Was born 1968, his mother died giving birth to him. His father remarried, and then his step mother died in a car accident when Francis was 9. Then his father died of cancer when he was 12 years old. The only close relatives he had were his aunt and uncle. But when he was in high school, his aunt and uncle got in a fight, and his uncle shot his wife then killed himself. [taken from The Balance Beam Speech]

By God’s grace and mercy, Francis came to know the Lord in high school. Chan was active in Christian youth groups which helped develop his faith in Christianity and his interest in ministry. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Masters College and a Master of Divinity degree from Masters Seminary.

Now Francis Chan is the founding pastor and teaching pastor of Cornerstone Community Church in Simi Valley, CA since 1994. He is the author of the best-selling book, Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God. He has inspired many people with his ‘crazy love’ message. His passion and clarity in sharing the gospel has inspired many to seek the Kingdom of God wholeheartedly, with all our heart, soul, mind and strength.

You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart,

with all your soul, and with all your mind

-Jesus (Matthew 22:37)

The father of modern missions, William Carey was born at Northamptonshire, England in 1761, and became a cobbler at the age of 14. Neither hands nor brains were idle. On his cobbler’s bench was a book. Before he was 20 years of age, to his store of Greek were added French, Dutch, Latin, and Hebrew. "With little teaching, he became learned; poor himself, he made millions rich; by birth obscure, he rose to unsought eminence; and seeking only to follow the Lord’s leading, himself led on the Lord’s host." Two years later, at the age of 22, he joined the Baptist church, and began preaching immediately, mostly on the theme of missions. He helped organize the English Baptist Missionary Society and was one of its first missionaries to India. His services there were remarkable for their range and depth.        

In April, 1789, Carey was called to the pastorate of Harvey Lane Church at Leicester. Here he was  brought into association with men of culture, and books were freely placed at his disposal. The course of events was now rapidly moving toward the formation of the missionary society. At the annual meeting of the association held at Nottingham, Carey was one of the preachers. He chose for his text Isa. 54:2-3, which was paraphrased as follows: "Expect great things from God," "Attempt great things for God." The impression made by the discourse was so decided that the following resolution was passed: "That against the next meeting at Kettering, a plan should be prepared for the purpose of forming a society for propagating the gospel among the heathen.

William and his family sailed June 13, landing at Calcutta November 10, 1793.The Moravian method of self-support in missions was known to Carey, and he wished to practice it. "At Bandel, on the Hugli, at Calcutta itself, and amid the tiger swamps of the Sunderbund tracts to the east of Calcutta, he made three attempts to preach and toil with his hands at the same time." In addition to soul-winning, Carey founded the Serampore College, and, with the aid of other linguists, he translated the Bible into 44 languages and dialects. In 1817 was begun the missionary training institute, which afterwards grew to a college, and was placed upon the same basis as other colleges of Europe. Through his efforts, the Bible was made available to 300,000,000 people before the American Civil War. He was also instrumental in developing grammars and dictionaries in Bengali, Sanskrit, and other native tongues.

For forty-one years William Carey was spared to labor for the good of India. He outlived nearly all who were associated with him in his prolonged residence, unbroken by any return to England. He died June 9, 1834.

“Some wish to live within the sound of Church or Chapel bell;
I want to run a Rescue Shop within a yard of hell."

That saying was characteristic of C. T. Studd. In 1878, a visiting preacher asked the young man, a well-known cricket player, if he was a Christian. When Studd knelt and thanked God for salvation, peace and joy flooded his soul. Unfortunately, he did not share his faith with others. As a consequence, he became spiritually cold. For six years he lived a life which he described as "backslidden." The love of the world crept in.

In 1883, Studd went to hear Dwight L. Moody speak. His soul was stirred afresh. Immediately, he began to tell others about Christ. Studd would later say that he had tasted all the pleasures of the world, but none gave him so much pleasure as bringing his first soul to trust in Jesus.

Two years later, C. T. Studd sailed for China to join Hudson Taylor as a missionary. He dressed like a Chinese, ate Chinese food, and learned the Chinese language. While in China, he turned twenty-five. Under his father’s will, that is when he would inherit a large sum of money. Reading the Bible and praying, he felt convinced he should give his fortune away to show the world that he relied not on money but on a living Lord. The Lord, he was sure, would bless him a hundred-fold in non-monetary ways and provide him sufficient money to live on. "If Jesus Christ be God and died for me, then no sacrifice can be too great for me to make for Him," he argued.

On this day, January 13, 1887, before he even knew the amount he was to inherit, he wrote several large checks for George Muller’s orphan work and for missions. It turned out there was still some money left. Studd gave it away. He gave the final £3,400 to the woman he was about to marry as a wedding gift. But Priscilla Livingstone Stewart was as sure of God as her husband. She determined to "start clear" at her wedding and gave that sum away, too.

Naturally, they ran short of money often after that. Yet they found God faithfully supplied them. "Funds are low again, hallelujah! That means God trusts us and is willing to leave His reputation in our hands," said C. T. Studd on one such occasion.

