I’m enjoying my stay at the Singapore YMCA. On my way to breakfast each day I pass this plaque displaying their mission statement.
There are some worthy ideals about “serving and enriching all members of the community.” Nothing about the gospel.
The YMCA was once an evangelical missionary movement. It birthed the Student Volunteer Movement which mobilized [...]
Tag Archives: Case studies
What happened to the Y?
17 March, 2010 – 8:17 AM
Born to rule — a movement on the skids
2 March, 2010 – 9:17 PM
I’m still in New Zealand talking about movements. Tomorrow we’re in Palmerston North. Last stop Christchurch.
While I was here this story broke about the Destiny movement led by Bishop Brian Tamaki. It tells of the closure of its Brisbane congregation after the pastor and 90 people walked out.
They were upset about increasing demands for money [...]
These people are crazy
17 February, 2010 – 8:55 AM
Dave Lawton reports in on what’s been happening at Alabaster House:
Starting with five young radicals I remember going to pray in parks at night with them as they started to dream of reaching broken kids with the gospel. Passion was high. So was their faith. There was no resource, no big budget, just big hearts.
A [...]
Why Nepal?
8 February, 2010 – 9:20 PM
Prayer can penetrate anywhere. Long before we enter the valleys of Nepal prayer can be doing a concrete work in laying the foundations for the future kingdom. . . . When we have prepared the way with the Spirit of God in prayer, he will answer those very prayers in permitting us to occupy Nepal.
Gordon [...]
The kingdom comes to Nepal
6 February, 2010 – 8:28 PM
John B shares some great news out of Nepal.
Until recently Nepal was the world’s only Hindu kingdom. The mighty Himalayas and the fact that Nepal was a closed land until the middle of the twentieth century enticed many, but from 1881 to 1925 only 153 Europeans are known to have visited Nepal and none became [...]
How it began
2 January, 2010 – 9:19 PM
SVM2 Haystack Video from SVM2 on Vimeo.
We began the story of the Student Volunteer Movement in 1886. Eighty years earlier God was preparing the way for the greatest student missionary movement in the history of the church.
In 1806 Five students gathered to pray for revival on their campus and in their generation. Samuel Mills, a [...]
7 Lessons from the Student Volunteer Movement
21 December, 2009 – 10:04 AM
The last in a series of posts on the greatest student missionary movement in history. We’ve seen is rise and its fall. Here are a few thoughts on the enduring lessons for us today.
1. History is made by people who don’t know any better.
The break throughs in the renewal and expansion of the Christian movement [...]
A lost cause
19 December, 2009 – 9:49 AM
In 1927 Robert Wilder resigned and returned to the mission field. He was the first and last of the founding leaders. The Student Volunteer Movement continued to distance itself from the missionary ideals that had launched it.
At the 1928 SVM convention in Detroit, Sherwood Eddy publicly repudiated the founding vision of the movement: “The Evangelization [...]
Embracing another gospel
16 December, 2009 – 10:35 AM
How are we to account for the decline of a once great missionary movement? One important factor was the acceptance of a more “relevant” gospel.
Just before World War I, the Social Gospel movement led by theologians such as Walter Rauschenbusch (above) began to influence the thinking of the Student Volunteer Movement. It became a dominant [...]
Global expansion
11 December, 2009 – 8:09 AM
Under Luther Wishart of the YMCA the Student Volunteer Movement became a world wide movement for missions mobilization.
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 [...]
