Gustav Warneck

1834-1910. Founder of the science of missiology. First a pastor and then an official in the Barmen (Rhine) Mission (1871-77), he was a biblicist and stood close to the Heiligungsbewegung. He founded in 1874 the important scholarly journal of German missions, the Allgemeine Missionszeitschrift, initiated in 1879 the practice of holding regular missions conferences in the German churches, assisted in founding the Evangelical Bund in 1885, and occupied the first university chair of missiology in Germany at Halle (1896-1908). In an 1888 paper he called for decennial general missionary conferences supported by a continuing central committee which would coordinate Protestant missionary activity, a vision that was finally realized with the Edinburgh Conference* of 1910 and the formation of the International Missionary Council* in 1921. Warneck's five-volume synthesis of mission theory, Evangelische Missionslehre (1892-1903), and his many historical works establish him as Germany's leading missiologist.