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The rise and fall of the Student Volunteer Movement
Conclusion
Certainly, the Student Volunteer Movement achieved some very laudable things. However, we would do well to take warning from many of its key failures—to raise sufficient workers for the task, to build a cohesive and enduring structure, to make a smooth transition in power from one generation to the next while preserving its values and, in the long-term, its failure to keep its promise.
When the SVM ceased to exist, the reason given was that “the SVM was among the first to act on the formation of a movement fully representative of the churches, and agreed that the sense of mission was sufficiently embodied in the student movement for the Commission to cease a separate existence.”
Yet the early days members of the SVM would probably not have articulated the idea of ‘embodying the sense of mission in the student movement.’ The ‘plausible promise’ of the SVM was ‘the evangelization of the world in this generation.’ At the time this goal was considered, by SVM’s leaders and respected mentors, to be imminently achievable. That the SVM failed to keep this promise may have been sufficient reason for turning out the lights. But turning out the lights for the reason given simply implies that SVM lost its direction along the way.
Christian Endeavor and the Women’s Missionary Union, on the other hand, exemplify two organizations that have not lost their way and have built to endure for the long haul. Would that a new missions mobilization movement could be created which features a fiery focus on missionary recruitment, the willingness to empower the local church in its task of missionary identification and deployment, and the power to endure for multiple generations until the task is finally complete.
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Justin, thank you for a well researched SVM article. Over the past 30 years I have had an enduring interest in this history, as a scholar, practitioner and mobilizer. http://www.jaygary.com/students.shtml
But now I think the student generation following World War I also made good choices regarding the gospel. While Robert Wilder chose fundamentalism, Sherwood Eddy embraced both the gospel and social justice, and rallied the church to work with marginalized urban youth. As 21st century Christian leaders, we must not let this divide between evangelism and social action divide us any longer. Even as evangelicals, both WEA and Lausanne have dealt with this both theologically and practically for 30 years now. There are new paradigms of global engagement emerging. We must not be frozen in the 19th century, but open to our own paradigms becoming more biblical and integral.
Second, whatever calls to come to a new generation, their watchword must deal substantially, in a post-Bosch world, on how the gospel must change both the evangelized and the unevangelized. Jesus linked both the rich man and Lazarus in his parable. We must link our overconsumption with the destitution of the developing world, and consider ways to create sustainable enterprises that are culturally relevant, environmentally appropriate and wealth generating among the bottom of the pyramid. See the work of Stuart Hart in this, his book _Capitalism at the Crossroads_ http://www.stuartlhart.com/frameworks%20and%20t...
I am encouraged by your work from Asia. May God continue to give you strength to sound the trumpet.
–Jay, Program Director, M.A. in Strategic Foresight, http://www.regent.edu/global/msf
Assistant Professor, School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship, Regent University