The Student Volunteer Movement: Can It Happen Again?

The Student Volunteer Movement of the early 1900’s was instrumental in mobilizing thousands of people towards missionary work and in bringing missions to the forefront of the Evangelical mind. The students of whom we speak were college and university students who had been excited by the challenge of missions. In the 1900’s, the world was full of hope, the colonial superpowers had opened their colonies for investment, tourism, and religion. Almost the entire world was open to missions and yet the majority of the world’s population had never heard of Jesus Christ—the time was ripe to change that. Young people volunteered and dedicated their lives to taking the Gospel to unreached areas. Much of present-day missionary work owes its foundation to what was laid by the early pioneers of the Student Volunteer Movement. We must confess, however, that the SVM originated and thrived in a socio-cultural milieu quite different from what we experience today. Nevertheless, that is not to say that such a movement cannot rise again. It can, and I pray that it will. But it will, by necessity, be different in a couple of ways.

First, it will be different because today’s society is highly mobile and interconnected in a way that was impossible 100 years ago. For instance, a commitment in 1900 to evangelize the world meant a serious-time commitment—a life commitment. The travel alone took weeks (if not months) just to arrive at a certain destination. Short-term missions was as unheard of as it was impossible. Nowadays, we can be almost anywhere on the planet in matter of a couple days, if not hours. The ease of travel does not demand a long-term commitment the way it once did—easy come, easy go. On the positive side, however, is that while the commitment to go may be easier than it was in the past, it is also more possible for so many more than it was in the past. It has never been so cheap to travel the world as it is today. This means that even the person of humble means can go, whether it be for long-term or for short-term.

Second, it will be different because our current society has bred certain deficiencies in us which make it difficult to embrace God’s call the way they did 100 years ago. Unquestionably, we are more fickle today than those in the past. We are used to instant gratification: information is at our finger-tips; our friends’ status is only a click away. Perseverance and delayed gratification are virtues that are dying out. But in every challenge there is also an opportunity, and so it is that the internet and the cyber-connectivity of the modern age also grant us great potential for sharing the gospel, inspiring others, and mobilizing others for prayer and action in a moment, almost instantaneously. If a modern SVM were to emerge, I think it would be, at least in part, due to these new social/cyber-media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and Tiktok. Certainly, if we fail to engage these modes of instant communication, we run the risk of failing to communicate at all.

Third, it will be different because the make up of the global church is significantly different. One hundred years ago, the majority of Evangelical believers hailed from Anglophone countries—either England, Australia, United States, or Canada. Today, Evangelical believers make up significant populations in countries as diverse as Brazil and Nigeria and China. The new Student Volunteer Movement will be far more diverse and international than it was one hundred years ago. All the various cultures and ethnicities will each bring its own distinctive flavor to the movement, yet all will be united in reaching the world with the Good News of Jesus Christ.

The challenge today is the same as it was then—we must always convert the passion and enthusiasm of making a difference for Christ into actual activity for Christ. It’s easy to get excited from a conference, a seminar, or a conversation, but it is much more difficult to make the concrete decisions to follow-through on what God may be leading us to do. However, like the members of the SVM of long ago, we also have the same Holy Spirit living in our hearts now—and He will guide us, direct us, comfort us, and work through us, just as He did for them.