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OMF International (formerly Overseas Missionary Fellowship and before 1964 the China Inland Mission) is an international and interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society with an international centre in Singapore. It was founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.
The non-sectarian China Inland Mission was founded on principles of faith and prayer. From the beginning it recruited missionaries from the working class as well as single women, which was a new practice for a large agency. Even today, no appeals for funds are made, instead a reliance upon God is practiced to move people through prayer alone. The goal of the mission that began dedicated to China has grown to include bringing the Gospel to the millions of inhabitants of East Asia who have never heard or had access to the message of Jesus Christ. Reluctantly, along with the departure of all foreign Christian workers in the early 1950s, the China Inland Mission redirected all of its missionaries to other parts of east Asia, to continue the work and maintain a ministry to China and the Chinese. The name was officially changed to Overseas Missionary Fellowship in 1964 and to OMF International in the 1990s. A quote from the OMF website summarizes the current organization:
OMF's Mission:
2. No solicitation of finance, or indebtedness; looking to God alone; pooling support in life of corporate faith 3. Identification with Chinese by wearing Chinese dress and queue (pigtail), worshipping in Chinese houses 4. Indigenization through training Chinese co-workers in self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating principles 5. Recruitment of missionaries not based on education or ecclesiastical ordination, but spiritual qualification; deployment of single women in the interior and Christian professionals 6. Interdenominational-International Membership 7. Headquarters on the field, director rule; leaders and workers serving shoulder to shoulder
Lammermuir. There were 16 missionaries as well as Hudson, his wife, Maria and their 4 children that became known as the Lammermuir Party. This journey took 4 months.
In 1872, the China Inland Mission's London council was formed. In 1875, it began to evangelise China systematically. Taylor requested 18 missionaries from God for the nine provinces which were still unreached. In 1881, he requested a further 70 missionaries, and, in 1886, 100 missionaries. In 1887 "The Hundred missionaries" were sent to China. Taylor travelled across several continents to recruit for the China Inland Mission. By the end of the nineteenth century, the CIM was well known around the world. Richard Lovett wrote about the practices of the missionaries in 1899:
2. Their operations are carried on with great efficiency and economy. 3. They are able and willing to bring themselves into close contact with the people, by living in their houses, using their dress, and living for the most part on their food; in short, "becoming all things unto all men, that they may save some." 4. They are widely scattered, but one or two families in a city. 5. They are having good success; many are doing a great amount of preaching and praying, and souls are "added to the Church," and are, I trust, truly converted. 6. They are not generally educated men, but men from humble labouring classes, converted and brought out by the revivals in England, Ireland and Scotland, and showing zeal and aptness to preach and labour for the salvation of souls. Hence they will not be very likely to fritter away foolishly their time in reading dusty old Chinese tomes, and in making books and tracts that nobody will read. 7. They are willing to "rough it."
In 1900, attacks took place across China in connection with the Boxer Rebellion which targeted Christians and foreigners. The China Inland Mission lost more members than any other agency: 58 adults and 21 children were killed. However, in 1901, when the allied nations were demanding compensation from the Chinese government, Hudson Taylor refused to accept payment for loss of property or life in order to demonstrate the meekness of Christ to the Chinese. In the same year, Dixon Edward Hoste was appointed to the directorship of the mission.
The early 1900s saw great expansion of missionary activity in China following the Boxer Rebellion and during the Revolution of 1912 and the establishment of the Chinese Republic. William Whiting Borden, wealthy heir of the Borden, Inc. family, who graduated from Yale in 1909, left behind a comfortable life in America to respond to the call for workers with the Muslims of northwest China. He died in Egypt while still in training.
A musician and an engineer named James O. Fraser was the first to bring the Gospel message to the Lisu tribes of Yunnan in southwest China. This resulted in phenomenal church growth among the various tribes in the area that endured to the 21st century.
The Warlord period brought widespread lawlessness to China and missionary work was often dangerous or deadly. John and Betty Stam were a young couple who were murdered in 1934 by Communist soldiers. Their biography "The Triumph of John and Betty Stam" inspired a generation of missionaries to follow in the same steps of service despite the trials of war and persecution that raged in China in the 1930s and 1940s.
The Japanese invasion further complicated efforts as the Japanese distrusted anyone with British or American Nationalities. When the Japanese invaded China in World War II, the China Inland Mission moved its headquarters up the Yangzi River to Chongqing. Many missionaries were put into concentration camps until the end of the war. One such camp was at Weifang. The entire Chefoo School run by the mission at Yantai was imprisoned at a concentration camp. As the children and teachers were marched off they sang:
A very present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear…. The Lord of Hosts is with us, The God of Jacob is our refuge. (Psalm 46:1,7)
The students were separated from their parents for more than 5 years.
In 1900 there were an estimated 100,000 Christians in China. It multiplied to seven times that number by 1950 (700,000). The Chinese church began to be an indigenous movement helped by strong leaders such as John Sung, Wang Ming-Dao, Watchman Nee and Andrew Gih.
Phyllis Thompson wrote that between 1949 and 1952, after the victory of the Communist armies, there was a "reluctant exodus" of all of the members of the China Inland Mission. The leaders met at Bournemouth, England to discuss the situation and the decision was made to re-deploy all of the missionaries into the rest of East Asia. Headquarters were moved to Singapore and work commenced in Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos and Indonesia. In addition to reducing some languages to written form, the Bible was translated, and basic theological education was given to neglected tribal groups. The publication and distribution of Christian literature were prioritized among both the rural tribes people and the urban working classes and students. The goal remained for every community to have a church in East Asia and thereby the Gospel would be preached "to every creature". The proclamation of the Christian message also included medical work. Three hospitals were opened in rural Thailand as well as a leprosy control programme. Many of the patients were refugees. In the Philippines, community development programs were launched. Alcoholic rehabilitation began in Japan, and rehabilitation work among prostitutes was begun in Taipei and Bangkok.
In 1980, Hudson Taylor's great grandson, James Hudson Taylor III, became General Director of the mission work. According to Taylor in 1989,
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Dr. Patrick Fung, a Chinese Christian appointed in 2006, is the first Asian to lead the mission. The work continues to the present day.
Impressive headquarters were built on Newington Green, in North London, which is in Islington but a few metres from Hackney. By the late nineteenth century, when the CIM building was commissioned, what was once a rural village had long been subsumed into the metropolis. Newington Green had grown up around a core of English Dissenters and their famous academies. The CIM headquarters sit between two other listed buildings on the green, Newington Green Unitarian Church (1708), and the oldest brick terrace in London, 52-55 the Green, where the most famous minister, Richard Price, lived.
The papers of the China Inland Mission are held by SOAS Archives and the Billy Graham Center for Evangelism at Wheaton College [2].
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