Paget Wilkes

Alpheus Paget Wilkes (19 January 1871 – 5 October 1934) was an English evangelical Christian missionary to Japan who was one of the founders of the Japan Evangelistic Band in 1903. In addition to extensive mission work in Japan, and touring South East Asia, he wrote a number of penetrating expositions of Christian scriptures.

Wilkes was born on at Titchwell, Norfolk, the second son of Rev. Alpheus Wilkes and his wife Mary Davies. He was and brought up in Little Walsingham where his father, an austere evangelical from Yorkshire, was headmaster of the Grammar School and also vicar of West Barsham. His mother was the daughter of Henry Davies, bookseller, publisher and newspaper editor of Cheltenham. She was vivacious and nicknamed "y Deryn" for her lovely singing voice, while Wilkes was heavy and serious, a contrast that was too marked to make for harmony. Paget Wilkes and his elder brother Lewis were initially taught at home in an environment of strict simplicity and discipline. Few pleasures were permitted, and little variety came into their lives. Their mother died when Paget was thirteen and following the remarriage of his father in 1886, the family home became a centre for highly religious spinsters. Wilkes went to Bedford School and Lincoln College, Oxford. Inspired by a meeting led by Frederick Brotherton Meyer, he became a devoted Christian and during his three years at Oxford he spent part of his vacations in Christian work helping in the work of the Children's Special Service Mission. There was a strong Christian zeal at Oxford at the time, and in those ten years 60 missionaries went from Oxford. Wilkes was particularly inspired by Richard Reader Harris and his Pentecostal League.

In 1898 Wilkes began his mission work in Japan at Matsue and Osaka on the invitation of Barclay Buxton, who first went to Japan in 1890. They returned to England in 1902. In 1903 at the Keswick Convention, Wilkes and Buxton founded the Japan Evangelistic Band (or JEB). The Band was devoted to aggressive evangelism and personal holiness. The work of the JEB, now known as JCL, has led to the establishment of the Kansai Bible College in Kobe and over 150 churches in Japan.

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