The New Zealand Church Missionary Society is a mission society working within the Anglican Communion and Protestant, Evangelical Anglicanism. The parent organisation was founded in England in 1799. The Church Missionary Society (CMS) sent missionaries to settle in New Zealand. The Rev. Samuel Marsden, the Society's Agent and the Senior Chaplain to the New South Wales government, officiated at its first service on Christmas Day in 1814, at Oihi Bay in the Bay of Islands, New Zealand.