South Seas Evangelical Church, Solomon Islands

South Seas Evangelical Church was founded in 1886 as the Queensland Kanaka Mission (QKM) in Queensland, Australia as an evangelical, non-denominational church targeting Kanakas (blackbirded sugarcane plantation laborers) mostly from the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.

Florence Selina Harriet Young (1856-1940) is considered the founding secretary of the organization. Florence was born in Motueka, South Island, New Zealand, the fifth child of English farmers who were Plymouth Brethren. She also served 1891-1900 with the China Inland Mission. She wrote an autobiography, Pearls from the Pacific, published in London in 1925.

At the height of QKM in 1904-05, it employed 19 missionaries, 118 volunteer "native teachers", and claimed 2150 conversions. The South Seas Evangelical Mission (SSEM) was established in 1904 by Young as a follow-up branch on the Solomon Islands, changing name to the South Seas Evangelical Church in 1964, and independent from the Mission in 1975. This church is presently the third largest denomination in the Solomon Islands, claiming 17% of the population, and is presently considered Pentecostal.

Sources

Wikipedia

• Florence Young
• South Seas Evangelical Church

Other

“Malaitan Christians Overseas, 1880s–1910s.” Making Mala: Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s, by MOORE CLIVE, ANU Press, Australia, 2017, pp. 144. JSTOR, www.jstor.org. Accessed 16 Oct. 2020.