October in global missions history: It happened today!
TL;DR:
Explore one significant event from Christian missions history for each day of October. These milestones include missionary arrivals, martyrs, institutions, church movements, Bible distribution, and pioneers such as William Carey, Lottie Moon, Gladys Aylward, John Paton, and George Müller.
Discover what happened on each October date in Christian missions history, from early Christian witnesses and missionary pioneers to institutions and movements that shaped world evangelism.
October dates in Christian missions history
"Since we have such a huge crowd of men of faith watching us from the grandstands . . ."
— Hebrews 12:1 (The Living Bible)
Influential events, locations, people, and movements in world evangelism
October 1, 1883 — Former Presbyterian minister A. B. Simpson formally opened the Missionary Training Institute in New York City. The school eventually became Nyack College and later Alliance University.
October 2, 1792 — A dozen English ministers formed the Baptist Missionary Society “for the propagation of the Gospel among the Heathen,” following the recommendations in William Carey's Enquiry.
October 3, 1954 — Herbert and Alice Ratcliff arrived in British Guiana (now Guyana) as missionaries. They served in Guyana and various Caribbean islands for more than 30 years.
October 4, 1930 — British missionaries Eleanor June Harrison and Edith Nettleton were
beheaded in China. They had been abducted in July at Chungan in Fujian province. Their
ransom was originally set at $500,000. When the ransom was not forthcoming, the bandits cut off
one of Miss Nettleton's fingers and sent it with the same ransom demand to the provincial
authorities. The Church Missionary Society authorized a representative to pay $10,000 in gold
for the women's release. The bandits received the money, but believing that they had been
betrayed when provincial troops attacked them, the outlaws killed the two missionaries.
October 5, 1745 — David Brainerd preached to Native Americans at Crossweeksung, New Jersey, where he was encouraged by their growing response to the gospel. Jonathan Edwards' later biography of Brainerd influenced William Carey and other missionary pioneers.
October 6, 1861 — Taiping rebels in Yantai, Shandong Province, China, murdered missionary J. Landrum Holmes.
October 7, 1873 — Southern Baptist missionary Lottie Moon reached China. Later, she was credited with saying, “If I had a thousand lives, I would give them all for the women of China.”
October 8, 1853 — Miles Justin Knowlton was ordained as a Baptist minister. Soon afterward
he sailed as a missionary for Ningpo, China. In 1871, while on a visit to the United States,
Knowlton wrote a prize-winning essay titled "China as a Mission Field." He also delivered a
lecture series at several theological seminaries that was published under the title The
Foreign Missionary, His Field, and His Work.
October 9, traditionally observed as the feast day of Saint Denis — According to Christian tradition, Denis, an early missionary and bishop in Roman Gaul, was beheaded with two companions near what is now Montmartre in Paris.
October 10, 644 — Paulinus, missionary and first archbishop of York, died. In 627,
Paulinus' preaching led to the conversion of King Edwin of Northumbria (roughly the northern quarter of modern England).
October 11, 2002 — The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod reported that its missionaries
were safe amid fighting in Côte d’Ivoire during a military uprising that had begun there on September 19.
October 12, 2000 — In India, K. S. Sudarshan told members of his Hindu nationalist group,
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), that the Indian government should expel all foreign
churches and set up a state church similar to the government-controlled church in China.
October 13, 1799 — A party of new missionaries arrived in India to join William Carey. Among the new arrivals
were Joshua and Hannah
Marshman, with their three children, and William Ward.
October 14, 1829 — Alexander and Ann Duff sailed from London for India aboard the
Lady Holland. They were the first missionaries of the Church of Scotland to India.
The ship was wrecked near Cape Town, South Africa. The Duffs lost everything except the
clothes on their backs and their Bible and psalm book. In May 1830—about seven months and another
shipwreck later—they arrived in Calcutta. Duff founded an
English-speaking college. By 1844, he had a thousand students.
October 15, 1932 — A small party of supporters gathered in Liverpool,
England, to send Gladys Aylward, a 28-year-old parlormaid, off on a dangerous missionary
trip to China. Though she'd been turned down by the missions agency she applied to, she
became one of the best-known women missionaries of modern history. Her
dramatic rescue of about 100 children is portrayed in the movie The Inn of the Sixth Happiness. [
More on Aylward ]
October 16, 1877 — William Taylor, a Methodist missionary to South Africa and India, sailed for South America to see if the ideas on self-support he had been discussing would also work there. He taught that when missionaries insisted on establishing structures that were expensive to maintain, they made it impossible for a church to achieve independence and vitality. Eventually, this prominent missions thinker would have a university—Taylor University in Upland, Indiana—named after him.
