Overseas Missionary Fellowship
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| Founded | 25 June 1865 |
|---|---|
| Founder | Hudson Taylor |
| Type | Evangelical Missions Agency |
| Focus | Unreached People Groups, discipleship, church planting |
| Location | |
| Origins | China Inland Mission (till 1964) |
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Area served
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East Asia & East Asians globally |
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Key people
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Hudson Taylor, DE Hoste, JO Fraser, A.J. Broomhall, Patrick Fung, Cambridge Seven, |
| Slogan | Heart for Asia. Hope for Billions. |
| Website | http://omf.org |
OMF International (formerly Overseas Missionary Fellowship and before 1964 the China Inland Mission) is an international and interdenominational Protestant Christian missionary society with an international centre in Singapore. It was founded in Britain by Hudson Taylor on 25 June 1865.
The non-sectarian China Inland Mission was founded on principles of faith and prayer. From the beginning it recruited missionaries from the working class as well as single women, which was a new practice for a large agency. Even today, no appeals for funds are made, instead a reliance upon God is practiced to move people through prayer alone. The goal of the mission that began dedicated to China has grown to include bringing the Gospel to the millions of inhabitants of East Asia who have never heard or had access to the message of Jesus Christ. Reluctantly, along with the departure of all foreign Christian workers in the early 1950s, the China Inland Mission redirected all of its missionaries to other parts of east Asia, to continue the work and maintain a ministry to China and the Chinese. The name was officially changed to Overseas Missionary Fellowship in 1964 and to OMF International in the 1990s. A quote from the OMF website summarizes the current organization:
OMF's Mission:
2. No solicitation of finance, or indebtedness; looking to God alone; pooling support in life of corporate faith
3. Identification with Chinese by wearing Chinese dress and queue (pigtail), worshipping in Chinese houses
4. Indigenization through training Chinese co-workers in self-governing, self-supporting and self-propagating principles
5. Recruitment of missionaries not based on education or ecclesiastical ordination, but spiritual qualification; deployment of single women in the interior and Christian professionals
6. Interdenominational-International Membership
7. Headquarters on the field, director rule; leaders and workers serving shoulder to shoulder
Hudson Taylor made the first decision to found the China Inland Mission at Brighton, England during his first furlough from China. Like his missionary forebear Karl Gützlaff and contemporary William Chalmers Burns, Taylor was convinced that Chinese clothing should be worn when engaged in missionary work in inland China. On 3 October 1865, Taylor sent John and Anne Stevenson and George Stott to China, where they arrived on February 6, 1866. Including the five missionaries previously sent to Ningbo -James Joseph Meadows, Jean Notman, Stephen Paul Barchet, and George and Anne Crombie, these eight were already in China when Taylor returned in 1866. On 26 May of that year, Taylor accompanied the largest group of missionaries that had ever sailed to China on the Lammermuir. There were 16 missionaries as well as Hudson, his wife, Maria and their 4 children that became known as the Lammermuir Party. This journey took 4 months.
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Wikipedia