It began in a chapel in Bloomsbury in 1861.
150 years later, Grace Baptist Mission is at work helping churches support their missionaries on four continents and in 13 countries. Jim Sayers tells the story of the growth of this work of God’s grace.
GBM began life in 1861 as the Strict Baptist Mission. A group of Strict Baptist churches in London were concerned to come together to support ‘the work of spreading the gospel among the heathen’. They decided to focus their efforts on supporting workers in India. Mr. Henry Doll, an Anglo-Indian already living in India, became the long-serving superintendent of the work on the field, supporting Indian Christians who worked as pastors and evangelists. Madras became the focus of the work, and a new area opened up in Tinnevelly in the south of Tamil Nadu, as well as a work in Ceylon.
After a memorable prayer meeting on November 19 1894, SBM sent out its first missionaries from Britain, Samuel Hutchinson and Ernest Booth. Booth served for 31 years and was known as a passionate evangelist and preacher.
