Rowland Bingham

I'm still reading a lot of missionary biographies (primarily from the "Christian Heroes Then and Now" series, which I highly recommend). The one I just finished was about Rowland Bingham. I had never heard of him, so I was curious about what he had done.

When Rowland Bingham was 20, he wanted to go to the Sudan to be a missionary. He joined another young man who was in England, looking for a mission board to sponsor him; they were joined by a third young man. No one would send them to the Sudan. Africa was "the white man's graveyard" even for those who stayed on the coast; anyone who went inland was going to die. Anyone who had tried had either died or been brought home seriously ill.

The young men were determined to go anyway. They formed their own mission organization, Sudan Interior Missions (SIM) and went to Africa. Rowland became ill and stayed near the coast to send supplies as needed and the other two men went into the interior. Both of the young men died before reaching their destination. Rowland went back to England and then home to Canada.

So it seemed that everyone was right: there was no way to evangelize the interior of Africa, no way to get to the Sudan, and trying would result in certain death. But Rowland Bingham did not give up. He raised money, he recruited people to go, and he tried again. This time he stayed in Canada to oversee things and other men went. They eventually turned back because it seemed impossible. Rowland didn't give up. More men volunteered and were sent to learn the language and the culture and then go to the Sudan. This time they made it. Still, many people died bringing the gospel to the Sudan and the interior of Africa. And yet still more people volunteered.

By the time SIM reached its 50th anniversary, there were 350 missionaries from around the world serving with them in Africa. There were thousands of believers in the Sudan, in Nigeria and Ethiopia, who would not have heard the gospel if Rowland and the later missionaries had given up because it was too hard.

Today, more than 100 years later, SIM has changed some. Different groups joined together under the name SIM (and in fact the name has changed a couple times although they kept the acronym) as the mission spread; there are now more than 1600 missionaries serving in more than 50 countries, evangelizing, ministering, equipping, and discipling.