Wishart was an unlikely founder: overweight, nearly blind, lacking the natural charisma of a leader. Regardless, he set off on a four year world tour determined to make college campuses the “strategic points in the world’s conquest.’”

John Mott (right) followed close behind on a two year world tour intending to make the colleges throughout the world the bases from which the world would be won for Christ. Mott proved even more effective in creating student organizations with the intention that they become centers for world evangelism.

Following his tour, “Mott reported that he had visited 22 countries, 144 educational institutions, organized 70 new YMCA’s, organized five national intercollegiate organisations, saw the beginning of 11 Christian publications, inducted 12 countries as corresponding members of the WSCF, saw 2,000 commit to keeping the morning watch, and witnessed 505 people accept Jesus Christ as their savior. Finally he saw 300 students commit to become student volunteers for home missions.”

By 1920 the various SVMs of the World Student Christian Federation (WSCF) had recruited 11,079 missionaries.

A key to the SVM’s effectiveness was the focus that it’s watchword provided — “The evangelization of the world in this generation.”

Despite the success of the SVM, by the end of the first decade of the new century, questions and arguments were raised concerning the wisdom of its further use. Opponents of the watchword from within the SVM felt that, “the goal of evangelization was too narrow, and that the Great Commission called for was not the mere proclamation of the gospel but the Christianization of the world.”

Next post: How the decline began.

The Student Volunteer Movement was the greatest student missionary movement in the history of the church. What accounts for the success of its early years?

1. A passionate and practical faith

The SVM was served by a lean and effective low cost organization with a minimum of paid staff. The real driving force was the faith and commitment of the volunteers. The leaders of the SVM were recruited from within. They combined a commitment to personal holiness, prayer and the power of the Holy Spirit with a down to earth practicality.

SVM volunteers committed themselves to the “Morning Watch” 30 minutes to an hour of bible study and prayer at the beginning of each day. They believed the evangelization of the world in this generation required both spiritual empowerment and effective methodologies.

2. A clear cause

SVM’s sole purpose was, “The evangelization of the world in this generation.” By that they did not mean the conversion of the whole world. Rather giving “all men an adequate opportunity to know Jesus Christ as their Savior and to become His real disciples.” (John Mott)

The SVM was only interested in recruiting missionaries, not in sending them. Their mandate was to inspire others who would serve with the various mission agencies.

3. Effective structures

The SVM’s organizational structure was simple, lean and capable of rapid expansion. Once a student became a volunteer they joined the SVM group on campus. These campus groups were the heart of the movement. Robert Wilder pioneered the strategy when he was at Princeton.

A small band of students met to pray and to encourage each other in their commitment to missions. They also became mission advocates on the campus. The groups were student run. The sole focus was total commitment to the promotion of missions.

Traveling secretaries set up and sustain an expanding network of campus groups. Without these groups the movement would have lasted long.

Next post: How the SVM went global.

My copy is still on the way but I have read a summary article. Here are some highlights . . .

According to Anderson, Pentecostalism is probably the fastest expanding religious movement ever. Here are five of the main features of Pentecostalism that contributed to its advance from the beginning.

1. The imminent return of Christ

Early Pentecostals were convinced that their experience of Spirit baptism was a “fire” that would spread all over the world, a last-days universal revival to precede the return of Christ. Missionary newsletters were filled with one overriding concern: to evangelize the nations of the world before the imminent return of Christ.

2. Intercultural origins

From it’s inception Pentecostalism was both interracial and intercultural. The Azusa Street Revival was led by William Seymour the son of former slaves. Within two years missionaries were circling the globe with their message of spiritual power.

At the same time, in western India, an equally influential revival was led by Pandita Ramabai at the Mukti mission. Missionaries, mostly young women, were sent throughout India and church planted. Anderson traces the origin of Chilean Pentecostalism back to India rather than North America.

3. Spirit-centered Mission

Pentecostalism grew out of a common experience of the Spirit. That experience of the Spirit led Pentecostals into world missions.

Within two years missionaries were sent out to China, India, Japan, Argentina, Brazil, Palestine, Egypt, Somalia, Liberia, Angola and South Africa.

This was the beginning of what is arguably the most significant global expansion of a Christian movement in history.

