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On 3 March Wareham URC were
privileged to welcome Revd. Graham
McGeoch, Head of the London office of the
Council for World Mission, to lead our
worship, and inform us of the history and
work of CWM. We were very pleased that
some representatives from Swanage and
Skinner Street URCs were able to join us,
despite regrettably short notice, and Graham’s young son Lucas.

CWM was formed in the 1970s, in response to a changing view of
mission. It evolved from one of the first British missionary
societies, the London Missionary Society, which started in 1795!
(As a boy in the early 1950s, when our family were members of
Dorking Congregational Church, I remember collecting old
sixpences in little plastic phials to help pay for the John Williams
mission ships to the Pacific Islands funded by the LMS.)

However, by the 1970s it was realised in the post colonial world
the concept of Britain, where the church was in decline, sending
missionaries to countries of the old Empire, often, whether
consciously or not, conveying suggestion of superiority, was
inappropriate. Britain was now in need of missionaries, and thriving
churches in the developing countries where LMS and Presbyterian
missionary work had happened deserved to be seen as equal
partners in mission and mission priorities. Thus in due course the
headquarters of CWM was moved to Singapore, symbolising this
new vision, and funding decisions began to be taken collectively.

CWM is now made up of 32 member churches, and represents
2.1 million Christians. In Europe the URC, along with the
Congregational Federation, the Presbyterian Church of Wales, the
Union of Welsh Independents and the Protestant Church in the
Netherlands belong to it, and in South Asia the Church of
Bangladesh and the United Churches of South and North India.

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