The Foreign Missions Committee was established by the "Southern Church" of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand. The Southern Church was represented by the Presbyterian Synod of Otago and Southland and was based on the Free Church of Scotland ideals.
The Foreign Mission Committee was elected to take charge of missionary activities for the "Southern Church" of the Presbyterian Church in New Zealand. This included administering all foreign mission appointments and matters and organising an annual mission collection to support missionaries in the field.

Rev. Thomas Smaill was born in Edinburgh, Scotland on 28 July 1857, His family emigrated to Otago New Zealand in 1858. Thomas Smaill apprenticed as a joiner and later studied for a BA at Otago University before attending the Theological Hall Dunedin from 1883-1885. After postgraduate and City Mission work in Edinburgh, he studied medical classes and hospital practice in Dunedin prior to missionary work in the New Hebrides.
Thomas Smaill was ordained as a missionary at Knox Church, Dunedin on 25 February 1889. He travelled to Nikaura, Epi later in 1889. In 1890 he returned to New Zealand and married Helen Grant of Leeston and then returned to the New Hebrides.
On 21 April 1895 five men and two women were baptized into the Church membership at Epi under Rev. Thomas Smaill. By the end of the 19th Century membership was close to 100 people. Rev. and Mrs. Smaill lost their first and second children and their third child, Nellie, was born in New Zealand. Rev. Smaill caught a chill after going out in a hurricane to administer medical aid to a native woman and died on 12 April 1902 aged 44 years old. He was buried beside his two children at Nikaura on Epi Island, Vanuatu.