Can College Students Reach the World?
by Matt Morton, College Pastor
In August 1806, five college students at Williams College in Massachusetts took shelter under a haystack during a brief and intense thunderstorm. To pass the time, they discussed and prayed for God's work through missionaries around the world. This meeting, now referred to as the Haystack Prayer Meeting, was the motivation behind the founding of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. In the fifty years that followed, the ABCFM sent 1250 missionaries from the United States to share the Gospel in foreign contexts.
Eighty years later, a college student named Luther Wishard was inspired by the Haystack Prayer Meeting to pray for men who would give their lives to foreign missionary work. He attended the Mount Hermon Bible Conference, led by Dwight Moody, and urged several men to consider going overseas. By the end of the conference, one hundred students had accepted his challenge. Over the next several decades, the Student Volunteer Movement sent tens of thousands of foreign missionaries across the globe.
College students have always been at the forefront of world missions. Grace Bible Church is uniquely positioned to participate in the Lord's work around the world through faithful and passionate college students.
This summer, more than forty young men and women will be going on short-term trips to Greece, East Asia, and North Africa. They will spend their summer days meeting college students overseas and sharing the Gospel with them. Many of our wonderful students will return home with a conviction that God is calling them to serve overseas for a longer period of time after they finish their college degrees. Some of the students with whom they share the Gospel will become the Christian leaders of their countries for the next generation.
Will you join with us in praying for these young men and women as they go? Let's Pray for:
- Receptive hearts, clear speech, and the Holy Spirit's conviction
- That our students will consider long-term service overseas
- That God will show you and me how we can participate in the Great Commission around the world through giving or going or evangelizing, so that people from every nation will hear of the greatness of our Savior
Perhaps the next great movement of God's Spirit across the globe will begin right here in College Station!
