Timeline of Christian Missions - 1950 To 1999

1950 To 1999

• 1950 - Paul Orjala arrives in Haiti; radio station 4VEH, owned by East and West Indies Bible Mission, starts broadcasting from near Cap-Haïtien, Haiti
• 1951 - World Evangelical Alliance organized; Bill and Vonette Bright create Campus Crusade for Christ at UCLA; Alaska Missions is founded (later to be renamed InterAct Ministries).
• 1952 - Trans World Radio founded
• 1953 - Walter Trobisch, who would publish I loved a girl in 1962, begins pioneer missionary work in northern Cameroon
• 1954 - Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities opens work in Cuba; Argentina Revival breaks out during Tommy Hicks crusade; Augustinians re-established in Japan; Columbans enter Chile
• 1955 - Donald McGavran publishes Bridges of God; Dutch missionary "Brother Andrew" makes first of many Bible smuggling trips into Communist Eastern Europe;
• 1956 - U.S. missionaries Jim Elliot, Pete Fleming, Edward McCully, Nate Saint, and Roger Youderian are killed by Huaorani Indians in eastern Ecuador. (See Operation Auca)
• 1957 - East Asia Christian Conference (EACC) founded at Prapat, Sumatra, Indonesia
• 1958 - Rochunga Pudaite completes translation of Bible into Hmar language (India) and was appointed the leader of the Indo-Burma Pioneer Mission; Missionaries Elisabeth Elliot and Rachel Saint make first peaceful contact with the Huaorani tribe in Ecuador.
• 1959 - Radio Lumière founded in Haiti by West Indies Mission (now World Team); Josephine Makil becomes the first African-American to join Wycliffe Bible Translators; Feba Radio founded in UK.
• 1960 - Kenneth Strachan starts Evangelism-in-Depth in Central America; 18,000 people in Morocco reply to newspaper ad by Gospel Missionary Union offering free correspondence course on Christianity; Loren Cunningham founds Youth with a Mission; The Asia Evangelistic Fellowship (AEF), one of the largest Asian indigenous missionary organisations, is launched in Singapore by G. D. James
• 1961 - International Christian radio stations now number 30
• 1962 - Don Richardson goes to Sawi tribe in Papua New Guinea; Operation Mobilisation founded in Mexico by George Verwer
• 1963 - Theological Education by Extension movement launched in Guatemala by Ralph Winter and James Emery
• 1964 - In separate incidents, rebels in the Congo kill missionaries Paul Carlson, Phyllis Rine and Irene Ferrel as well as brutalizing missionary doctor Helen Roseveare; Carlson is featured on December 4 Time magazine cover; Hans von Staden of the Dorothea Mission proposes to Patrick Johnstone that he write the book now titled Operation World
• 1966 - Red Guards destroy churches in China; Berlin Congress on Evangelism; Missionaries expelled from Burma; God's Smuggler published
• 1967 - All foreign missionaries expelled from Guinea
• 1968 - The Studium Biblicum Translation of the Bible is published in Chinese by the Venerable Gabriele Allegra
• 1968 - Wu Yung and others form the Chinese Missions Overseas in order to send out missionaries from Taiwan to do cross-cultural ministry; Augustinian order re-established in India
• 1969 - OMF International begins "industrial evangelism" to Taiwan's factory workers
• 1970 - Frankfurt Declaration on Mission; Operation Mobilisation launches MV Logos ship; Abp. Makarios III (Mouskos) of Cyprus baptizes 10,000 into the Orthodox Church in Kenya.
• 1971 - Gustavo Gutierrez publishes A Theology of Liberation
• 1972 - American Society of Missiology founded with journal Missiology
• 1973 - Services by Billy Graham attract four and a half million people in six cities of Korea; first All-Asa Mission Consultation convenes in Seoul, Korea with 25 delegates from 14 countries
• 1974 - Missiologist Ralph Winter talks about "hidden" or unreached peoples at Lausanne Congress of World Evangelism. Lausanne Covenant is written and ratified
• 1975 - Missionaries Armand Doll and Hugh Friberg imprisoned in Mozambique after communist takeover of government
• 1976 - U.S. Center for World Mission founded in Pasadena, California; 1600 Chinese assemble in Hong Kong for the Chinese Congress on World Evangelization; Islamic World Congress calls for withdrawal of Christian missionaries; Peace Child by Don Richardson appears in Reader's Digest.
• 1977 - Evangelical Fellowship of India sponsors the All-India Congress on Mission and Evangelization
• 1978 - LCWE Consultation on Gospel and Culture in Willowbank, Bermuda; Columbans enter Taiwan
• 1979 - Production of JESUS film commissioned by Bill Bright of Campus Crusade for Christ; Ted Fletcher founds Pioneers, a missionary agency with a focus on "unreached people groups"; Columban missionaries enter Pakistan at the request of the Bishop of Lahore
• 1980 - Philippine Congress on Discipling a Whole Nation; Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism Conference in Pattaya
• 1981 - Colombian terrorists kidnap and kill Wycliffe Bible Translator Chet Bitterman; Project Pearl: one million Bibles are delivered in a single night to thousands of waiting believers in China
• 1982 - Story on "The New Missionary" makes December 27 cover of Time magazine; Andes Evangelical Mission (formerly Bolivian Indian Mission merges into SIM (formerly Sudan Interior Mission
• 1983 - Missionary Athletes International, a global soccer ministry, founded by Tim Conrad
• 1984 - Founding of The Mission Society for United Methodists, a voluntary missionary sending agency within the United Methodist Church; rebranded in 2006 to The Mission Society; Founding of STEM (Short Term Evangelical Mission teams) ministry by Roger Petersen signals the rising importance of Short-term missions groups
• 1985 - Howard Foltz founds Accelerating International Mission Strategies (AIMS)
• 1987 - Second International Conference on Missionary Kids (MKs) held in Quito, Ecuador
• 1989 - Adventures In Missions (Georgia) (AIM) Short-term missions agency founded by Seth Barnes; Lausanne II, a world missions conference; concept of 10/40 Window emerges; "Ee-Taow" video released by New Tribes Mission
• 1991 - The Marxist government of Ethiopia is overthrown and missionaries are able to return to that country
• 1992 - World Gospel Mission (National Holiness Missionary Society) starts work in Uganda
• 1993 - Trans World Radio starts broadcasting from a 250,000-watt shortwave transmitter in Russia
• 1994 - Liibaan Ibraahim Hassan, a convert to Christianity in Somalia, is martyred by Islamic militants in the capital city of Mogadishu;
• 1995 - Missionary Don Cox abducted in Quito, Ecuador
• 1996 - Nazarenes enter Hungary, Kazakhstan, Pakistan
• 1997 - Foreign Mission Board and Home Mission Board of Southern Baptist Convention become the International Mission Board and North American Mission Board with ten thousand missionaries
• 1999 - Trans World Radio goes on the air from Grigoriopol (Moldova) using a 1-million-watt AM transmitter; Veteran Australian missionary Graham Stuart Staines and his two sons are burned alive by Hindu extremists as they are sleeping in a car in eastern India.