Eade , Barnado Nansen (Bun)

1901-1988. Despite having primary schooling only, Eade had a lifelong hunger for learning. He furthered his education by subsequently attending night-classes. Later, when training for the Baptist ministry in Wellington under Baptist pastors Rollings, Harry and Edridge (there being no Baptist College at that time) he also studied at Victoria University College. In his final year of training he was senior student amongst the nine inaugural students of N.Z. Baptist College in 1926. He then became an N.Z.B.M.S. missionary 1926-1962. His first 20 years were in Chandpur (now in Bangladesh). He was subsequently a missionary in Tripura, India, responsible especially for establishing and leading the Tripura Bible School from 1948. His holistic gospel focus showed in his famine relief work in the 1940s (for which he was awarded the Kaiser-I-Hind Medal of India in 1945 – something like an OBE), in his encouraging his Tripuri students to develop basic medical skills to use in villages when they served as pastors, and in his setting up a rural reconstruction fund in Tripura to help debt-burdened farmers redeem their land from voracious moneylenders. In his retirement in N.Z., Eade engaged in church extension work, in ecumenical activity and in support of CORSO, Save the Children Fund and the anti-apartheid movement. Refs: B.E. Hibbert, B.N. Eade (Shapers of Baptist Life pamphlet series); obituary: NZB December 1988.