Founder's of ECWA---Bibloigraphy of Bingham








In 1893 the three young men Walter Gowans, Thomas Kent and Rowland Bingham (pictured above) answered the call of God as missionaries and set sail from America to Europe and from there to Lagos, Nigeria, arriving on Dec. 3 1893 with the sole goal of taking the Gospel to the Soudan (the name given to the whole area bordering Northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Northern Cameroun, Sudan etc.). This was a great sacrifice and we cannot thank God enough for calling these young men, nor can we thank them enough for answering God’s call because of their love for lost people they have never seen.
Both Walter Gowans and Thomas Kent died within the first year of their ministry in Nigeria without seeing one soul come to the Lord. The Lord kept Rowland Bingham alive who returned to the US and mobilized other missionaries to go back to Africa with him. The result was the planting of an SIM church which was indigenized in 1956 and renamed ECWA. ECWA today has more than 7, 000 churches in Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Chad, Gambia, Niger Republic, Togo, USA, Cameroun, Benin, Malawi, Mali, Zambia, Kenya, Ghana, Burundi, UK, Israel and a Prayer Cell in the Philippians. The goal remains to take the Gospel to all parts of the world.

Walter Gowan's Life Drained out for Sudan

Dan Graves, MSL

Walter Gowan's Life Drained out for Sudan Despite the African heat, Walter Gowans shivered. He was miserable; malaria had laid him low. Seeing the desperate need of the Sudan for the gospel he had left his home in Canada, but here, barely a year later, in 1894, the mission pioneer was dying, separated from his co-workers.
Two other men had come out with him. The first, Rowland Bingham, had become so ill he had remained on the coast to procure supplies and act as a go-between. Thomas Kent, of Buffalo, New York, had traveled inland with Walter, but gone back to the coast to bring up the needed supplies. Meanwhile, an Emir who was raiding for slaves captured Walter, who was starving. When released, Walter tried to get back to the coast. He died alone in a town called Girku.
Walter was only twenty-six years old. Born on this day, September 17, 1868, he had developed a passion for the peoples of the Sudan. At that time, the name "Sudan" referred to all of Africa from Senegal to Ethiopia.
Rowland and Thomas were in the Sudan because of Walter. Walter's mother was sold on her son's vision to carry the gospel to the sixty million people of north central Africa. She invited preacher Rowland Bingham to her home. In her parlor, she laid Walter's dream before him. He was deeply moved. When Rowland left the Gowan residence that day, he was determined to join Walter. Hearing of their decision, the third man, Thomas Kent of Buffalo, New York, teamed up with them.
Unable to interest established mission agencies in their work, the three set out to tackle the work alone. They landed in Lagos, Nigeria. Their hope was to establish a work 500 miles inland in one of the most treacherous regions of the world. But the three immediately found themselves sick.
Thomas died, having brought the supplies up to where he had left Walter. Rowland was still desperately ill; and returned to Canada, where he took Walter's few belongings to Mrs. Gowan.
As Rowland remembered it, Mrs. Gowan met him with extended hand. "We stood there in silence. Then she said these words: 'Well, Mr. Bingham, I would rather have had Walter go out to the Sudan and die there, all alone, than have him home today, disobeying his Lord.' "
Walter's dream did not die with him. In 1900, Rowland Bingham made a second attempt to establish a mission work in Sudan. Again he failed. But the following year, he managed to send a team into the Sudan, and it established a base 500 miles from Lagos.
Walter's vision resulted in the formation of the Sudan Interior Mission. In the 1980s this mission merged with two others to become the Society for International Ministries. Today, thanks to such sacrifice, forty percent of Africans claim to be Christians.
Bibliography:
  1. Adeyemi, E. A. From Seven to Seven Thousand; the story of the birth and growth of SIM/ECWA church in Ilorin. Ilorin: Okinbaloye Commercial Press, 1995.
  2. Bingham, Rowland. Seven Sevens of Years and a Jubilee.
  3. Corwin, Gary R. "Bingham, Rowland Victory." Evangelical Dictionary of World Missions; general editor, A. Scott Moreau. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2000.
  4. ------"Bingham, Rowland Victory." Anderson, Gerald H. "Williams, John." Biographical Dictionary of Christian Missions. New York : Macmillan Reference USA; London : Simon & Schuster and Prentice Hall International, 1998.
  5. Neill, Stephen. A History of Christian Missions. The Pelican History of the Church #6. Hammondsworth, Middlesex, England: Pelican Books, 1964, p. 459.
  6. Rennie, I. S. "Bingham, Rowland V." Biographical Dictionary of Evangelicals. Downers Grove, Illinois: InterVarsity Press, 2003.
  7. Various internet articles on Walter Rowland, the Sudan Interior Mission (now Society for International Ministries) and Rowland Bingham, such as SIM Roots. http://www.sim.org/aboutSIM.asp?fun=3&page=8.





Bingham, Rowland Victor

1872-1942
Sudan Interior Mission
Sudan
Rowland Victor Bingham was the cofounder and longtime director of the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM). Born in East Grinstead, Sussex, England, Bingham immigrated to Canada at age 16 and sailed for Africa in 1893 under the nascent SIM to open a way to the unreached people of the interior. Within a year, both of his colleagues, Walter Gowans and Thomas Kent, were dead from fever and he himself had returned to Canada in broken health. In 1898 SIM was reconstituted as the Africa Interior Mission, with Bingham serving as its director. After a second failed attempt in 1900, a third attempt in 1902 succeeded in establishing the mission’s first station at Patigi, Nigeria. In 1906 the mission returned to “Sudan Interior Mission” as its official name.
By the time of Bingham’s death, SIM had grown into what was arguably the largest Protestant presence in Africa-400 missionaries, with hundreds of churches established. Under Bingham, SIM became a somewhat unique representative of the faith missions movement, more open about the need for missionary support and more thoroughly internationalized than the British model of Hudson Taylor and the China Inland Mission, and more broadly evangelical and more socially involved than many American faith missions. Perhaps most outstanding among the missiological legacies Bingham left through SIM were his emphasis on teaching and promoting missions among the newly established churches of Africa, his utilization of thoroughly integrated international teams, and his holistic model of missions outreach, which addressed social concerns as part of the process of discipling believers into churches equipped to carry on Christ’s commission.
As editor of Evangelical Christian (Canada’s only trans-denominational evangelical magazine) from 1904 until his death, Bingham not only was an articulate spokesman regarding the pressing theological issues of his day but carried on a tireless campaign to promote mission and outreach organizations, both foreign and domestic. To the same ends he also established Evangelical Publishers (1912) and the Canadian Keswick Conference Center (1924). He received an honorary D.D. from Wheaton College in 1932. He died in Toronto.
Gary R. Corwin

Bibliography

Bingham’s Seven Sevens of Years (1943) is a largely autobiographical record of the Sudan Interior Mission during his ministry years. Other works by Bingham, in addition to his multitudinous writings in Evangelical Christian, include Matthew the Publican (n.d.) and The Bible and the Body (1921, 1952). James Hunter, A Flame of Fire (1961); Brian McKenzie, “Fundamentalism, Christian Unity, and Premillennialism in the Through of Rowland Victor Bingham (1872-1942): A Study of Anti-Modernism in Canada” (Ph.D. diss., Toronto School of Theology, 1985). A Ph.D. dissertation in process by Gary R. Corwin for Trinity Evangelical Divinity School examines the missiological contributions of Bingham and the work of the Sudan Interior Mission under his leadership in the context of the larger faith missions movement. Bingham’s papers, along with a full set of Evangelical Christian magazines, are part of the SIM archives in Charlotte, North Carolina.