Since the earliest days, the church has worked to fulfil the Great Commission to make disciples of all nations. The work of mission continued throughout the centuries. The western Catholic church converted the Franks, Irish, Angles and Saxons, other continental Germanic peoples (Thuringians etc.), Norsemen, Slavs and eventually the peoples of the Baltic. The last pagans in Europe were the Lithuanians who converted in 1386. Even during the 1300s, when the Western Catholic church was in disarray, there were bold missions in Central Asia (eg Azerbaijan), India, to the Mongols and in China. A leading missionary was John of Montecorvino (d. 1328). Across the Mediterranean, brave monks risked their lives to preach the gospel to Muslims in North Africa. The Eastern Orthodox church headquartered at Constantinople likewise missionised its neighbours over many centuries, including Goths, Arabs, Persians, Bulgars, Slavs, Mongols and Lithuanians. The missionary work of the non-Chalcedonian West Syrian Jacobites (Monophysites) covered a huge area, although in both cases many gains were lost by the 1300s. Even more prolific was the heterodox Church of the East (Nestorians), based in the Persian Empire, which from the 300s had churches throughout Central Asia in places such as Kyrgyzstan, and reached peoples such as the Uighurs and Mongols, and arrived in China no later than 645.
Nevertheless, the "Age of Discovery", which began in the 1400s with Portugal and Spain, heralded a new phase in the history of Christian mission. (Arguably, in Russia this phase began earlier, as Russia colonised eastwards from the 1300s onwards.) As European countries explored and traded and colonised, there was a simultaneous movement of mission to bring the Christian gospel.
In Siberia work was pioneered by Stephen of Perm among the Zyrians (Komi peoples) in the 1300s. While Russia was still under Mongol domination, work was undertaken among the Tatars. As Russia expanded eastwards there was work to convert native peoples to Eastern Orthodoxy - with varying degrees of success.
The Age of Discovery began with forays by Spain and Portugal off the western coast of Africa. From Columbus' voyage in 1492, new fields opened up in the West Indies (Caribbean), Mexico, Central and South America. As Portugal and Spain (both Roman Catholic) established their overseas empires, there was an arrangement with the Roman Catholic church (royal patronage) whereby the world was divided between those two colonising powers, who took on responsibility for an active role in the administration of the Church’s mission in those places. Huge numbers of people were brought into the church, but in the Americas they were not granted communion or ordained to the priesthood - a sign of the low esteem in which they were held. In many cases Roman Catholic priests stood up for the rights of indigenous peoples, and protested their ill treatment. An example of an indigenous Christian leader was Aztec St Juan Diego (d. 1548). In the 1500s, India and the Far East were missionised mostly under Portuguese patronage. The Philippines were Christianised under the aegis of Spain from 1561. A pioneer Roman Catholic missionary in the 1500s was Francis Xavier who laboured in India and later in Japan. The first Roman Catholics landed in Japan in 1549, and by 1570 there was a church established in Nagasaki. However, Christianity was officially banned from 1614. The mission in China was quite successful, and a major missionary was Matteo Ricci (d. 1610) who had a philosophy of "accommodation" to make the gospel easier to accept.
From 1622 onwards, the missionary work of the Roman Catholic church was coordinated by an organisation headquartered in Rome called "the Propaganda". The various monastic orders, such as the Jesuits and Dominicans had large numbers of missionaries. However, conflicts between rival monastic orders, and controversy over appropriate translation of the word "God" and other matters ("Chinese rites" controversy) led to the Roman Catholic church being officially banned from China in the 1720s. In the 1700s, the forces which led to the French Revolution also caused a temporary demise of Roman Catholic missions which would only recover in the 1800s.
Protestant missionary interest had begun on a very small scale around 1550 when Lutheran King of Sweden Gustav Vasa reached out to the still-pagan Lapps in his realm. There were also failed plans by Huguenots to set up colonies in Florida and Brazil. This changed as countries with Protestant majorities followed the example of Portugal and Spain, establishing trading posts in places with non-Christian populations. It was the Dutch colonies in what is now Malaysia and Indonesia that arguably marked the start of Protestant missionary work in the early 1600s. Around 1610, Englishman John Eliot reached out to the American Indians with the gospel, later followed by Thomas Mayhew and David Brainerd. The German Pietists began their work in Danish colonies in India, and also Zanzibar and later Greenland. The Moravians followed suit from 1732 onwards, in many cases literally following in the footsteps of German Pietists. The Moravians worked in the West Indies, in Greenland, among the North American Indians, in Surinam and elsewhere. In each case, there was some success but also huge challenges.
In the late 1700s in England, a second phase of Evangelical Revival brought a new vigour, among others, to the Particular Baptist churches. This was the context for Baptist William Carey writing "The Enquiry", assessing the state of the Great Commission in his day, and chronicling work already done (see above). His efforts led to the creation of a Particular Baptist Missionary Society which sent him out to India. This was followed by a raft of Protestant missionary societies which ventured out from Britain to India, the West Indies (Caribbean), and the Pacific. Mission from the newly formed United States was pioneered by people such as Adoniram Judson who went as a missionary to Burma. There were similar Protestant missionary societies based in Germany, Switzerland and France. Church historian La Tourette described the long nineteenth century (1789-1914) as the "Great Century". Work was underway in many places. China reopened for the gospel in the 1840s. A famous missionary to Japan was Hudson Taylor (Brethren). Japan, where Christianity had been officially banned since 1614, reopened in 1868. Korea was initially very resistant to the gospel, however 1910 marked the "Korean Pentecost" and the church there grew. Inland Africa south of the Sahara was initially known as a "graveyard for missionaries" but during the latter half of the 1800s was increasingly reached for the gospel. A major explorer-cum-missionary was Scotsman David Livingstone who between 1851 and 1873 made a series of journeys inland to "open up" Africa for trade and the gospel.
Following restoration of the Jesuit monastic order in 1814 (suppressed since 1773), Roman Catholic missions resumed with French-origin missionaries taking a leading role. Roman Catholic mission work in the 1800s focused on places like Indochina (Vietnam), China, and also Sub-Saharan Africa.
While most of the rest of the Orthodox world remained under Muslim domination, the Russian Orthodox church was very active in missions - reaching areas colonised in Siberia as far east as the northern Pacific and what is now Alaska, and also the Empire of Japan (Nikolai of Japan).
In 1910, a landmark world missionary conference was held in Edinburgh to assess gains made and make plans for the completion of the Great Commission.
In our time, areas such as western Europe which once boasted large Christian majorities and major influence in the church have now become secularised and Christians there represent a tiny minority of the population. Meanwhile, it is some of the lands missionised since the Age of Discovery which have become the heartlands of Christianity worldwide: the Americas, the Caribbean, parts of South East Asia, the Pacific, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
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