General Articles

By Martin Sutherland

If we are looking for a truly “big” Baptist idea we have clearly found one in the call to radical discipleship. If we are to be Christ’s followers we must truly follow, whatever the cost, whatever the challenge. With that goes the parallel conviction that the church too must reflect, in all aspects of its life, the state of things which Jesus describes as the kingdom. Taken together, individual discipleship and corporate authenticity lead naturally to a number of other characteristic Baptist positions. The first answers the question “Who is properly in the church?” To early Baptists the answer was clear and obvious: only radical disciples. If the church is to mirror the values and commitments of the kingdom of God, only those who have given themselves to Christ in total submission can be counted in it.

Read more: Baptist Ideas: The Baptism of Disciples

1885  

Tranzsend born 15^th October in Dunedin as the New Zealand Baptist Missionary Society (NZBMS). On the motion of Rev. Alfred North the 25 delegates to the third Conference of the Baptist Union of New Zealand vote unanimously to form a society "to take up at the outset Missionary work in India."

1885-89

1886—the first missionary, Rosalie MacGeorge, arrives in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) to work in association with members of the (English) Baptist Missionary Society. A steady trickle of missionary volunteers follows.

1890-99

1891—in poor health at the end of her first term of service, Rosalie MacGeorge dies in Colombo on her way back to New Zealand.

After initial difficulty in settling on a fixed area, the NZBMS takes responsibility for two districts in the eastern part of the province. Centres are established, first at Brahmanbaria and later at Chandpur, a junction town on the Meghna River.

Read more: A very brief history of tranzsend

By Martin Sutherland

Ideas have power. Ideas can start wars – and stop them. They can inspire sacrifice and lifelong service; they can create prejudice and injustice. They can change lives and transform communities; they can also restrict, contain and oppress whole groups of people. Culture itself is ultimately about ideas, ideas about the spiritual as well as the physical world in which we live.

Read more: Baptist Ideas: Radical Discipleship

by Walter B. Shurden

In 2009, Baptists will celebrate a huge 400th birthday party. Born in 1609, they began, as all infants, struggling to survive. Today, however, Baptists number 43 million people in over 200 countries in every continent of the world. Hassled, heckled, and persecuted both in England and America in the seventeenth century, Baptists of the twenty-first century have become the largest Protestant denominational family in North America. Baptists have come a very long way!

Read more: Turning Points in Baptist History