Thomas A. Lambie

Book excerpt: Dr. Thomas A. Lambie was called a "loose cannon" by his Presbyterian missionary colleagues in British Sudan in 1907 because of his energy, vision, and spiritual fervor. Through combined gifts of diplomacy and medical prowess, Lambie, together with two missionary colleagues, launched the Sudan Interior Mission in Ethiopia in 1927. The goal of this enterprise was to evangelize the primal religionists of southern Ethiopia. During ten years of pioneering mission efforts by Lambie and nearly one hundred SIM cohorts, a young church of nearly fifty baptized believers was formed. The missionaries were then evicted from Ethiopia by the invading Italians in 1936. This modest beginning became the foundation for what is today the vibrant Ethiopian Kale Heywet Church, the largest evangelical denomination in Ethiopia.