Berlin Missionary Society
The Berlin Missionary Society (BMS) or Society for the Advancement of evangelistic Missions amongst the Heathen (German: Berliner Missionsgesellschaft or Gesellschaft zur Beförderung der evangelischen Missionen unter den Heiden) was a German Protestant (Lutheran) Christian missionary society that was constituted on 29 February 1824 by a group of pious laymen from the Prussian nobility.[1][2]
It was a successor organisation, in Berlin, to the missionary training efforts of Pastor Johannes Jaenicke (of the Bohemian-Lutheran congregation in Berlin) which had prepared missionaries since 1800 for work with other missionary societies including the London Missionary Society.[3]
The BMS began the training of its first missionaries in 1829, with assistance from missionary societies in Pomerania and East Prussia.
An important director was Hermann Theodor Wangemann, who directed the Society from 1865 until his death in 1894. He first traveled to South Africa shortly after becoming director and went a second time in 1884. He wrote a system of regulations addressing fundamental questions of missionary work, the 1881 Missionsordnung der Gesellschaft zur Beförderung der Evangelischen Missionen unter den Heiden zu Berlin.[4]
The Society supported work in South Africa, China and East Africa.
East Africa[edit]
The Bethel Mission had established a missionary presence in Tanganyika, German East Africa, inviting the BMS in 1903 to take over a number of its stations. These missions declined after World War I (when Germany lost all its colonies and German missionaries in such areas were deemed undesirable) and their work was impossible after World War II.[1]