Pioneers UK & Ireland Blog

At Pioneers, we have been gifted with a long lineage of men and women who were passionate about Christ, energetic for the Gospel and utterly heartbroken for the unreached. They went to great lengths to build gospel ministry in hard-to-reach places and many of them sacrificed family, health and even life to share the love of Jesus with those who hadn't heard. Praise the Lord, in many places they served there are thriving, growing churches today. Today, we stand on their shoulders, recipients of a legacy that we hope to continue building. As we press forward in gospel ministry, we want to celebrate their lives.

As friends fell around him in battle, Ted became keenly aware that he was unsure of what would happen to him when he died, and this troubled him. But in 1952, evangelist Billy Graham visited the troops, and Ted knew that he had found the answer in Jesus. 

Ted’s faith transformed him. When he returned to the US, he married his childhood sweetheart, Peggy, and they moved to New York, where Ted would climb the corporate ladder, eventually becoming the National Sales Manager for the Wall Street Journal. Ted remained steadfast in his faith and took every opportunity to share the gospel with his friends and colleagues. 

But he knew that God was calling him to do more. Ted and Peggy became keenly aware that there were people around the world who not only hadn’t heard the gospel, but also had no means of hearing the gospel. They knew they had to do something. 

The Fletchers applied to become missionaries with several mission agencies. They were rejected each time – not enough formal training, too old, too many children, etc. However, after a visit to Nigeria in 1979, they knew that they couldn’t take no for an answer. Using the gifts God gave them, with the godly counsel of other believers, Ted and Peggy followed God’s call to establish a different kind of mission agency. They sent their first missionary to Nigeria later that year.

World Evangelical Outreach (later renamed Pioneers) started life in the Fletchers’ basement in Virginia, eventually moving to an orange grove in Orlando, Florida. Pioneers was one of the fastest-growing mission agencies of the 20th century and now supports more than 3000 missionaries serving in over 100 countries around the world. 

Born in Dublin in 1835, Henry Grattan Guinness is regarded as one of the founders of the North Africa Mission, and was a highly influential speaker and traveling evangelist in the Ulster Revival. His wife, Fanny, was an accomplished speaker and writer in her own right, and was a noted administrator.

In 1872 Henry and Fanny started the East London Missionary Training Institute (also called Harley College) at Harley House in London. The renowned Dr. Thomas Barnardo was co-director with Henry and was greatly influenced by him. The Regions Beyond Missionary Union would also be founded here, an agency which is an ancestor of Latin Link. Henry also founded the Livingstone Inland Mission in 1877.

The college was so successful that it needed a new site and it moved to Derbyshire. The Guinnesses raised and spent thousands of pounds refurbishing the site, which is today the home of Cliff College.

In 1879, Henry travelled to Algeria and saw the need there. The next year, George and Jane Pearse would approach him for guidance on starting work there and he would donate to help begin The Mission to the Kabyles (later the North Africa Mission). Henry and Fanny would both serve on the council of the mission in those early years.

Fanny died in 1893 and Henry would go on to remarry in 1903. He and Grace, his second wife, would travel across the world on a missionary tour for the next five years. Returning in 1908, Henry died in Bath in 1910, leaving behind a family who would themselves be remarkable servants of the Lord.

Henry and Fanny’s daughter, Mary, married the son of Hudson Taylor. Lucy, another daughter, married Karl Kumm, the founder of the SUM (today Pioneers UK), whom she met when visiting Egypt with her father.

Hermann Karl Wilhelm Kumm (pronounced Koom) was born in 1874 in Hanover, Germany. His call to mission came powerfully during a meeting of the North Africa Mission (NAM) in England. By the age of 24, he was in Egypt, where he wrote of his call, “…Even while I was still in England a voice seemed to say to me, ‘I have prepared the people of the desert for my Gospel, go and preach it to them’. Now at last I have had a look upon those dear people and upon the vast desert Sahara, which is for me the Promised Land.”

Kumm’s passion for the people of the Sahara drew him to travel further and further into the desert. In early 1899, Kumm travelled to the oasis of Fayum. His companions were the well-known English evangelist Henry Grattan Guinness – one of the founders of the North Africa Mission – and his daughter Lucy. Lucy was, herself, quite well-known in London as a Christian writer and editor. Her pen aflame for the gospel, Lucy edited the “Regions Beyond” magazine and wrote pleading appeals for the unreached peoples of China, India and Arabia. By the time Lucy met Karl Kumm, she had already served the Lord in Tasmania, East London and India.

As missionary historian J Lowry Maxwell wrote, “Indeed it was hardly to be wondered at that the two drew together, for do not fire and heat ever keep company the one with the other?” Karl and Lucy were married in Cairo in February 1900 and within two years their combined passion for the spread of the gospel in what was then called ‘the Soudan’, gave rise to the Soudan Pioneer Mission. In 1904, the name was changed to Sudan United Mission to reflect the new unified effort between the Kumms and the like-minded Christians who had joined the effort, and by the end of that year the first four pioneer missionaries had travelled to what is now Nigeria. Karl Kumm was amongst them as SUM’s leader and founder. Lucy remained in England and continued to use her pen to advocate for the work of SUM while Karl opened new areas for the gospel in Nigeria. Together, they launched a work amongst the unreached of Africa that is still thriving today.

