The missionary society known as SAMS is keeping its acronym but changing what the initials mean. What was the South American Missionary Society–USA is now the Society of Anglican Missionaries and Senders.
“We are offering more opportunities for people to serve,” said Stewart Wicker, president and mission director of SAMS.
Wicker said the society sent its first missionary outside of Central and South America 15 years ago. That missionary served in Spain, and today 20 of the society’s 78 missionaries are serving outside of South America.
“It’s been a gradual process for us,” Wicker told The Living Church. “We have more people serving in South America than at any point in our history.”
The society’s previous name was becoming a source of confusion, both to local bishops and donors, when missionaries served on other continents, Wicker said.
Including the word Anglican in the society’s new name was an important reflection that the society works not only with Episcopalians but with a broad array of people within the Anglican tradition, Wicker said.
“We thought it probably would be the most explosive word, but in the best sense of the word it was inclusive,” he said.
SAMS–USA was founded in 1976, but its parent — the Britain-based South American Mission Society — dates to a vision by Capt. Allen Gardiner, a British missionary who died of starvation in Tierra del Fuego in 1851.
The SAMS General Council voted in 2008 to merge with the Church Mission Society. They merged on Feb. 1 of this year and are known as CMS.
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For the sake of clarity I would like to comment and correct the impression of the last paragraph. It is in the UK/Britain that SAMS and CMS merged and have taken the name CMS. In the USA it is SAMS-USA that continues to be the Missionary Society. CMS has ceased to exist as such in the USA and the former CMS missionaries have been incorporated into SAMS-USA. It is the opposite of what happened in the UK.
Missionaries who were under SAMS-GB are now under CMS, which is now a registered charity in the UK. Bishop Henry Scriven in Oxford, England, oversees this aspect of the works of CMS. Missionaries who had served under CMS-USA now serve under SAMS in the USA.