Methodists and their missionary societies 1760-1900 - John Pritchard

Methodism played an important part in the spread of Christianity from its European heartlands to the Americas, Asia, Africa and the Pacific. From John Wesley's initial reluctance, via haphazard ventures and over-ambitious targets, a well-organized and supported Wesleyan Society developed. Smaller branches of British Methodism undertook their own foreign missions. This book, together with a companion volume on the 20th century, offers an account of the overseas mission activity of British and Irish Methodists, its roots and fruits.
John Pritchard explores many aspects of mission, ranging from Labrador to New Zealand and from Sierra Leone to Sri Lanka, from open air preaching to political engagement, from the isolation of early pioneers to the creation of self-governing churches. Tracing the nineteenth-century missionary work of the Churches with Wesleyan roots which went on to unite in 1932, Pritchard explores the shifting theologies and attitudes of missionaries who crossed cultural and geographical frontiers as well as those at home who sent and supported them. Necessarily selective in the personalities and events it describes, this book offers a comprehensive overview of a world-changing movement -
a story packed with heroism, mistakes, achievements, frustrations, arguments, personalities, rascals and saints.

John Pritchard was the General Secretary, Methodist Church Overseas Division (MMS) from 1991 to 1996, having previously served as its Africa Secretary.
He had been a missionary with the Methodist Church in Cote d'Ivoire - then a District of the British Methodist Conference - from 1966 to 1975, and was Secretary of the committee which drafted its constitution as an autonomous Church.
In the 1970s he edited Urban Africa, a quarterly magazine published by the All Africa Conference of Churches. He chaired the interdenominational Friends of the Church in China for six years from 2000 and convened the Methodist Missionary History Project from its inception in 1994.

'There has long been a need for a concise and comprehensive account of British Methodism's engagement in world mission. John Pritchard's volume admirably meets that need and will be essential reading for any student of Methodism.' Brian E. Beck, former President and Secretary of the Methodist Conference
'... a very important, readable history of a wonderful story where British and Irish missionaries, alongside local converts, migrants and those in the colonial world, established Methodism across the planet. A denomination of 80 million people needs to remember where it came from so that it can help determine its future. This text, and its companion volume, will be a major contribution to this.'
Irish Methodist Newsletter
'John Pritchard has spent most of his ministry in mission and mission affairs for the Methodist Church and this work is informed by all of that, but it is primarily a carefully researched and thoughtful analysis of the vast canvas of mission the Methodist in all of their denominational manifestations undertook over 140 years. John is to be congratulated and I, for one, await keenly the second volume covering the twentieth century which is hinted at in the conclusion.'
Proceedings of the Wesley Historical Society
'John Pritchard has written a very satisfying book that is likely to serve for a good time as the standard work on Methodist mission activity before 1900. Along with [the] companion volume ...scholars and general readers are now equipped with two excellent accounts of the work of the Methodist missionary societies.'
Wesley and Methodist Studies