These early missionaries had no fixed plan. Many went out believing they had “missionary toungues”. Many left without any source of funds. Their sacrifices were startling. They were poor, untrained and unprepared. Many died on the field.

4. Personal Inflexibility and Adaptability

Like other foreign missionaries Pentecostals were not always sensitive to the local people and culture. Some took too much responsibility for the expansion of the faith and stifled local expressions and leadership.

The result was often secession as new converts reacted to missionary paternalism and control.

The truth was often that the national churches grew in spite of, and not because of, these missionaries, who were denying their converts’ gifts of leadership. The Holy Spirit was anointing ordinary people to “spread the fire” to their friends, relatives, and neighbors, and even to other communities, peoples, and nations.

5. Responsive to Local Contexts

Pentecostal mission was inherently flexible, responding creatively to different contexts. Pentecostalism both absorbed and transformed the religio-cultural context wherever it went.

Conclusion

The wildfires of Pentecostalism were chaotic, unpredictable and out-of-control. When human organizations attempted to quench the flames, as they often did, this futile effort resulted in new fires breaking out in other places and the further proliferation of new churches.

Pentecostalism has been most successful in the Majority World where half the world’s Christians live today, where forms of Christianity are very different from what Westerners often assume they must be.

“Spreading Fires: The Missionary Nature of Early Pentecostalism” (Allan Anderson)

Allan Anderson provides four more reasons behind 100 years of Pentecostal advance:

4. Contextualization of Leadership
The overwhelming majority of Pentecostal missionaries have been national people “sent by the Spirit,” often without formal training. In Pentecostal practice, the Holy Spirit is given to every believer without preconditions.

One of the results of this was, as Saayman observes, that “it ensured that a rigid dividing line between clergy and laity and between men and women did not develop early on in Pentecostal churches” and even more significantly, “there was little resistance to the ordination of indigenous pastors and evangelists to bear the brunt of the pastoral upbuilding of the congregations and their evangelistic outreach.”

This was one of the reasons for the rapid transition from “foreign” to “indigenous” church that took place in many Pentecostal missions. Pentecostal missions are quick to raise up national leaders who are financially self-supporting, and therefore the new churches are nationalized much quicker than older mission churches had been.

5. Mobilization in Mission
The remarkable growth of Pentecostal movements in the twentieth century cannot be isolated from the fact that these are often “people movements,” a massive turning of different people to Christianity from other religions on an unprecedented scale, set in motion by a multitude of factors for which western missions were unprepared.

The growth of Pentecostalism was not the result of the efforts of a few charismatic leaders or “missionaries.” The proliferation of the movement would not have taken place without the tireless efforts of a vast number of ordinary and virtually now unknown women and men.

This was the democratization of Christianity, for henceforth the mystery of the gospel would no longer be reserved for a select privileged and educated few, but would be revealed to whoever was willing to receive it and pass it on.

6. A Contextual Missiology
The style of “freedom in the Spirit” that characterizes Pentecostal liturgy has contributed to the appeal of the movement in many different contexts. This spontaneous liturgy, which is mainly oral and narrative with an emphasis on a direct experience of God through his Spirit, results in the possibility of ordinary people being lifted out of their mundane daily experiences into a new realm.

These practices made Pentecostal worship easily assimilated into different contexts, especially where a sense of divine immediacy was taken for granted, and they contrasted sharply with rationalistic and written liturgies presided over by a clergy that was the main feature of most other forms of Christianity.

Many older missionary churches arose in western historical contexts, with set liturgies, theologies, well-educated clergy, and patterns of church and leadership with strongly centralized control. This often contributed to the feeling that these churches were “foreign” and that one first had to become a westerner before becoming a Christian. In contrast, Pentecostalism emphasised an immediate personal experience of God’s power by his Spirit, it was more intuitive and emotional, and it recognized charismatic leadership and national church patterns wherever they arose.

Churches were rapidly planted in different cultures, and each culture took on its own particular expression of Pentecostalism.

“An Introduction to Pentecostalism : Global Charismatic Christianity (Introduction to Religion)” (Allan Anderson)

Here’s my summary of his first three points:

1. Pneumatocentric Mission*
Pentecostal mission is grounded first and foremost in the conviction that the Holy Spirit is the motivating power behind all this activity. Pentecostal missionaries got on with the job in a hurry, believing that the time was short and the second coming of Christ was near. Reflection about the task was not as important as action in evangelism.

