| Activity | The Baptist Missionary Society (BMS; originally known as the Particular Baptist Missionary Society for Propagating the Gospel among the Heathen, and since the year 2000 as BMS World Mission) was established in 1792, largely at the instigation of the Northamptonshire Baptist Association. It was the first Protestant society to be founded specifically for the purpose of overseas mission, and its earliest mission was that founded by William Carey (1761-1834), Joshua Marshman (1768-1837) and William Ward (1769-1823) in Serampore, Bengal (now West Bengal, India), in 1793 (the Serampore Mission separated from its parent society in 1827, reuniting in 1837). During the nineteenth century it established missions in the West Indies (Jamaica 1813) and played an active part in the abolition of slavery. Missions were subsequently established in Ceylon (1830), the Cameroons (Fernando Po 1841), Europe (Brittany 1843), China (1845), the Congo (1873). In 1891 the society merged with the General Baptist Missionary Society (founded 1816) to become the Baptist Missionary Society (a title which the 1792 society had used informally for much of the nineteenth century), and the pioneering work continued, with an emphasis in all mission fields on education, translation, publication, social and medical welfare, alongside pastoral and evangelistic work.
An important aspect of the society's work was the establishment of subgroups and auxiliaries. These included the Bible Translation Society, which was formed in 1840 to act as a support to the BMS, and which in 1920 became the Bible Translation and Literature Auxiliary. Another auxiliary of note was the Baptist Zenana Mission (BZM; full title 'Ladies' Association for the Support of Zenana Work and Biblewomen in India, in connection with the Baptist Missionary Society') which was formed in 1867; its medical mission work passed to the Medical Mission Auxiliary in 1902, and in 1914 the BZM became the Women's Missionary Association (WMA; also known as the Women's Committee) of the BMS but retained its separate committee and funds (its finances were merged with those of the BMS in 1925). The Medical Mission Auxiliary had been formed in 1901 in connection with the BMS and the BZM; it lost its independence in 1925 when it became the Medical Committee of the BMS. The Baptist Girls' Auxiliary was formed in 1903 and continued strongly up to 1953, but by then the Secretariat was reduced to one and so gradually the work merged with the youth work of the Society.
A change in the role of the BMS after 1914 was reflected in the progressive devolution of authority from mission to church, often during times of great political upheaval. In its missionary work in Brazil, commenced in 1953, and more generally in all its work since the 1960s, the BMS adapted to the changing needs of churches in the mission fields in the face of global ecumenical developments, and this was reflected in the society's change of name, in 2000, to BMS World Mission. [Source: www.mundus.ac.uk]
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