Biography
William Frederick Padwick Burton lived from 1886 to 1971. Trained in engineering, he left that employment in 1911 to preach full time. For several years he travelled through English towns and villages before leaving for southern Africa in 1914.[1] [2]
James Salter joined him in 1915, and together they travelled into the Belgian Congo, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Their work among Luba communities developed into the Congo Evangelistic Mission. Accounts distinguish the beginning of the mission in 1915 from its later formal organisation in 1919. Burton married Hettie Trollip in 1918 and became the mission's first field director.[1] [3]
His work combined evangelism with practical skills, writing, and an interest in local life. The Flower Pentecostal Heritage Center records his advocacy of indigenous church leadership. Any account of this mission must also recognise the African Christians whose labour sustained congregations beyond the foreign missionaries' presence.[1] [3]
Burton's books include Congo Sketches and God Working With Them, a history of the mission published in 1933. These are firsthand missionary records, valuable for understanding his convictions and activities but written from his own standpoint. His legacy belongs to both Pentecostal mission history and the continuing history of Congolese Christianity.[2] [3]