The Spirit bears witness to the presence of Christ in the life of the missionary, and the message proclaimed by the power of the Spirit is of the crucified and resurrected Jesus Christ who sends gifts of ministry to humanity.

2. Dynamic Mission Praxis
Pentecostals believe that the coming of the Spirit brings an ability to do “signs and wonders” in the name of Jesus Christ to accompany and authenticate the gospel message.

Gary McGee notes that this “confident belief that God had at last poured out his Spirit with miraculous power to empower Christians to bring closure to the Great Commission…has forced the larger church world to reassess the work of the Holy Spirit in mission.”

The central role given to healing is probably no longer a prominent feature of western Pentecostalism. But it is in the Majority World, where the problems of disease and evil affect the whole community and are not relegated to a private domain for individual pastoral care.

Thus, Pentecostal movements went a long way towards meeting physical, emotional and spiritual needs of people in the Majority World, offering solutions to life’s problems and ways to cope in what was often a threatening and hostile world.

3. Evangelism: Central Missiological Thrust
The Azusa Street revival (1906-8) resulted in a category of ordinary but “called” people called “missionaries” fanning out to every corner of the globe within a remarkably short space of time.

Despite the seeming naiveté of many early missionaries, their evangelistic methods were flexible, pragmatic and astonishingly successful.

Pentecostal evangelism was geared towards church planting, a central feature of all Pentecostal mission activity. Pentecostal churches were missionary by nature, and the dichotomy between “church” and “mission” that so long plagued other churches did not exist. This “central missiological thrust” was clearly a “strong point in Pentecostalism” and central to its existence. Thriving Pentecostal “indigenous churches” were established in many parts of the world without the help of any foreign missionaries.

*Comment from Steve: In the old days they called it “Holy Ghost power!”

The class of 2006 is the largest group ordained as ministers in the Anglican Church in Australia. Many of them have been appointed to set up new congregations affiliated with existing parishes.

Watch out if the Sydney Anglicans follow the example of that great evangelical Anglican, John Wesley. His response when the clergy tried to shut him out of their parishes?

“The world is my parish!”

Like Wesley, Sydney Anglicans know how to grow leaders. Check out: 7 lessons on growing leaders and Growing leaders II

Author Muriel Porter is unhappy. Her new book describes Sydney Anglicans as “fundamentalists”— not the suicide bomber kind. She means “that narrow, rigid, ideological approach to life, the Scriptures, the church.”

At the book launch Charles Sherlock said Porter had exposed a movement that was spiritually dangerous for the health of church and society. His comments have inspired some interesting letters to the editor: Whence blows this pious gust of intolerance?

Much of the rest of Anglican church faces serious decline which is expected to get worse: Let’s face our decline

In contrast, it seems plenty of Australians are quite content to find faith and a worthwhile experience of church among these dangerous Anglican fundamentalists.

Just keep them away from the explosives or it could get messy.

1. Read the case studies.
2. Distill the learning.
3. Follow their example.
4. Change the world.
5. Or at least make a mess.

“How the Irish Saved Civilization (Hinges of History)” (Thomas Cahill)

“Wesley and the People Called Methodists” (Richard P. Heitzenrater)

“A Cambridge movement” (John Charles Pollock) If there are no copies on Amazon try www.abe.com

“Tongues of Fire: The Explosion of Protestantism in Latin America” (David Martin)

“The Next Christendom : The Coming of Global Christianity ” (Philip Jenkins)

The latest addition to the WorldChanger’s Library: How the West was won: Methodists and Baptists on the American Frontier.

Plenty of lessons for students of church planting movements.

Happy Australia Day!

Forecast: 40ºC (105ºF) in Melbourne.

Australia v Sri Lanka in the cricket. Australian Open Tennis finals. I’ll be cranking up the aircon and staying indoors. Unless Michelle has other plans for my productive employment around the house. . .

In 1771 there were just 300 Methodists in the American colonies led by four ministers. By the time of Francis Asbury’s death in 1816, Methodism could claim 2,000 ministers and over 200,000 members in a well-coordinated movement.

