders" were Hawaiians.
• March 29, 1828 -- Adoniram Judson reported in his diary that missionaries George and Sarah Boardman were moving to Tavoy (now called Tavai) in southeastern Burma. George Boardman had been educated at Andover Theological Seminary and sent to India by the Baptist Board for Foreign Missions in 1825. Arriving in Tavoy, he began a ministry to the Karen people that would be cut short by his death in 1831.
• March 30, 1820 -- The first Protestant missionaries arrived at the Sandwich Islands, now known as Hawaii, where they are welcomed by King Kamehameha II.
• March 31, 1998 -- In return for an agreement by several Protestant groups not to engage in active "proselytizing," Israeli parliament member Nissim Zvilli (Labor) announced he would withdraw his sponsorship of an anti-missionary bill already introduced in the Knesset.

    -- compiled by Howard Culbertson

Missions history resources:    Evangelizing the Barbarians    Black involvement in world missions     World evangelism history crossword puzzle    Evam study guides    Historic missions slogans    Lecture    Monastic missionary strategy    Nazarene missions    Nazarene Missions International history     PowerPoint: Epochs of world mission history     World missions from 1600 to the present     Course syllabus     Year-by- year timeline of world missions events     Evangelizing the Vikings     William Borden's story

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