Mission Work
Open Brethren are noted for their commitment to missionary work. In the earliest days of the Plymouth Brethren movement, Anthony Norris Groves became one of the earliest "faith missionaries", travelling to Baghdad in 1829 to preach the gospel and the Bible without the aid of an established missionary society. Many later Plymouth Brethren missionaries took the same stance, and included notable missionary pioneers such as:
- George Müller—founder of orphanages in Bristol, England
- Dan Crawford—Scottish missionary to central Africa
- Charles Marsh—missionary to Lafayette, Algeria (1925–69)
- Jim Elliot, Ed McCully, Pete Fleming—missionaries to Ecuador killed by members of the Huaorani tribe
While the majority of Open Brethren missionaries do not belong to a missionary society, there are a number of supporting organisations that give help and advice for missionaries: in the UK, Echoes of Service magazine, Medical Missionary News and the Lord's Work Trust are notable organisations. Today, missionaries are found all over the world, with high concentrations in Zambia and Southern Africa, Brazil, India, Western Europe and South East Asia.
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Famous quotes containing the words mission and/or work:
“Man is eminently a storyteller. His search for a purpose, a cause, an ideal, a mission and the like is largely a search for a plot and a pattern in the development of his life story—a story that is basically without meaning or pattern.”
—Eric Hoffer (1902–1983)
“We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a “life-work” of teaching, of social work—we know that we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. And all the time in the background of our consciousness rings the warning that perhaps the right man will never come. A great love is given to very few. Perhaps this make-shift time filler of a job is our life work after all.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)