The Studds served in China and India and toured in behalf of the Student Volunteer Movement. Leaving his invalid wife in England, C. T. sailed to Africa to open mission work in Sudan, the largest unreached area in the world. In spite of heart attacks, he worked there to the end of his life. Priscilla was able to rejoin him for only one year before she died. Studd became an autocrat who would brook no opposition.

C. T. Studd’s answer to critics who said he went overboard in his zeal was simple:

"How could I spend the best years of my life in living for the honors of this world, when thousands of souls are perishing every day?"

Elizabeth Fry was born in Gurney Court, off Magdalen Street, Norwich, Norfolk, England to a Quaker family. Her mother died when Elizabeth was only twelve years old.

As one of the oldest girls in the family, Elizabeth was partly responsible for the care and training of the younger children.

At the age of 18, young Elizabeth was deeply moved by the preaching of William Savery, an American Quaker. Motivated by his words, she took an interest in the poor, the sick, and the prisoners. She collected old clothes for the poor, visited those who were sick in her neighborhood, and started a Sunday school in the summer house to teach children to read.

She married Joseph Fry on 1800 and moved to St Mildred’s Court in the City of London. They had eleven children in all.

Prompted by a family friend, Stephen Grellet, Fry visited Newgate prison. The conditions she saw there horrified her. The women’s section was overcrowded with women and children, some of whom had not even received a trial. They did their own cooking and washing in the small cells in which they slept on straw. Elizabeth Fry often as in said in the book of prisons volume three that she actually stayed the nights in some of the prisons and invited nobility to come and stay and see the conditions they lived in.

She returned the following day with food and clothes for some of the prisoners. She began a system of supervision and required the women to sew and to read the Bible. In 1817 she helped found the Association for the Reformation of the Female Prisoners in Newgate. This led to the eventual creation of the British Ladies’ Society for Promoting the Reformation of Female Prisoners, widely described by biographers and historians as constituting the first “nationwide” women’s organization in Britain.

In 1840 Fry opened a training school for nurses. Her program inspired Florence Nightingale, who took a team of Fry’s nurses to assist wounded soldiers in the Crimean War. She worked tirelessly on behalf of those women who were condemned to death, trying to get their death sentence reprieved and dealing with their distress.

For more than twenty years this work continued, based simply on her response to what God had done for her.

David Livingstone was born on March 13, 1813 in Blantyre, Scotland, near Glasgow. He became a doctor and a missionary, and devoted much of his life to exploring Africa. He helped Europeans learn a lot about the continent of Africa.

Livingstone was one of the first Europeans to explore the central and southern parts of Africa. He first went to Africa as a Christian missionary in 1841, when he was 27 years old. He decided that the best way to teach Africans about Christ was to move about and see as many people as he could. That is how he became an African explorer.

He married Mary Moffat in 1845 and she (and later their children) came along with Livingstone on his early explorations. In 1849, he led a group of Europeans across the Kalahari Desert and discovered Lake Ngami. Two years later, he again travelled through the Kalahari with his family.

He continued crossing the continent of Africa during three different time periods: 1852-56, 1858-64, and 1866-73. In 1856, he travelled on the Zambezi River, and became the first European to see the spectacular Victoria Falls. He also became the first European to cross the entire width of southern Africa.

These accomplishments made him very famous in England. He wrote a book about his experiences in Africa and traveled around England giving speeches in 1856 and 1857. Livingstone went back to Africa in 1858 and is credited with the discovery of Lake Nyasa in 1858, the Chilwa River in 1859, and more of the Nile River.

In 1866 David Livingstone went on an expedition to discover more of the Nile River. While on this expedition he was lost and no one heard from him. In 1871, a New York reporter, Henry Morton Stanley, led an expedition to find him. When they found him, Stanley said those famous words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume."

In May, 1873 after Stanley left Livingstone to learn the customs of an Indian tribe, Livingstone was found on his knees, dead in prayer. His body, along with his personal items and papers, were sent back to England. This journey took almost a full year. He was buried in Westminster Abbey in London in April, 1874.

As part of his travels, David Livingstone learned more about African customs, geography, and the slave trade than any other European. David Livingstone’s expeditions helped the world learn about the continent of Africa.

Amy Carmichael (1867-1951)

Amy Carmichael was born in North Ireland. When she was 18 her father died and the family went to Belfast where Amy became involved with mission work in Belfast itself.

As a child Amy Carmichael had been strongly influenced by beggars and homeless children. She had organized groups within her church to help children, particularly those who were ill from working in the mills.

Now the desire for missionary work was in her heart. She was accepted by a missionary group and in January 1892 she went to Japan to join a group doing missionary work there. She failed to meet up with this group but was taken in to a family where she learnt the local customs and the language. She fell ill and was sent to China for treatment. From there she went to Ceylon and by 1894 she was back in Japan.

However she was now ready for the work that God had planned for her. She was asked to go to India which she did. In the mountains near Bangalore Amy discovered her work was to set up a home for young girls who had been rescued from the Hindu temples where they had been forced into prostitution. This is a practice still around today! Later she built a house for boys and a community hospital.  She ran these homes for fifty-five years until her death in 1951.