Missions

Missions, systematic expeditions or establishments for the spread of Christianity authorised by an ecclesiastical officer or a religious society. Celebrated missions are the sending of Augustine to England by Gregory the Great (597), the Jesuit missions in India, China, Japan, and South America, the missions of the Moravians or United Brethren, those of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (incorporated in 1698),andof the Church Missionary Society (established by the "Clapham sect"(q.v.),thenucleus of the Evangelical Party, in 1800). The term is applied also to a set of special services held occasionally for the awakening and comforting of baptised Christians under the conduct of a "missioner."