In October 1795 the editors of the fledgling interdenominational journal,the Evangelical Magazine, founded by the LMS director John Eyre with the partial aim of promoting missions, informed its readers of the spectacular success of a week of meetings held in September to form the London Missionary Society. The first private British missionary society designed exclusively to convert the heathen had been founded three years previously by the Particular Baptists. The LMS, however, was the first interdenominational society and the first to make such a large-scale bid for public support.The Evangelical Magazine was undoubtedly a biased reporter, but itsaccount is nonetheless striking. ‘It is with infinite satisfaction and joy unspeakable, that we now inform our anxious readers that their wishes are not only gratified, but our own expectations far, very far exceeded’.Crowded morning and evening services had been held throughout the week, at one of which thousands had been turned away. On the final evening, some of the ministers present ‘could not, for a time, proceed for tears of joy’.

By 25 September the Anglican Evangelical banker Henry Thornton wasable to write informally to a future leading organizer of the Church Missionary Society, John Venn, on the rapid fund-raising success of the new society: