Our History

It began in a pub...

Yes, it's true. CMS was brought into being in 1799 by a small group of thinking evangelicals, who had met as the 'Eclectic Society' for three years at the 'Castle and Falcon' pub in London.
The group included John Newton, who wrote Amazing Grace, and William Wilberforce, who had slave trading abolished in England. The group first started talking about mission in 1786. The question they were discussing was:
"What is the best method of planting and promulgating the gospel in Botany Bay?".
More discussion of mission topics arose over the next few years, and in 1799, the society that would later be known as the Church Missionary Society was born.

First Steps

CMS and the Eclectic Society were responsible for sending the first chaplains to Australia. One notable appointment was Samuel Marsden, who is well-known in both Australia and New Zealand.
Marsden's efforts saw a CMS Auxiliary set up in Sydney in 1825, primarily to engage in work amongst Aboriginal people. In 1830 the first missionaries arrived from England to establish a mission venture in Wellington Valley. Three Aboriginal people were baptised before CMS discontinued the work in 1842.
CMS Associations were set up around Australia, and the first Australian missionary, Helen Philips, sailed for Ceylon in 1892.
In 1916 the states came together and what would later become the Church Missionary Society of Australia was formed. CMS had sent missionaries to many countries by this time, including China, India, Palestine and Iran, but by 1927 they had particular interest in North Australia and Tanganyika.

Into the future...

The world has changed and missionary work has changed with it. Rather than focusing on geography-based opportunities as in the past, the CMS Vision now concentrates on opportunity-based work.
But the history of CMS is not just about committees and organisations - it's about people:
People with vision, who first grasped the opportunities to make the gospel known around the world; people with commitment, who prayed for God's blessings on CMS; people with courage, who went out and who continue to go out to take the gospel to those who haven't heard.