This is the second in a series of case studies through the movement lifecycle. The first was on St Francis of Assisi and the birth of a movement.

The second involves St Francis of Asbury and the growth of a movement. It looks at the amazing story of the Methodists and Baptists on the US frontier.

Here’s what I’m learning. . .

1. The “fringe principle” again
Without exception, the breakthroughs in the expansion and the renewal of the church occur on the fringe and never at the centre of ecclesiastic power (Paul Pierson, Fuller Seminary).

2. Without faith it’s impossible
The upstart Methodists and Baptists had none of the resources, education, or social prestige of the mainline churches, but they had faith. By faith they were willing to risk everything in order to win a new generation to Christ. A white-hot faith alone was sufficient to conquer the US frontier.

3. Apostolic leadership
You cannot explain the rise of British Methodism without reference to John Wesley. So you cannot explain the rise of American Methodism without reference to Francis Asbury. His apostolic vision and example, inspired a new generation of pioneering leaders who functioned like a Protestant version of the Catholic religious orders.

4. Rapid deployment
In a crisis you do not ask: Who has proper qualifications? You ask: Who can get the job done? The US frontier confronted the churches with a crisis of opportunity. The movements that deployed under-educated, under-funded, gifted, called and committed lay people, got the job done.

5. Growing leaders
The upstarts were not opposed to training their leaders. They just did their training on the job. The mainline churches preferred well-paid and educated clergy whose faith had been tamed by secularized theology in a classroom environment. The outcome was predictable.

6. Mission structures
Both movements structured for mission and rapid growth. They allowed maximum authority and responsibility on the front line. The “glue” that held these movements together was not a tight organizational structure but their commitment to a common cause. The Methodists had the best of both worlds. Local autonomy supplemented by itinerant circuit riders who pioneered new territory and strengthened the growing network of churches.

7. Eventual but not inevitable decline
Eventually the Methodists joined the ranks of the more sedate mainline churches and moved into decline. Why? Their circuit riders got off their horses to become settled parish clergy. Secularized theological education replaced life-long, on the job, ministry training. A professional elite disempowered ordinary people called and willing to serve. Perhaps some of them went off and planted Baptist churches instead!

Tomorrow I’ll post the full article for the brave to download.

Previous post: How the West was won

2. Religious intolerance. . . Religious tolerance
At times Christianity faced dreadful persecutions but intense persecution was sporadic and never consistent across the whole empire. There was a stigma and a price attached to being a Christian but there was no sustained, consistent attempt to wipe out the Christian faith. From the earliest days archeologists can identify Christian houses and individuals who took on Christian names publicly. A secret faith could not have grown as rapidly as Christianity did. For rapid expansion a movement must maintain open ties to non-members. Early Christianity proved Nietzsche’s dictum: “What does not destroy us makes us stronger.”

3. Pagan weakness
It is very difficult and extremely rare for a new religion to displace an existing one if the existing faith is strong. There were signs that paganism was in a declining and weakened state. There was a rapid reduction in the number of new sacred buildings being dedicated. The religious environment was volatile with a confusing array of old and new pagan alternatives. The costs required to maintain elaborate temples, professional priests and lavish feasts were a burden. Blasphemous graffiti on the walls of Pompeii reveal a growing lack of public reverence. Paganism was in a weak position.

The inherent weakness of paganism is that it cannot generate exclusive commitment. Paganism is nonexclusive and takes multiple religious involvements for granted. Nonexclusive religions are individualistic allowing people to choose from among a variety of alternatives rather like consumers. They struggle to produce a communal faith. A modern example of this is the New Age movement. There is no New Age church, only a loose network of individuals who consume New Age religious products, often as fee-paying clients. Pagan cults were not able to get people to do much of anything. They had limited social strength.

As an exclusive faith, Christianity was able to build a communal faith, rather than an individualist one. It demanded exclusive commitment. It was able to channel people’s commitment into mutual support and collective action.

Paganism was sustained by a professional religious elite and would have been susceptible to “top-down” persecution. The Roman authorities assumed Christianity could be destroyed by targeting its leadership. They did not understand that Christianity was a mass movement with a highly committed rank and file that spread through networks of relationships.

That’s enough for now. Love to hear what others think.