For 15 years these British missionaries have been at the heart of New Foundations, an evangelical medical mission. They had been serving the Lord giving spiritual and medical help to local communities in the Niger Delta, one of the world’s most unstable and impoverished areas. In October 2017 the lawlessness of that area touched…
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In a series of four articles starting this month, experienced missionary Will Niven asks some searching and important questions about the current evangelical approach to missions. Countless millions are passing into eternity without Christ. Over four billion people on this planet do not know Christ. They are standing under the wrath of God and…
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Let’s talk about missionary support — or, rather, let’s not. I think we have a problem with vocabulary and the language of ‘support’ is not adequate to describe the relationship between a church and the people who it sets aside for ministry. Friends and families support missionaries; they provide finance, they pray, and they…
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William Carey loved maps! He sewed together a large globe made from coloured, left over scraps of shoe leather. He would use it when teaching children. It is said that the young people would sometimes be surprised at his geography lessons. When teaching about some far-off country he would burst out with an agonised,…
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William Chalmers Burns (1815–1868) (3) In February 1849, William Chalmers Burns set his face towards the ‘regions beyond’ in mainland China and left for Canton. Foreigners were assumed to be rich, so he could become a prey to robbers. He carried a light purse and was even reluctant to have a Bible with a…
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Part 1 is here. From December 1839, Burns spent several months at Perth. He travelled by coach and ‘gave tracts to all on it and in it (a practice which I intend to follow, wherever I go)’. The congregations were solemn, and many were in tears. He witnessed everywhere he went — on…
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William Burns was born on 1 April 1815 at Dun in Scotland, the third son of Rev. W. H. Burns and Elizabeth Chalmers. In 1821 the family moved to Kilsyth, a town of colliers and weavers about 12 miles east of Glasgow.
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