After 1817 there initially began a time when the newly joined forces first had to gain experience. New missionary associations appeared in many places and spurred on the old Elberfeld Association to compete with them. And it did not lack for energy and good will, if only it could be given a clearly circumscribed, clearly recognizable field of work. At that time several members were prompted in a very special way to work among the Jews in their immediate environment, and this provided the impetus for the society to devote itself for some time almost exclusively to disseminating the Gospel among the Jews, without losing sight of the mission to the heathens. Now it is well known, however, that the mission to the Jews is an exceedingly difficult task, abounding in deceptions and bitter experiences. And on top of that, our society had chosen the most troublesome part of the mission to the Jews, namely the question of converts.
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Let us also take a closer look at the brief history of the Barmen Missionary Society. It took a long time before Barmen decided to participate in the missionary work. Once, at the beginning of the century, when the Elberfeld Missionary Society invited the friends in Barmen to participate, the latter turned them down. Everything was still unclear and in flux. But when a new breath of spring swept through the German lands, when all powers began to stir under the mild and just rule of the Hohenzollern kings, and a feeling of security and well-being permeated everything, the subdued friends of the Kingdom of God lifted up their heads also in Barmen. The new stirrings were centered around a young and zealous preacher, whose memory as the real founder of the Barmen society and later also the Rhenish Missionary Society will remain a blessing among us and all his many friends. He was pastor Leipoldt, initially an auxiliary preacher in Wichlinghausen, later pastor of the union* parish of Unterbarmen. For some time, he had already been working to create a society of friends of the Bible and of missionary work, similar to what existed in Elberfeld; but the matter was still too unfamiliar to the parishioners, and in addition everything was in a kind of religious ferment, from which a new and fresh parish life had to take shape first. A visit from pastor Blumhardt helped them to surmount the initial difficulties. Blumhardt, the inspector of the newly established Missionary Society in Basel, was seeking to set up auxiliary societies for Basel also in this region. However, he found the ground in Barmen still so little prepared that he initially dared only to bring up the matter of the bibles. But when, in response to confidential questioning, he discussed at the length the purpose of the Basel Society and the progress in the heathen mission, a new meeting was immediately agreed upon, and on September 8, 1818, before a fairly numerous assembly, Blumhardt delivered a lecture that struck a chord. Together with young Leipoldt, he had already criss-crossed all of Barmen to personally look up and recruit the most capable
* Union: united Lutheran and Calvinist – ed.
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