William Carey was a brilliant scholar, learning Latin and Greek and other languages while a teen working as an apprentice in a shoe shop. He became a Baptist pastor and school teacher. He was concerned for the “heathen” masses who did not know the good news about Christ and eventually moved to India where he lived and labored for 41 years. He translated and printed the Bible into several languages, preached and taught school, and founded a school to train indigenous preachers.
Before going to India he founded a mission organization called the Particular Baptist Missionary Society. Baptists and many other groups have employed Carey’s methodology for doing missions and for funding the work ever since. He is widely recognized as the father of modern gospel missions.
William Carey was born in 1761 and died in 1834. His legacy lives on in the mission model he began and in the six schools named for him around the world. Carey is easily one of the top five most influential Baptists of all time and a great example of a missionary.