基督教国外传教事业(mission)

指有组织的宣传基督教教义的运动。使徒圣保罗把福音传到小亚细亚和希腊很多地方，这种新兴宗教迅速沿着罗马帝国的商道传播开来。西元500年後基督教推进的步伐随着罗马帝国的瓦解和7～8世纪的阿拉伯人力量的增强而放慢，但塞尔特和英格兰传教士继续在西欧和北欧传播信仰，同时君士坦丁堡的希腊教会的传教士在东欧和俄国发展。对伊斯兰地区和东方诸国的传教事业始於中世纪，并且当16世纪西班牙、葡萄牙和法国建立起海外帝国时，罗马天主教会将传教士派到美洲和菲律宾群岛去。19世纪天主教传教士活动再次集中在非洲和亚洲。在国外传教事业上新教稍微迟了一些，但在19世纪和20世纪初新教传教活动达於顶点。传教工作今天仍在继续，虽然它经常被已经获得独立的前欧洲殖民地的政府所阻挠。

English version：

mission

Organized effort to spread the Christian faith. St. Paul evangelized much of Asia Minor and Greece, and the new religion spread rapidly along the trade routes of the Roman empire. The advance of Christianity slowed with the disintegration of the Roman empire after 500 and the growth of Arab power in the 7th-8th century, but Celtic and British missionaries continued to spread the faith in western and northern Europe, while missionaries of the Greek church in Constantinople worked in eastern Europe and Russia. Missions to Islamic areas and the Orient began in the medieval period, and when Spain, Portugal, and France established overseas empires in the 16th century, the Roman Catholic church sent missionaries to the Americas and the Philippines. A renewed wave of Roman Catholic missionary work in the 19th century focused on Africa and Asia. Protestant churches were slower to undertake foreign missions, but in the 19th and early 20th century there was a great upsurge in Protestant missionary activity. Missionary work continues today, though it is often discouraged by the governments of former European colonies that have won independence.