SUM would go on to become Action Partners, before joining the Pioneers International movement in 2007 to become Pioneers UK.

COCIN, the Church of Christ in Nations (formerly Nigeria) traces its roots to the work of Karl and Lucy. Today it has between 5-6 million members.

George was a stockbroker in London, initially able to support their ministry in France through working for just a few months of the year. He was also heavily involved in ministry and Honorary Secretary of the Chinese Evangelisation Society who initially sent Hudson Taylor to China in 1853.

Jane had been converted through the ministry of Henry Grattan Guinness in Paris and she and George continued to have a heart for France. They set up a mission station with the aim of reaching French soldiers with the gospel. However, when local opposition arose, they adapted their approach and went to Algeria in 1876 with the hope of continuing the work with troops posted there. Little did they know that God would use this trip to stir their hearts for the local Kabyle people.

On one night of their stay, in the early hours of the morning, Jane looked down from the balcony of the guesthouse to see what she initially thought were a bundle of rags in the street. Looking closer, she realised that the bundle was a man and another lay nearby, his face turned up in pain towards the moon. She could not go out to help them as the guesthouse was locked up for the night. But, early in the morning, when the Arab water carrier came, and the house unlocked, she asked what had happened to the men. They had starved to death in the night. Seeing her horrified expression, the man told her “Their fate affects me about as much as a dead dog would; I am used to it; hundreds have gone in a short time” (Algeria was in the midst of famine). The sight and this reaction rested heavy on Jane’s mind and she and George began praying that something could be done to bring the gospel to these forgotten people.

In 1880, the Pearses returned to Algeria to survey the country. George was 65 by this time. After briefly returning to England to recruit new workers and begin language study, in 1881, they came back with a small team: Edward Glenny, (who would go on to lead the mission for over 40 years) Henri Mayor (a Swiss teacher), and Selim Zeitoun (a Syrian convert who had translated literature). The North Africa Mission would grow from this mission station at Djemma Sahridj to number 115 workers by 1900.

The four intrepid young men set sail from Liverpool on 23 July 1904, and by the time they reached Nigeria 8 of their fellow passengers had given their lives to Christ. A sign of things to come.

After a long and arduous trek inland on foot and by boat, the missionaries found themselves at Wase Rock in central Nigeria, and there they established their first mission station. Later, Maxwell trekked south to open a new mission station at Wukari and another one at Donga. 

Maxwell became known in the Mission as a great lover of African culture and language. He was fluent in Hausa and eventually became the Mission’s language teacher. 

Over his thirty years in Nigeria, Maxwell made a tremendous impact on the local people and was instrumental in the establishment and discipleship of the early churches. 

He returned to the United Kingdom in 1934 due to ill health, but continued to be active in the life of the mission. Maxwell’s daughter, Kay, returned to Nigeria as an adult and was a much-loved colleague to many of our SUM missionaries in the 1960s-70s.

In 1954, Maxwell wrote and published SUM’s official history, Half a Century of Grace. Both highly entertaining and academically rigorous, it stands today as a must-read for anyone interested in the history of the Mission.
 

Whilst in Venice with her mother, she was introduced to the art critic John Ruskin, who recognised her artistic talent and began mentoring her. Ruskin told Trotter that if she would devote herself to her art “she would be the greatest living painter and do things that would be immortal.” Ruskin was left disappointed when Lilias decided that that this was not something she could do and still prioritise ministry.

In 1887, Edward Glenny of the NAM spoke at the YWCA conference. Lilias had been felt led to North Africa and was struck by his message. She responded to the call for workers and applied to the mission. However, Lilias had a weak heart from surgery (an issue that would cause her to have to take times of convalescence throughout her life), and was rejected on health grounds. Because she could support herself financially, the mission agreed to work in harmony with her, if she went herself.

Lilias travelled to Algeria in 1888 with two other women, Blanche Haworth and Katie Stuart. She would go on to found the Algiers Mission Band, which would grow to have stations across Algeria. They were heavily involved in the production and distribution of literature, collaborating with the Nile Mission Press. They were innovative evangelists, recognising the need for carefully contextualised methods and material. Lilias would write and illustrate much of the material.

Lilias died in Algeria in 1928. Her legacy has been rediscovered in recent years, with a film, play, and several books written about her life and ministry.

In 1964, the Algiers Mission Band merged with the North Africa Mission.

Returning to Morocco in the 1960s with the British Churchman’s Missionary Society (now Crosslinks), Kaye went to the south of Morocco to assess if medical work was possible there. Deciding that it was, she founded the Dades Valley Fellowship in 1963 and moved into a Kasbah. Over the years she would be joined by other women and together they provided midwifery and antenatal care, ran clinics, and organised yearly summer camps in Agadir. As work expanded, a second station was opened and short-term teams also provided additional workers.

Kaye came back to the UK in 1974 to help care for the aunts who had brought her up but continued running the mission and promoting its cause. She was also a gifted artist.

By 1982, the number of Dades Valley Fellowship workers had dwindled until it was decided that the last missionary would join North Africa Mission. The DVF thus merged with NAM in 1983.

Kaye served on the NAM council until she retired to the Isle of Mull in 1983. She died in 2006 at the age of 92.