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The rise and fall of the Student Volunteer Movement

The Student Volunteer Movement

The Student Volunteer Movement was a remarkable moment in time, when thousands of young people committed themselves to a task and a career which they viewed as reasonable and honorable. While this achievement is laudable, it is unfortunate that the SVM was not able to endure long-term. At the risk of seeming to be overly critical of a great movement, here are some of the reasons why to me it seemed to falter:

• The SVM’s local groups were more of an afterthought. Individuals were first members of the national movement. Local volunteer groups (or “bands”) and regional unions were formed on an ad hoc basis to provide fellowship and support for volunteers, but the relationship between these groups and the National Movement was never very organized and subject to policy flip-flops. “Local groups tended to gradually lose contact with the aims and mood of the national headquarters and to settle into their own traditions. Some groups, for example, became involved in home missions projects at a time when the national Movement was striving to confirm its commitment to the foreign side of missions.” (Smalley 1980)

• The SVM confined itself to college campuses, but did not develop structures that would give the apppearance of competition. While it developed relationships with groups like Christian Endeavor, it did not completely integrate with them either. It thus had no real broad structure and had to work through its conventions, conferences, word-of-mouth from members, and itinerating speakers. Moreover, by not integrating itself with other groups, it did not have natural authority figures who served as self-advertising references (as Christian Endeavor did by integrating with churches and serving pastors).

• The SVM was indelibly tied to its watchword, which was indelibly tied to 1900. Once this date had passed, and after the events of World War I, the SVM found it very difficult to change its culture and expectations. The momentum of the marketing campaign was broken.

• Without a local relational structure, the SVM could not follow up on promise-breakers. The SVM’s strongest component was its vision and its pledge. However, a criticism was that the pledge was often made in the heat of an emotional moment, and many did not keep it, once made. Without a local structure, the SVM could not provide long-term encouragement and help to would-be missionaries who were finding it difficult to go.

• SVM became a bureaucracy. The “voice” of SVM came to be dominated by a few people who had their own agenda which neither matched up with the top level management or the grass-roots audience. That this was permitted to continue speaks of some significant confusion and lack of authority.

• SVM chose an agenda over its promise and its constituency. By aligning itself with more liberal groups that were becoming more and more anti-missionary, and excluding itself from the more pro-missionary agencies, it became more and more powerless to achieve its ‘plausible promise.’

Lessons to apply

Today, billions of people still have no access to Christ, Christianity or the Gospel, and among other things we need more workers. A modern mobilization initiative will, I think, need:

• A clear, rational, achievable, plausible goal. To evangelize the world in a specific timeframe (e.g. 10 or 20 years) has been a failed ‘goal’ twice. Perhaps a more plausible goal is to mobilize—and maintain—a sufficient number of missionary workers to realistically achieve closure. Previous research published here illustrates that possibly, the target number should be about 150,000 new workers.

• A flexible grassroots structure that can plug in to any local niche group. To mobilize sufficient workers, we need to mobilize not just students, but every kind of niche group. Therefore, we need a structure that can plug into any existing structure—college, church, community—in order to tap the broadest possible pool of candidates.

• An intention to build multigenerational endurance. The movement needs to tie itself to the idea of mobilizing sufficient workers rather than a specific date. Workers will be retire, die, or otherwise leave the field, and new workers will be needed to replace them. We need a long-term effort that can sustain the number of workers through the inevitable ebb and flood. The promise and values of the initiative must be clearly stated, agreed to by all members, and inculcated into future generations of mobilizers.

• Build a long-term connection to the candidate through local relationships. Rather than utilizing emotional appeals, we need to focus on finding the best way to identify people who already evidence a calling, connect with them in a supportive way, and help them fulfill that calling. This keeps the movement from being tied to charismatic, magnetic, ambitious personalities.

• Empower local “Candidate Care”. Again, rather than relying on magnetic mobilization personalities (if for no other reason than there are never enough of these), we need to focus on training and empowering local people within churches who will identify, encourage and mentor local candidates from their church.

• We must learn to adapt. The network must be constantly changing and refining its processes and resources in order to better achieve its goals.

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