This week in Christian history: Pope Francis leads mass in NYC; London Missionary Society forms
London Missionary Society holds foundation meeting – Sept. 23, 1795
This week marks the anniversary of when the London Missionary Society began a two-day meeting in which they laid the foundations of their evangelism organization.
The Society was founded amid a time of revival in the United Kingdom, with an earlier meeting held by supporters the previous November at Baker's Coffee House in London.
The September meeting was when the formal launching of the Society, which held the stated goal “to spread the knowledge of Christ among heathen and other unenlightened nations.”
Approximately 200 ministers were present for the gathering, according to the Council for World Mission, which was formed in the 20th century when LMS merged with two other mission societies.
"From its beginning, the Missionary Society was independent of denominations. It was inter-denominational and multinational in its character," the CWM noted. “This impulse, included in the founding principle, was not to take any particular form of Church.”
“It was to take the message of the Gospel and allow the local church as it was formed to determine its form of church governance.”
