It was established in 1893 by its three founders, Walter Gowans and Rowland Bingham of Canada and Thomas Kent of the United States.

Gowans and Kent traveled to what is now Northern Nigeria with a Kru guide, Tom Coffee, but the two died of malaria.

Until 1998, SIM worked in Benin, Burkina Faso, Central African Republic, Ivory Coast, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan and Togo.

Initially, the headquarters was located in San Pedro de Buena Vista before being transferred to the more accessible Cochabamba.

Whereas the mission activities were relatively straightforward among the Quechua on the (highland) Altiplano, the real challenge began when the BIM reached out to the naked tribes of the inhospitable lowland Beni region.

Here, in 1923, while exploring the area prior to establishing a mission station, BIM-founder Allan narrowly escaped death from malaria, but young fellow missionary Henry C. Webendorfer succumbed to the disease.

[3] In 1999, Radio Mosoj Chaski was founded as an evangelical short wave station to reach the Quechua-speaking population in Bolivia.

[9] In the 1890s, two other small missions were formed to work in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), South India, and in the Philippines.

They served in Angola, Botswana, Gabon, Madagascar, Mauritius, Réunion, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

[11] In 2016, branches of the Middle East Christian Outreach (MECO) joined hands with SIM.