One story, one message, one life at a time
For more than 180 years, through five names and two world wars, one calling has remained unchanged: bringing the good news of the Messiah to Jewish people around the world.
The Founding Generation
A journey to the Holy Land, a meeting in a London church, and a Society open to every evangelical believer.
The Mission of Inquiry
Four Church of Scotland ministers, among them Robert Murray McCheyne and Andrew Bonar, travel to Palestine to investigate the spiritual condition of the Jewish people. Their journey becomes the mainspring of everything that follows.
The Society is Founded
On 7 November 1842, at the National Scotch Church, Regent Square, London, the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews is established: a mission open to evangelical believers of every denomination.
A Founder Falls
Just five months after the founding, Robert Murray McCheyne dies of typhus at the age of 29, having contracted it while visiting the sick of his Dundee parish. His example shapes the Society for a century.
A Growing European Network
Mission stations multiply across Britain and the Continent, from London and Woolwich to Budapest and Livorno, taking the gospel to Jewish communities across Europe.
Spurgeon Champions the Cause
On Thursday 16 June 1864, C. H. Spurgeon preaches on Ezekiel's valley of dry bones at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, in aid of the Society's funds. Published as "The Restoration and Conversion of the Jews," the sermon urges the Society's workers to reach every Jewish person, the poor and overlooked as much as the respected. The Tabernacle's friendship endured for decades: Isaac Levinson, later Secretary of the Society, trained at Spurgeon's College under Spurgeon himself.
"Seek after the ignorant, the degraded, the poor, and the fallen."
C. H. Spurgeon, to the Society's missionaries
Four men, one vision
Ridley Haim Herschell
Born into a devout Jewish family in Strzelno, Prussian Poland, he came to faith in Christ in Paris through reading the Sermon on the Mount. He co-founded the Society in 1842 and the Evangelical Alliance in 1845. His son Farrer became Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.
Robert Murray McCheyne
Minister of St Peter's, Dundee, and a member of the 1839 Mission of Inquiry to Palestine. He was preaching at Regent Square in the very week the Society was founded. His memory exercised a formative influence on the mission for generations.
Andrew Bonar
Minister at Collace and later Finnieston, Glasgow, and a fellow member of the Mission of Inquiry. His Memoir of McCheyne became one of the most influential Christian biographies of the Victorian era.
William Wingate
One of the great pioneers of Jewish mission in Central Europe. Arriving in Budapest in 1841, he served for decades and helped establish a lasting evangelical witness among the Jewish community of Hungary.
Two Streams of Witness
From 1879, two missions worked side by side: the British Society and the Barbican Mission to the Jews. For nearly a century they ran in parallel, until their stories converged.
Witness in the Land
Shabtai Rohold establishes pioneering work in Haifa in pre-state Palestine. He later becomes the first President of the Hebrew Christian Alliance of America and a co-founder of the International Hebrew Christian Alliance.
Seventy Years of Service Begins
Ernest Lloyd (1913 to 2010), raised in the Barbican Mission's Naomi Home for Women and Children, joins the British Society. He goes on to serve for seventy years across BJS, IJS and CWI, one of the longest ministries in the mission's history.
A New Name for a Global Work
The British Society becomes the International Society for the Evangelisation of the Jews, reflecting a work that now reaches far beyond Britain.
The Barbican Mission is Born
A second mission to the Jewish people is founded in London. Under leaders such as Rev. Paul Warschawski and C. T. Lipschytz, its work spreads across Eastern Europe, with extensive ministry in Poland reaching tens of thousands each year.
The Prague Rescue
On 12 January 1939, the very first Kindertransport flight leaves Prague for London, arranged by the Barbican Mission before the better known transports began. Rev. I. E. Davidson and Rev. William Wallner, working with Doreen Warriner, rescue around 68 children from Central Europe and give them homes in Chislehurst.
"This was fixed up by the Barbican Mission to the Jews in London."
From Nicholas Winton's own scrapbook
After the Darkness
In the wake of the Holocaust, the Barbican Mission rebuilds and expands its post-war work, including new ministry in the young state of Israel.
Two missions become one
The International Society for the Evangelisation of the Jews and the Barbican Mission to the Jews merge to form Christian Witness to Israel, uniting more than a century of experience, prayer and sacrifice in a single mission.
Christian Witness to Israel
A united mission grows into a global one, with workers serving Jewish communities in Israel, Europe, Australasia and beyond.
Rev. Murdo MacLeod
Led the newly merged mission through its formative years.
Rev. John S. Ross
General Secretary through seventeen years of growth and consolidation.
Rev. Mike Moore
General Secretary, author and editor, who strengthened the mission's voice in print.
Rev. Joseph Steinberg
Chief Executive, leading the mission into its present international era.
International Mission to Jewish People
In 2021 the mission took its present name, International Mission to Jewish People, expressing a calling that now spans the globe. Today our missionaries serve Jewish communities in Israel, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Hungary, Ukraine, Brazil, Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.
A New Name, the Same Calling
Christian Witness to Israel becomes International Mission to Jewish People: one unbroken story reaching back to a London church in 1842.
To the Ends of the Earth
From Tel Aviv to Sydney, Budapest to Boston, our teams continue the work Herschell, McCheyne and Bonar began: sharing the Messiah with Jewish people, one life at a time.