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The rise and fall of the Student Volunteer Movement

1888: much enthusiasm

In 1888, “the year opened with much enthusiasm about what could be done.” Much had been done in 1886, and less in 1887, and the Student Volunteer Movement was concerned it would die out. Fifty volunteers with the Student Volunteer Movement came together at Northfield 1888 to pray and plan, and identified several challenges to the movement: loss of unity, growin gcoldness of volunteers, conflict with existing agencies, and a desire to expand and touch more colleges.

The volunteers decided the Movement should confine itself to students and establish formal leadership. Since virtually all of the volunteers were members of one of the student organizations, they proposed creating an executive committee of three members, one from each of the three student organizations (YMCA, YWCA, Inter-Seminary Missionary alliance).

The student organizations agreed to this, and they appointed John R. Mott (YMCA), Miss Nettie Dunn (YWCA), and Mr. Wilder (Inter-Seminary Missionary Alliance). Wilder became the Traveling Secretary and Mott became the chairman. Wilder was urged to spend another year among the colleges he had previously visited, and thoroughly organize the volunteers.

In addition, they established an Advisory Committee of seven people: five from leading evangelical denominations, one from YMCA and one from YWCA. “The Executive Committee was to confer with the Advisory Committee about every new step taken so nothing would be done to justify unfavorable criticism. The movement was designed to help the church boards in every way possible and in no sense to encroach upon their territory or conflict with their work.”

Finally, they created a Corresponding Member in every State and Province who would be the agent of the Executive Committee and carry out their policy to “conserve and extend the movement in the State.” The traveling secretary would then touch only the leading colleges in each state. In some states there might be a corresponding committee.

In each [educational] institution, the Volunteers formed the Volunteer Band, which frequently constituted the missionary committee of the college Association. The fourfold purpose of this organization is, (i) To awaken and maintain among all Christian students of the United States and Canada, intelligent and active interest in foreign missions; (2) to enrol a sufficient number of properly qualified Student Volunteers to meet the successive demands of the various missionary boards; (3) to help all such intending missionaries to prepare for their lifework, and to enlist their co-operation in developing the missionary life of the home church; (4) to lay an equal burden of responsibility on all students who are to remain as ministers and lay workers at home, that they may actively promote the missionary enterprise by their intelligent advocacy, by their gifts and by their prayers. The Volunteer Movement is in no sense a missionary board.’ It is rather a recruiting agency for all the Boards. (Erb 1916)

Agencies were likewise organizing—sort of. An ecumenical conference was finally held in London. Unfortunately, “mission leaders congratulated each other on what had been done but never got around, as planned, to dividing up the remaining task.” Pierson delivered several addresses in which he warned that world evangelization could not be achieved at the present rate of progress, yet “because it was hastily organized and because so many speakers were on the platform, there was no opportunity for genuine strategic planning.” It was a “huge, popular conference” that did not give the mission agencies time to plan properly. The conference closed by suggesting that the event pave the way for a still greater conference “to organize more completely.”

The women meeting in Richmond, again in conjunction with the men’s Convention meeting, voted to organize a central committee, the name of which in 1890 became the “Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU), Auxiliary to the Southern Baptist Convention.”

The preamble to their Constitution, submitted to an anxious men’s meeting a few blocks away, read as follows: “We, the women of the churches connected with the Southern Baptist Convention, desirous of stimulating the missionary spirit and the grace of giving, among the women and children of the churches, and aiding in collecting funds for missionary purposes, to be disbursed by the Boards of the Southern Baptist Convention, and disclaiming all intention of independent action, organize and adopt [this Constitution].”

There was still some conflict: rural Baptists, many of whom would never affiliate with the Convention, believed the local church to be the highest form of religious organization, and they had little interest in domestic or world missions. Leaders of the state conventions did engage in missions work, but they were suspicious of a regional denomination that might exercise too much control over local and state missions activities or over matters of theology. (Women’s Missionary Union).

The WMU began its labor by working closely with the Home Mission Board and the Sunday School Board, contributing to their publications, sponsoring a Convention-wide “Missionary Day” to promote missions giving in Sunday schools South-wide, and perhaps most importantly, organizing a graded program of missions education classes (beginning with the preschool-age “Sunbeams”) for Southern Baptist children and youth.

During the late 1880s, Christian Endeavor’s the first international convention was held after the Canadian delegation was admitted. 1889 was the year that Christian Endeavor gained wide recognition. In that year, John Willis Baer, a gifted administrator, became general secretary, a post he would hold until 1902. The first city-wide unions of Christian Endeavor societies came into existence.

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© 2008 Momentum Magazine.
Related: The Mission Manual · Justin Long's Annotated Links and Notes