Reformed Presbyterian Church of North America - Missions

Missions

The RPCNA has sponsored missions in several different fields throughout the years. In North America, several different home missions were established among specific people:

  • Jewish Missions were established by congregations in Philadelphia and Cincinnati.
  • A Chinese Mission was run for a short time in Oakland, California.
  • The Indian Mission, which worked primarily with members of the Kiowa nation, was established in the countryside near Apache, Oklahoma, in 1887 or 1888. A congregation that resulted from this mission existed until 1971.
  • Several small Southern Missions were run throughout the South during and after the Civil War, mostly working with freed slaves. The last of these, established in Selma, Alabama in 1875, resulted in the establishment of a congregation still in existence.

Several other missions were organized for foreign work:

  • In 1847, a missionary was sent out to begin work in Port-au-Prince, Haïti. This mission was ended abruptly within two years when the missionary joined the Seventh Day Baptist Church.
  • Missionaries were first sent to Syria in 1856. After a short exploratory period, several mission stations were organized in Latakia and the surrounding area. This mission was continued until the late 1950s, when Syrian governmental policies forced the RPCNA to cut its ties with the churches there.
  • Work was begun in the area around Mersin, in Asia Minor, around 1882 and continued until around 1932.
  • In 1888, work was begun in Cyprus, and congregations were established in Larnaca and Nicosia. Mission work continued until the 1970s. Today, a single congregation in Larnaca is affiliated with the RPCNA and is pastored by an RPCNA missionary, but is not related to the previous mission.
  • Missionaries were first sent to the town of Tak Hing, in South China, in 1895. This mission proved to be quite fruitful, resulting in over eight hundred members by the early 1940s. However, with the communist revolution in 1949, the mission was closed.
  • A mission was begun in Qiqihar, Manchuria, in the early 1930s. Communist control of the area forced the mission's closure before 1949.
  • With the closure of the Chinese missions in 1949, the unemployed missionaries were soon sent to Kobe, Japan. This field, the only one currently operated by the RPCNA, is the site of a small mission presbytery.

Several short-term mission trips are sponsored by the denomination each year, both foreign and domestic. As well, some RPCNA members work formally or informally as missionaries in other countries, although not officially with the RPCNA's Global Mission Board.

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