Faith Missions

Faith Missions

By Ralph R. Covell

With the beginning of the modern missionary movement in the last years of the eighteenth century, several types of mission agencies emerged. The earliest agencies, such as the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and the London Missionary Society were interdenominational. In the early years of the nineteenth-century denominations organized their own boards of missions; and even as late as 1925, 75 percent of American missionaries were affiliated with denominational boards.

Faith mission societies, often also referred to as independent, interdenominational, or non-denominational, developed in the latter half of the nineteenth century. At the present time they have many more missionaries under appointment than do the denominational agencies. These types of mission agencies appeared first in Great Britain, the best known being the China Inland Mission in 1865. Some of the early faith missions in the United States were the Christian and Missionary Alliance (1887), the Evangelical Alliance Mission (1890), the Sudan Interior Mission (1893), and the Africa Inland Mission (1895).

Several interrelated factors led to the development of faith mission societies. First was the conviction that the denominational agencies were not reaching the un evangelized areas of the world they were not penetrating the interiors or frontiers of many countries. The terms "interior" and "inland" in the names of these new agencies testified to this fact. Among the unreached in many countries were women. This led to the first American faith mission, the Woman's Union Missionary Society (1860).

A second major issue was theological. Christian leaders were alarmed at the growth of what they perceived to be liberalism in many denominations and wished to found agencies that were fully committed to the authority of Scripture and had an evangelistic fervor to reach the lost. These new agencies were connected with the fundamentalist movement, were theologically conservative, and usually separated themselves from the mainline denominations. They tended to be opposed to the conciliar Ecumenical Movement, believing that many of its leaders were liberal and that it was more committed to social issues than to evangelism.

A third factor for the establishing of the independent mission agencies was financial. Denominational agencies often had insufficient funds to send out missionaries. The new boards, operating on the faith principle, believed that God would provide even when it appeared that no money was available. This made it possible for them to continue to send out new missionaries. At the beginning, societies like the China Inland Mission instructed their missionaries not to ask for money nor to tell anyone but God about their specific financial need. At present, most of the faith agencies ask for money or in some way make their financial needs known.

As concerned Christian leaders assessed the spiritual needs of the world, they formed a number of specialized mission agencies that can also be considered faith or independent societies. Among these were Mission Aviation Fellowship, Far Eastern Broadcasting Company, Gospel Recordings, and Wycliffe Bible Translators.

The formation of these new agencies came in a period at the end of the nineteenth century when mission interest was stirred to new heights by many mission conferences both in England and in America. Among these were international conventions held in Cleveland, Detroit (1894), and Liverpool (1896) by the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions. Another series of important annual conferences was promoted, beginning in 1893, by the Interdenominational Conference of Foreign Missionary Boards and Societies in the United States and Canada. The most international and interdenominational of all these conferences was the Ecumenical Missionary Conference held in New York in 1900.

From the beginning, the faith mission societies derived their finances and personnel from independent Bible and community churches. Most of their missionaries were trained in Bible schools founded in the last two decades of the nineteenth century, such as Nyack (1882), Moody (1886), Ontario (1894), and Barrington (1900). Gradually, many of these schools added liberal arts courses to their curriculum and became Bible colleges granting the B.A. degree. Most candidates for faith missions continue to come from these schools.

Many faith mission agencies that were based originally only in the United States or England have now established centers in other countries, even in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Thus they have become international societies, sending missionaries from six continents to six continents.

The theologically more inclusive nature of the World Missionary Conference at Edinburgh in 1910, the growth of liberalism in mainline denominations, and the antipathy of denominational boards to the faith mission agencies contributed to the founding in 1917 of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association of North America. Boards formerly a part of the Foreign Mission Conference of North America, such as the Africa Inland Mission, Central American Mission, China Inland Mission, Sudan Interior Mission, South Africa General Mission, Inland South America Missionary Union, and the Woman's Union Missionary Society joined forces to form this new association of interdenominational or faith missions societies. Today a total of seventy-two agencies belong to the IFMA.

The IFMA does not include denominational, Pentecostal, or holiness groups, even though it is willing to work with them in cooperative endeavors. So in 1945 a group of mission executives related to the National Association of Evangelicals formed the Evangelical Foreign Missions Association (EFMA), now renamed Evangelical Fellowship of Mission Agencies. It includes many agencies that are not members of the IFMA.

Bibliography. E. L. Frizen Jr., 75 Years of IFMA 1917-1992; J. H. Kane, A Concise History of the Christian World Mission.

Source: Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions, Sep 01, 2000.