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:
“... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.”
—Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)
“We’d like to fight but we fear defeat,
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We’d like to be sick but we’d get the sack,
We’d like to behave, we’d like to believe,
We’d like to love, but we’ve lost the knack.”
—Cecil Day Lewis (1904–1972)