Student Power in World Evangelism (Urbana 70)
page 4 of 6by David Howard
read more Urbana 70 talks
About David Howard (as of 1970)
this talk has been put on six pages for ease of use. This is the fourth.
Click to go to another page: << previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 next >>
God was at work elsewhere during these years. In the early 1840s, a student named Royal Wilder was a member of the Society of the Brethren at Andover Seminary. In 1846, he sailed for India under the American Board of Commissioners. After serving there for thirty years, he was forced home in 1877 by poor health. Settling in Princeton, New Jersey, he founded a periodical, The Missionary Review of the World.
His son, Robert Wilder, enrolled in Princeton College in 1881, where he became greatly concerned that God would awaken students there to their responsibility to the rest of the world. On Sunday afternoons he would meet in his father's living room with other students to pray to this end. In 1883, they formed the Princeton Foreign Missionary Society.
Then God began to bring together some other strands. J.E.K. Studd, brother to C.T. Studd of the famous Cambridge Seven, came to the United States in 1885 to share with students here the vision which the Cambridge Seven had spread in England. While visiting Cornell University he was used of God to influence deeply the life of a young sophomore there named John R. Mott.
In the summer of 1885, God in his sovereignty brought together Luther Wishard of the YMCA, Robert Wilder of Princeton, John R. Mott of Cornell, and J.E.K. Studd of Cambridge - all of whom shared a mutual vision for awakening missionary interest among students. Strands which had begun eighty years earlier under the haystack were being formed into what has been called "the golden chain stretching from the Haystack Meeting to the greatest student uprising in all history." These young men were convinced that God wanted to do a great thing among students of their day. So they requested D.L. Moody, the evangelist, to sponsor a student Bible conference in the summer of 1886. He agreed and plans were under way.
In July 1886, 251 students gathered at Mount Hermon, Massachusetts, at the conference grounds of D.L. Moody, for a month of fellowship, prayer and Bible study with Moody and A.T. Pierson, editor of The Missionary Review of the World and a renowned Bible teacher. Wilder and his sister, Grace, were praying that out of that conference God would call one hundred missionary volunteers.
During the month the Holy Spirit began to work in a quiet yet unmistakable way. After a powerful address by Dr. Pierson on "God's Providence in Modern Missions," most of the students spent the better part of the night in prayer. That address provided the seed thoughts for the watchword that became the cry of the students: "The evangelization of the world in this generation." By the last night of the conference, ninety-nine students had signed a declaration saying that they were willing and desirous to go to the unevangelized portions of the world. On that night one more student came to Robert Wilder to indicate a similar desire. Wilder's prayers were answered.
But the students were not willing to let this vision stop with the end of the conference. They requested Wilder and another Princeton student, John Forman, to travel during the coming year to other campuses to impart a similar vision to students around the United States and Canada. Wilder and Forman agreed. During the 1886-87 school year, they visited 162 schools and saw 2,106 students sign missionary volunteer declarations. Among these were some of the great missionary leaders of the next half-century, including Samuel Zwemer, a great apostle to the Muslims, and Robert E. Speer, an outstanding Presbyterian statesman.
The students also felt that some form of organization was needed to keep up their impetus. So they formed the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions (SVM), which was formally incorporated in 1888. John R. Mott was named chairman and Wilder traveling secretary. The cry, "The evangelization of the world in this generation" became their watchword. Mott in later life said, "I can truthfully answer that next to the decision to take Christ as the Leader and Lord of my life, the watchword has had more influence than all other ideals and objectives combined to widen my horizon and enlarge my conception of the kingdom of God."
The growth of the SVM was phenomenal. In 1891 they sponsored the first student missionary convention. This subsequently became a quadrennial affair, held every four years. (IVCF readily acknowledges its debt to the SVM for the idea which lies behind this present Urbana convention.) For the next thirty years the conventions and the movement in general grew rapidly. By the post-World War I era, literally thousands of students had gone overseas as missionaries as a result of the influence of the SVM. The entire church of Christ in the United States and Canada was awakened to its worldwide responsibilities by the impact of this movement.
The first quadrennial convention following World War I was held at Des Moines, Iowa, in 1920. This was the SVM's peak year, statistically and in terms of influence. There were 6,890 people who attended the Des Moines Convention, and 2,783 students enrolled as missionary volunteers the following year. Less than twenty years later the entire enrollment of student volunteers for one year was 25. The quadrennial convention held at Toronto in 1940 was attended by only 465 delegates. What had happened to cause such a drastic change in so short a time?
this talk has been put on six pages for ease of use. This is the fourth.
Click to go to another page: << previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 next >>
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
Print
Email
Comments
Be the first one to add a comment.
To post a comment, please login or register