Johann Oncken was born on this day 225 years ago.  After he began his life of Christian service his motto became “Every Baptist a missionary,” and those were not just words.  By 1850 the Baptist church he started in Hamburg supported three missionaries, established numerous other German churches and helped to build twenty meeting places for some of those congregations.  Pastor Oncken himself was an evangelist as well as pastor.  In 1847 he went to Switzerland and lead enough souls to Christ to establish a church there, after which he traveled to Austria where more were saved.  In 1855 he was in Latvia preaching.  On one of his preaching trips he baptized a Romanian man who returned to Bucharest as a colporteur and eventually a church planter.  When some Hungarians visited Germany they were evangelized and then baptized by Oncken, before returning home as missionaries to their countrymen.  Brother Oncken also had a printing ministry, giving him material to distribute door-to-door and on the docks to sailors who in turn carried the gospel throughout the world.

Historian, Leon McBeth, called Brother Oncken a one man mission society, a theological seminary and literature distribution center.  “Not only in Germany, but also throughout Europe, much of the Baptist work stems either directly from Oncken or from others whom he trained and sent out.”

Despite the souls in heaven today because of this man’s work, there is little remaining there today, reminding us that our work is never, never, never finished, whether on the other side of the world or next door to our church.  As Brother Oncken believed, “Every Baptist should be a missionary.”

– Source: This Day in Baptist History, Cummins and Thompson