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Life and ministry
Overview
David Stokes was born in 1905. Rev Stokes and his wife, Caroline, married around 1946.
David Stokes worked for the Bible Churchmen’s Missionary Society (B.C.M.S., now Crosslinks) in Gondar and Addis Ababa from 1939 to 1974.
- Another source mentions 1934.
Stokes was active in various ministry fields, including distributing Bibles, writing study materials on New Testament scriptures and teaching at a Bible school.
For a time he worked with members of
Stokes passed away in 1985.
Details
Pedersen, Early Evangelicals, p. 30 [with reference to a phone call with Colin Mansell in May 2004], reads:
“From 1933 [?] till the Italians arrived he worked in Addis Ababa, forming a Bible school, which unfortunately was closed quite effectively by the Italians when they killed the local director after Stokes had fled to Kenya. After the Italians were defeated,
Stokes returned in 1942, and established a Bible school in Fiche Sillale, close to Debre Libanos. In 1970 Stokes retired, and in 1985, 80 years old, he died.
Today Stokes is known as having played a decisive role in the translation of the Old Testament, as being central in first edition of the Amharic Bible Dictionary, and as being the author of quite a number of commentaries to the New Testament, which are still available. [… ] quite a number of Mr. Stokes’ students seem to have been engaged by the mission organizations working in relation to Mekane Yesus.”
Mentoring
David Stokes was a key person in the spiritual journeys of Meseret Sebhat Leab and Memre Sileshi Wolde Mikael. Launhardt writes (Evangelicals, p. 272):
“During his time in Fiche he met Mr. Stokes from the BCMS, and decided in 1953 to attend the BCMS Bible School. Sileshi joined that group which called itself ‘Serawite Kristos’.”
- Resource person: Mesfin Lissanu (cf. Tibebe Eshete 2009, p. 350: “He was a close personal friend of David Stokes, the missionary from the BCMS who has left a major impact on the Orthodox Church in Ethiopia. Mesfin later joined the ECMY and became one of its key leaders.”
David Stokes was also an important person in the spiritual journey of one of the first Evangelicals in Bale, Haile Mariam Engeda.
Hymn book
“According to Wubshet [Desalegn], in the 1950s David Stokes tried to develop an indigenous hymnal known as Shumiye based on the lyrical tradition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, but it did not attract wide attention.” (Tibebe Eshete, Evangelical Movement, p. 433, n. 14 [Profile of Wubshet on p. 363])
- See (also?) the hymn book Mäzmurä bǝrhan (1955/56).
Picture
(adapted from Horton & Wright [1947], The first 25 years, before p. 209)
Further reading
» View bibliography