Ongoing Mission Heritage
"The living, the living—they praise you, as I am doing today; parents tell their children about your faithfulness" Is 38:19
The ongoing message and power of heritage serves to inspire us to continued faithfulness in going into all the world for the cause of Christ.
The Burnside Christian Church, which began in 1864 as the Burnside Christian Chapel, changed its name to Burnside Family Church in 2013.
William Finlayson
This Church has a long history of missionary involvement, going back to the first pastor, William Finlayson. He was born in Glasgow in 1813 and came from Scotland to the very new colony in South Australia with his young wife Helen in February 1837.
Robert Finlayson
He had hoped to be a missionary to the Pacific Islanders, or to the Aboriginal people around Adelaide. Instead he was involved in the early development of Scots Church and later Pastor Tom Playford’s Bentham St Chapel in the late 1840s. Then in 1855 he became co-pastor with Jacob Abbott at the Zion Chapel in Pulteney St, which later planted the Christian Chapel here at Burnside in 1864.
The Zion Chapel sent out missionaries to China, Sudan and India, including William Finlayson’s granddaughters, Nurse Lily Ambrose and her sister Dr Ethel Ambrose. They both served with the Poona and Indian Village Mission for decades from 1905.
Robert Finlayson was initially co-pastor with his father William at Burnside, then from 1872 he was pastor in his own right. In 1911 he and the Burnside congregation supported and prayed for their first young missionaries, Reginald and Annetta Burrow. Known to all as Reg and Hettie, they had both graduated from the first Missionary Bible Training Colleges in Adelaide prior to their marriage in 1910. They worked from 1911 to 1927 in Bolivia, involved in Bible teaching, preaching, baptising, and church planting among the Quechua people, as well as medical work and hospitality.
Later in 1949 Reg and Hettie’s eldest son Allan, a former teacher and pastor, became the first principal of Adelaide Bible institute, when it became a residential college for theological study. Hundreds of A.B.I. students have become pastors and missionaries and many young people from this church studied at the college, which became Bible College of SA in 1973.
Many missionaries from the Burnside Christian Church, worked for decades in countries of Africa, Asia, South America and the Pacific Islands, as well as here in Australia.
These missionaries endured great hardship as they served the people in the country to which God had called them. There were new languages to learn, new cultures and food to adapt to, often difficult climates and primitive conditions. Many parents had to eventually send their children away to boarding school, or back to Australia to continue their education.
By the 1990s, mission work was changing and as a result, many missions developed short term work lasting for a few years, or a few months, or even just a few weeks, in order to utilise people with specific skills. Many Burnside folk were involved in short term mission ministry in the 1990s and into the 2000s.
The Burnside congregation has always prayed for their missionaries and supported them financially.