London City Mission was set up by David Nasmith on 16 May 1835 in the Hoxton area of east London. The first paid missionary was Lindsay Burfoot. Today it is part of the wider City Mission Movement.

History

The London City Mission's early work centred on the poor and destitute, developing a wide range of charitable help including Ragged Schools and ministering to working people. One missionary wrote Last year I walked 3,000 miles on London pavements, paid 1,300 visits, 300 of which were to sick and dying cab men. Missionaries were also appointed to visit members of London's new fire service. The service's first Chief, James Braidwood, introduced the first such missionary in 1854. Within five years the missionary was visiting nineteen fire stations throughout London, ministering to 450 people (firemen, their wives and dependents). The first Ragged School established by the London City Mission was in 1835 in a disused stable in the City of Westminster. It was established by the missionary Andrew Walker with a charitable donation fund-raised by Lord Shaftesbury amongst his colleagues in, and visitors to, the Houses of Parliament. Lord Shaftesbury became an ardent supporter of the Mission and YMCA's founder George Williams (YMCA) was an early president, until his death in 1905. LCM was established as a joint venture by members of different Protestant denominations. LCM was a pioneering organisation, in: LCM and its staff were innovative, being instrumental in the founding of other Christian and social organisations and in developing a range of ministry methods.

Work of the Mission

The LCM exists to share with the people of London, patiently, sensitively and individually the transforming love of God in Jesus Christ, and to enable them to join his Church. A scholarly work on the London City Mission is Donald M. Lewis' Lighten Their Darkness: The Evangelical Mission to Working-Class London, 1828-1860 (Greenwood Press, 1985; reprinted by Paternoster, 2001). Lewis examines the role that the LCM played in broadening interdenominational cooperation among evangelicals in the nineteenth century, against the earlier view that this sort of cooperation only emerged much later in the century. As the object of the Mission is to extend the knowledge of the Gospel, it is a fundamental law that the following doctrines be prominently taught by the Agents and publications of the Mission. They are given "not in the words which man's wisdom teaches, but which the Holy Spirit teaches".