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 [...]
Tag Archives: Case studies
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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.’” [...]
Accounting for the rise of the SVM
10 December, 2009 – 8:01 AM
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 [...]
The rise of a missionary movement
8 December, 2009 – 2:59 PM
Next year is the 100th anniversary of the World Missionary Conference of Edinburgh 1910. It marked a highpoint of Protestant missions and the beginning of the Ecumenical movement that birthed the World Council of Churches. Next year there will be a spate of articles on the centenary, so I’m getting in early with a serious [...]
Pentecostal power
17 November, 2009 – 5:56 AM
What is remarkable about this new strain of Pentecostalism is the heroic intensity of the ministries, which have not yet evolved into tired bureaucracies. The founders of these programs are driven by a sense of calling, a feeling of thankfulness for how God has intervened in their personal lives, and they are constantly reinventing their [...]
Airds update
16 November, 2009 – 7:01 AM
Tim Scheuer has been baptizing new believers down at the Airds swimming pool in Sydney. Looks like he’d better buy a season’s ticket. Ten more people have come to faith in Christ in the last week. I’ve just interviewed Tim for a church planting conference in Brisbane. Listen in to find out what he’s learning.
