The World Missionary Conference - Edinburgh 1910 and 2010

In 1910 over 1,200 Christians mainly from the English-speaking world gathered in Edinburgh as representatives of a wide variety of Protestant mission agencies. It was the third of a series of conferences organised by an International Committee comprising representatives from America, Britain and the European Continent.

Why should we celebrate this event? There are many reasons, here are just a few of them: Christian missionaries had often been caricatured by twentieth century revisionist historians for their cultural insensitivity and complicity in Western imperialism and although there may have been some evidence to support such a thesis, the vast majority of these men and women were genuinely committed followers of Jesus Christ whose powerful witness took an Evangelical faith that had been largely confined to parts of Europe and North America two hundred years ago to the ends of the earth. Christianity by the start of the twentieth century had become a truly global religion. In fact more followers of the faith were now found in the two-thirds world than in its traditional heartlands. The people that gathered in Edinburgh in 1910 to review the progress of this missionary activity in the non-Christian world had every reason to be confident in the further progress of the gospel. It was the culmination of a long tradition of pan-Evangelical ecumenism that had begun during the eighteenth century religious revivals. It was also a superbly organised attempt to present and analyse scientifically the observable facts of Christian missionary expansion and policy. There was extraordinary spectacle of an Archbishop of Canterbury, for the first time, addressing a non-denominational gathering in an assembly hall of a non-established church. It enabled countless Christian missionaries, in attendance at Edinburgh 1910, working in geographically isolated and denominationally limited work to place it in a broader and exciting context. Its success led to the foundation of the International Missionary Council and national inter-denominational missionary councils around the world. It inspired the formation of National Councils of Churches in countries where missionary councils had taken root and enabled Christians from a wide range of backgrounds and countries to grasp the urgency of taking forward, together, the task of fulfilling the Great Commission.   

What about Edinburgh 2010? What will take place from Wednesday 2 to Sunday 6 June this year? There will be opportunities to celebrate the extraordinary growth of God's Church in the last hundred years and prayerfully to commit to God our witness for the next century. The biblical text will be proclaimed and studied, with a particular focus on evangelism at the heart of our mission to the world. Key discussions will take place between mission leaders from the older mission agencies in the global North with those of the new outreach bodies from the South and East, where the Church is growing in a most encouraging way. Guidelines will be developed to help Church leaders evaluate effective strategies for mission from around the world. Networks will be mobilised and alliances formed to enable greater strategic collaboration in world mission, and it is hoped that a new vision for reaching people for Christ will be developed in the life of the churches worldwide. Please pray for this conference, most of all, that its impact may advance the spread of the Gospel around the world.

The best study of 1910 is Brian Stanley's The World Missionary Conference, Edinburgh 1910. A helpful guide to the 2010 gathering is Kenneth R Ross, Edinburgh 2010 Springboard for Mission.

Brian Talbot

Dr. Brian Talbot is the minister of Broughty Ferry Baptist Church, Dundee, and is representing the Baptist Union of Scotland on SCOT Edinburgh 2010.  He has served in that body in a variety of capacities most recently on the Inter-Church Relations Task Group. From 1992 to 2007 he was the minister of Carbrain Baptist Church, Cumbernauld, prior to taking up his present post. He was appointed to the Baptist History and Identity Commission of the Baptist World Alliance in 2005. Brian has produced a number of books and articles on various historical subjects including Search for a Common Identity: The Origins of the Baptist Union of Scotland 1800-1870 (2003) and 'Baptists and Other Churches in the Twentieth Century', a paper delivered in July 2009 at the International Conference On Baptist Studies, V, Melbourne, Australia. He also contributed a brief overview 'Why celebrate Edinburgh 1910'.