Allen, Roland, mission strategist, born Bristol, England, 29 December 1868, died Kenya, 9 June 1947. Educated at Oxford and Leeds, he became an Anglican priest in 1893 and in 1895 went to North China with the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.  He survived the Boxer siege and following furlough and marriage returned briefly to China.  He resigned from parish ministry in 1907 and worked in association with the Survey Application Trust and World Dominion Press. His classic Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or ours? and other writings argued for independent indigenous churches. He influenced Pentecostal missions and a new generation of missionaries from the 1960s.
BDCM, DEM, ML

Alopen, pioneer missionary to China. A Syriac-speaking Nestorian from Persia who travelled over the Silk Route to be welcomed at the capital of Tang dynasty China in 635. The story of his founding of churches and monasteries in China in a window of religious toleration under the second Tang emperor, T’ai-Tsung is recorded on the Nestorian monument erected near Xian in 781 and rediscovered in 1623. The church was free from significant association with foreign political forces, but it accommodated to Buddhism, and remained over-dependent on long and fragile lines of communication. Nestorianism had faded in China by 900 but reappeared in the Western Chinese empire among the Mongols (1260-1368). Alopen’s work remains highly significant for Mongol and Chinese Christianity.
BDCM

Azariah, Vendanayagam Samuel, First Indian Anglican bishop. Born Vellalanvilai, Tirunelveli, South India, 17 August 1874, died Dornakal, 1 January 1945. A gifted evangelist, he served as a YMCA secretary from 1895-1905, and founded the Indian Missionary Society in 1903.  At the Edinburgh Missionary Conference in 1910 he challenged western missionaries for their lack of friendship.  In 1912 he became Bishop of Dornakal. Some 200,000 joined the church under his ministry. He worked for a united Indian church from 1919, and was chair of the National Christian Council of India. He attended meetings of Faith and Order (Lausanne 1927), Life and Work (Oxford 1937) and of the International Missionary Council (Tambaram 1938).  The Church of South India, formed in 1947, was a fruit of his leadership. 
ML DEM BDCM

Bavinck, Johan Herman, Dutch missiologist born in Rotterdam, 22 November 1895, died in Amsterdam, 23 June 1964. After graduating from the Free University of Amsterdam and gaining a doctorate from Erlangen in 1919, he ministered to Dutch congregations in Medan and Bandung, Indonesia (1919-1926). He then pastored in Heemstede, Holland (1926-1929) before returning to Indonesia as a missionary in Solo and Jogjakarta where he developed a deep understanding of Javanese spirituality. In 1939 he became the first professor of missions at Kampen Theological College and taught at the Free University of Amsterdam until 1964. He wrote on Javanese mysticism and religious psychology and lectured in America and South Africa. His missiological handbook was translated into English as An introduction to the Science of Missions in 1960. His irenical influence was spread through his students, and by many others impressed by his transparent spirituality and good humour.
BDCM, ML

Beaver, Robert Pierce, North American historian and documentalist of mission, born in Hamilton, Ohio, 26 May 1906, died, Tucson, Arizona, 20 November 1987. He studied at Oberlin College and Cornell University (Ph.D., 1933) and was in parish ministry before going to China as an Evangelical and Reformed Church missionary in 1938. He taught at Central China Union Theological Seminary in Hunan, was interned in Hong Kong and repatriated in 1943. He taught at Lancaster Theological Seminary, then in 1948 became director of the Mission Research Library (MRL) at Union Theological Seminary New York.  In 1955 he was appointed professor of missions at the University of Chicago Divinity School. Personally modest, his writings on comity, women in mission, and American Missions in Bicentennial Perspective (1976) laid the foundations for a new generation of missionary scholarship. His Occasional Bulletin from the MRL continues as the International Bulletin of Missionary Research. 
BDCM, ML

Bosch, David Jacobus, South African missiologist born near Kuruman, South Africa, 1929, died in a car accident, 15 April 1992. He studied at the universities of Pretoria and Basel (ThD, 1957) and served as a Dutch Reformed missionary in the Transkei. He founded the Southern African Missiological Society (SAMS) in 1968 and was first editor of its journal, Missionalia. He became professor of missiology at the University of South Africa (UNISA) in 1971. He was known for his gracious pastoral and spiritual sensitivities, enjoyed the trust of diverse groups of Christians, and in his magisterial Transforming Mission (1991) produced the summative work of classic 20th century missiology.
BDCM

Buchanan, Claudius, East India Company chaplain, missionary strategist and publicist, born in Cambuslang, Scotland 12 March 1766, died Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, 9 February 1815. After study at Glasgow University he moved to London. Following a spiritual crisis in 1790 John Newton encouraged him to go to Queen’s College, Cambridge. Ordained Anglican priest in 1796, at Charles Simeon’s suggestion he was appointed an East India Company Chaplain and served at Barrackpore (1797-1799) and Calcutta (1799-1808). To publicise the India mission cause he donated some £2,600 for prize essays in 1803 and 1805.  His Memoir of the Expediency of an Ecclesiastical Establishment for British India (1805), Star in the East (1809), and Christian Researches in Asia (1810), were major contributions to the successful campaign for the inclusion of missionary clauses in the East India Charter of 1813 and the appointment of the first bishop for India in 1814.
ML, DEB

Bogue, David, Congregationalist minister and pioneer missionary educator, born in Coldingham, Berwickshire, 1 March 1750, died Brighton, 25 October 1825. He studied in Edinburgh (1762-1771) and was licensed to preach in the Church of Scotland. Rejecting patronage, he taught in London and in 1777 became an Independent minister at Gosport near Portsmouth where he began to take in students for the ministry. His appeal in 1794 “To the Evangelical Dissenters who practise Infant Baptism” helped found the London Missionary Society (1795). He advocated proper training for missionaries and was active in the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Religious Tract Society. His History of Dissenters was first published in 1809. He had a special interest in India. By his death some 115 missionary students had passed through his academy, 50 going to India. Yale awarded him a D.D. in 1815.
BDCM, DSCHT

Kraemer, Hendrik, Dutch Reformed missiologist, lay theologian and ecumenical leader, born Amsterdam, Netherlands, 17 May 1888, died Driebergen, 11 November 1965. Kraemer studied Javanese in Leiden before working for the Dutch Bible Society in Indonesia (1922-1937). He was professor of the history and phenomenology of religion at Leiden University (1937-1947) and first director of the Ecumenical Institute in Bossey (1948-1955). His Christian Message in a Non Christian World (1938) prepared for the International Missionary Council meeting in Madras, was very influential. Kraemer was an excellent linguist with a deep understanding of Islam, of the importance of independent churches, the role of the laity, and the encounter between God and man in the midst of social and religious crises.
BDCM, DEM