Barclay Fowell Buxton

Barclay Fowell Buxton was born in 1860 in London, England, into one of the most famous Christian families of the age. His grandfather, Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, had been the leader in Parliament of the fight against slavery after William Wilberforce. The family was wealthy, and they gave generously to many causes. Barclay was raised in a home of prayer and service, and he knew from childhood that his life would be given to God.

He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he came under the influence of the great missionary movements of the day. He heard the call to go to Japan, a land that had only recently opened to the West after centuries of isolation. After ordination in the Church of England, he sailed for Japan in 1890 with the Church Missionary Society. He was a tall man with a gentle manner, and he took the trouble to learn the Japanese language and to understand the people.

He settled in the city of Matsuyama, in the south, and later in Matsue and other towns on the western coast. These were places where few foreigners had gone. He preached in the streets and public halls, visited homes and trained Japanese believers to share the gospel. He was a man of prayer who gave long hours to waiting on God. He believed that missionaries should live among the people and adapt to their ways, and he and his wife made their home in a Japanese-style house.

He is best known for founding the Japan Evangelistic Band in 1903. It began with a small group of missionaries who felt that the work in the rural areas needed more workers and more urgency. The band sent out teams of evangelists, both Japanese and foreign, to preach in the villages and small towns that had not been reached. They traveled together, lived simply and relied on prayer and on the gifts of God's people. The band grew over the years, and it trained many Japanese Christians for ministry.

He wrote several books and pamphlets in English to inform people at home about the work and to call them to prayer. He also taught the Bible in conferences and training schools. He had a strong interest in the deeper Christian life and was a friend to the Keswick movement, which stressed holiness and the filling of the Spirit.

His labors had limits. The growth of the Christian church in Japan was slow, and he saw less fruit than he had hoped. The rise of nationalism in the 1930s made the work harder, and the years of war that followed scattered much of what he had built. He was also criticized by some of his colleagues for holding to a plain approach and for being slow to adopt new methods. He took the criticism calmly.

He lived to see the end of the Second World War and the beginning of a new season for Japan. He died in 1946, at about the age of eighty-six. He had given more than fifty years to the land he loved. His story shows what a person of privilege can do when he spends his wealth, his time and his strength among a distant people.