Under A Haystack

Under A Haystack

God began the American foreign missions movement in a very unlikely place.

FOREIGN MISSIONS organizations are common in America today, but in the early 1800s there was not a single foreign missions board in the United States. God was to begin the American foreign missions movement in a very unlikely place—a haystack!

Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, was just twelve years old in 1805 when the Second Great Awakening reached the school. In the spring of 1806 Samuel Mills, the son of a Congregational minister, joined the freshman class with a passion to spread the gospel around the world. He began leading a prayer group of four other students who had been touched by the revival. They met three afternoons a week in the maple grove of nearby Sloan’s Meadow.

One sultry day in August 1806 a violent thunderstorm interrupted their prayer time, and they took refuge on the sheltered side of a large haystack. There in the sanctuary of the haystack, Mills directed their prayers to their own personal missionary obligation. God spoke to them as they prayed, and four of the five committed themselves to serving God overseas if he so led. The Haystack Prayer Meeting was not only the beginning of the first American student mission society but was also the beginning of the American foreign missions movement itself. In two years their prayer group took the name The Society of the Brethren, with the motto “We can do it if we will.”

Two years later many of the group enrolled at Andover Seminary in Andover, Massachusetts, where they were joined by Adoniram Judson and others interested in foreign missions. There they continued to believe that God was calling them to the mission field, but there was no foreign missions board in America to send them.

The students took their problem to the seminary faculty and to pastors in the area. In response, the teachers and pastors met at the home of Moses Stuart, one of the Andover faculty. Their advice was that the students submit their case to the General Association, a body made up of the Congregational Churches of Massachusetts, which was to meet in Bradford, Massachusetts, beginning the following day.

Acting on this advice, the students wrote a letter explaining their plight and soliciting the association’s help. The letter was signed by Adoniram Judson, Samuel Mills, and two others. Originally Luther Rice and James Richards also signed the letter but removed their names, lest the number of potential missionary candidates needing support scare the Association.

Two days later, on June 29, 1810, the association responded to their request by forming the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the first foreign missions board in America. A year later the board sent out Adoniram Judson and three other men with their families as their first missionaries.

From that humble beginning the foreign missions force of the United States has grown to over sixty thousand missionaries sent out by hundreds of mission boards.

Reflection

God’s plan for this age is to “make disciples of all the nations” (Matthew 28:19). What do you see as your role in fulfilling the great commission? The students in the Haystack Prayer Meeting prayed faithfully for the opportunity to be foreign missionaries. They did not let the lack of a mission board in America to send them stand in their way. We can learn much from their faithfulness. Not everyone can go, but all can pray and give.

My ambition has always been to preach the Good News where the name of Christ has never been heard, rather than where a church has already been started by someone else. I have been following the plan spoken of in the Scriptures, where it says, “Those who have never been told about him will see, and those who have never heard of him will understand.”

Romans 15:20-21