Make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace. Ephesians 4:3
“Vedanayagam Samuel Azariah was born on 17 August 1874, in Vellalanvilai, Tirunelveli, South India. Few Westerners have heard his name. But not only did Azariah found two successful missionary societies to bring the gospel to India, not only did he help bring about the unification of India’s Protestant churches, but he also grew an impoverished diocese of 8,000 Christians to over 200,000.
Azariah’s father was an Anglican evangelist and his mother a devout laywoman. Azariah himself trained for the ministry at Madras Christian College. One evening, while visiting a mission work in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Azariah was deeply moved thinking of India’s lost souls and the little work that its own Christians did among them. He prayed and wept under the stars. Back in India, he organized young churchmen into the India Missionary Society of Tinnevelly.
Making an intensive study of the 1901 India census and contacting the leaders of foreign mission societies, he discovered that one hundred million Indians were out of the reach of the Gospel. He invited India’s Protestant denominations to form another mission society. The result was the National Missionary Society of India with Azariah as general secretary.
Azariah soon became convinced he should resign his leadership posts and become a missionary himself. His took as his field the small Diocese at Dornakal, one of the poorest regions of India. People lived on an average of five cents a day. When he was appointed bishop, he was the first native-born Anglican bishop in India. His diocese numbered eight thousand Christians, six Indian ministers and one hundred and seventy two laymen coworkers.
By his death on 1 January 1945, Dornakal had one hundred and fifty ministers and two hundred and thirty thousand Christians. Despite India’s fundamental hostility to Christianity and the opposition of Gandhi to Christian evangelization efforts, his diocese of Dornakal averaged over three thousand baptized converts a year. Astonished by the “impossible” transformation of outcasts, thousands of higher class Indians in Dornakal also joined the church.
Azariah was shocked by the lack of unity among all Christians and the arrogance of Western missionaries toward Indians. “Unity may be theoretically a desirable ideal in Europe and America, but it is vital to the life of the church in the mission field,” he told the 1927 Lausanne ecumenical conference. “The divisions of Christendom may be a source of weakness in Christian countries, but in non-Christian lands they are a sin and a scandal.”
In 1919, Azariah organized the Tranquebar Conference. It issued a manifesto which declared: “We believe that the challenge of the present hour…and the present critical situation in India itself, call us to mourn past divisions and turn to our Lord Jesus Christ to seek in Him the unity of the body expressed in one visible Church. We face together the titanic task of winning India for Christ—one-fifth of the human race.” Two years after his death, the Union Church was inaugurated.”
“V. S. Azariah: India’s Amazing Home-Grown Apostle” in Christian History Institute blog post on 17 August 2025 shared with me by Pat Tennant, a faithful Daily Meditation reader.
I loved it because of the quote and because I fly to India this Thursday and will serve as a speaker to the India Missions Association conference.
I really appreciated what he wrote about the negative impact of divisions and the importance of unity.
For example, the India Missions Association serves 317 agencies who send 60,000+ international missionaries from India and who serve 300,000+ home missionaries across India. That’s a lot of gospel spreading workers.
But the agencies have given little attention to administration and governance and are struggling.
Pray for me that my call to serve as faithful stewards who follow standards will bring order and oversight, strengthen unity in the community of agencies, and that our pilot group will shine.
Working closely with Rebecca Nilanjana, the NobleRank Growth Strategist (NobleRank is the peer accountability group I helped establish there like ECFA in USA) to help 10 of the 317 agencies get accredited to standards.
Imagine their testimony at the conference. Pray with me they inspire their peers to put their houses in order.
May God help us spread the gospel to millions who need to hear it across India like Azariah.