Samoan Congregationalist Church

Ekalesia Fa'apotopotoga Kerisiano i Samoa
Classification	Protestant
Orientation	Presbyterian
Polity	Congregational-Presbyterian polity
Region	New Zealand
Origin	1830 Savaii Island, Samoa
Congregations	325
Members	70,000

The Congregational Christian Church of Samoa (CCCS) is an international evangelical Christian Church originally established in Samoa by missionaries of the London Missionary Society.

CCCS traces its beginnings to the arrival in 1830 of missionaries sent by the London Missionary Society (LMS), accompanied by missionary teachers from Tahiti and the Cook Islands and a Samoan couple from Tonga.

The LMS missionaries arrived at a time of fierce warfare and fighting between local chiefs. Weary of violence and bloodshed, they readily received the missionaries and their gospel of peace.

Paramount chief, Malietoa Vainu'upo, of noble lineage accepted Christianity. All his followers and kinsfolk immediately followed suit. Similarly, Tui-Manu'a, the sovereign ruler of the Manu'a islands also embraced the LMS emissary. The Kingdom of Manu'a became a LMS and Congregational stronghold. Within a few years, virtually the whole of Samoa was converted to Christianity. Huge numbers of people from simple and noble lineage soon offered themselves for overseas mission work. In 1839, nine years after the arrival of the LMS, the first twelve Samoan missionaries left for mission work in Melanesia. Since then, Samoans continued to take the gospel message to other Pacific islands, e.g. Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Niue, Tokelau, New Caledonia, Rotuma, Solomon Islands, Wallis and Futuna. Many of these early Samoan missionaries never returned home; they occupy many of the unnamed and unmarked graves on islands throughout the Pacific. By the 1980s Samoan missionaries could be found in Africa, evangelizing on the streets of London, to remote villages in Jamaica.

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