October 17, 1895 — Peter Cameron Scott's Africa Inland Mission team arrived in
Mombasa, Kenya. Scott pressed inland to share the gospel and plant missions. Peter contracted
blackwater fever. He died on December 8, 1896. After his death, his teammates also died one by
one. Others came to replace them, some carrying their supplies in coffins. Despite these early losses, new missionaries continued the work, and Africa Inland Mission developed an enduring ministry in East Africa.
October 18, 1855 — Francis McDougall was officially named leader of Anglican work in
Labuan and Sarawak. He had initially turned down an opportunity to go to Borneo as a
missionary. Later, he repented of that decision and, in December 1847, sailed for the mission
field. Francis was a pioneer in medical missions. His supervisors thought he was stepping out
of line when he began to tend to the sick. He had little success among the Muslim Malays, who
were overlords to much of Borneo. He did better among the Chinese traders who had settled
in Borneo but best among Indigenous Dayak communities. Among McDougall's achievements was a Book of Common Prayer and Catechism in Malay.
October 19, 1893 — John Livingston Nevius, Presbyterian missionary to China, passed away. He is well known for promoting the concept that mission work should aim from the very beginning to establish self-propagating, self-supporting, self-governing Indigenous churches.
Nevius' writings include The Planting and Development of Missionary Churches. [ More on the
three-self principles ]
October 20, 1833 — Dr. Justin Perkins arrived in Urmia, northwestern Iran, as the first American missionary in that area.
October 21, 1944 — Alois Kayser (born in 1877 in Alsace) died in Chuuk, where the Japanese had deported him. Kayser was a German Roman Catholic missionary who spent almost 40 years on Nauru and wrote a Nauruan grammar and possibly a Nauruan dictionary. The
government of Nauru later named a technical school after Kayser.
October 22, 1941 — Presbyterian missionary Bruce Hunt was arrested and imprisoned in
Manchuria by Japanese occupying forces. The 38-year-old father of five was released on
December 5, after 45 days of imprisonment. While reluctantly preparing to return to the States,
he was arrested again two days later in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack. He was then sent to
a concentration camp, where he grew weak and sick from semi-starvation. He was finally freed
as part of a prisoner exchange.
October 23, 2003 — Yakup Cindilli, a Turkish convert to Christianity, was severely beaten for
distributing New Testaments in his hometown of Orhangazi in northwestern Turkey. Yakup
Cindilli's interest in Christianity had begun when he made a telephone call to "Alo Dua," a prayer
hotline ministry organized by Turkish Christians after a devastating 1999 earthquake in their country.
October 24, 1869 — Scottish Presbyterian missionary John Paton held the first Communion
service on the small island of Aniwa (part of what is now Vanuatu). Paton eventually saw all the
islanders on Aniwa become at least nominally Christian.
October 25, 1933 — John and Elisabeth Stam were married in Jinan, China. A year later, they
would be taken hostage by Communist forces. The Red Army took the Stams and many Chinese prisoners to nearby Miaosha. John wrote a letter to the China Inland Mission (CIM)
headquarters, saying they would be released in exchange for $20,000. He closed the letter, "God
give you wisdom in what you do, and give us grace and fortitude. He is able." The next day, John
and Elisabeth were executed by decapitation. The Stams' death was later cited by many
Americans as an event that caused them to become missionaries.
October 26, 1966 — The first World Congress on Evangelism opened in West Berlin,
attracting approximately 600 delegates from about 100 countries.
October 27, 1874 — Presbyterian missionary Mary Parker wrote in her diary that on this day a
Japanese believer named Takahashi was sending a letter to a Japanese government ministry
asking for the right to bury Christian Japanese "according to our way."
October 28, 1646 — At Nonantum, Massachusetts, missionary John Eliot preached the first
worship service for Native Americans in their native language.
October 29, 1885 — English missionary James Hannington was murdered in Uganda.
October 30, 1838 — In a letter, Marcus Whitman, a missionary to Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, announced the safe arrival of several missionary reinforcements and discussed how best to use them. In addition to providing updates on the Waiilatpu mission,
Whitman described a plan to obtain a printing press from Hawaii and mentioned his desire to build a grist mill.
October 31, 1825 — George Müller, who founded orphanages in Great Britain that would
house more than 10,000 orphans, became a Christian at a prayer meeting in a private home. Müller’s
living-by-faith approach to finances became a key inspiration for Hudson
Taylor (China Inland Mission) and other "faith" mission leaders.
