The Haystack Prayer Meeting

How did a sudden storm and a simple prayer meeting spark a global missions movement? Today, Stephen Nichols tells the story of the Haystack Prayer Meeting and the five college students whose faith helped shape American foreign missions.

Welcome back to another episode of 5 Minutes in Church History. Near the Haystack Monument there is a bronze plaque with these words, “On this site in the shelter of a haystack during a summer storm in 1806, five Williams College students dedicated their lives to the spread of the Church around the globe. Out of their decision grew the American Foreign Mission movement.” And on the monument itself is inscribed these words, “The field is the world.” All right, there is definitely a good story here, so let's dive in.

So we know this is on the campus of Williams College. Williams College is near Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was founded in 1793, so it's relatively young. And we know when it occurred. We know that it occurred during a summer storm in 1806. It was a Saturday afternoon, and these five students were standing there discussing missions when all of a sudden a storm came upon them, and they took shelter in the haystack. This was also during the early days of the Second Great Awakening, and that movement began on college campuses. Campuses like Williams, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Harvard, Middlebury, Union College, and Princeton.

Now, who were these five students? And you know we love the number five here at 5 Minutes in Church History. We have Samuel Mills, James Richards, Francis Robbins, Harvey Loomis, and Byram Green. Samuel Mills emerged as one of the leaders of this group. He was born in 1783. He graduated from Williams in 1609, and he graduated from Andover Seminary in 1812. One of the things he did that was very crucial at Williams before he graduated was he and the other four formed a religious society they called the Society of the Brethren. Its purpose was “to effect in the persons of its members a mission to the heathen.” This society quickly spread to other colleges, and that led to other colleges having similar societies of wanting to send out missionaries, and so in 1810, with Samuel Mills in the leadership, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions was formed.

Mills would go on to work in various parts of the United States over the next seven years. He was in New Orleans. While he was there, he could not buy a Bible. He was greatly disturbed by this, and so that led him to distribute significant numbers of Bibles to New Orleans, both in French and in English, and across the United States. He sailed to West Africa in March of 1818 to find a site for a mission project. He found one and boarded a ship to return home, but he died at sea on June 16 in 1818.

Meanwhile, back in 1812, the mission board ordained and sent out some other missionaries. Among them was Adoniram Judson. Shortly after they arrived, the British East India Company forced them out, and they went to Burma and established a mission station there. He planted churches, built schools, translated the Bible into Burmese, completing the long work in 1834. At one time, he was charged with being a spy and was put in prison.

And all of this started in a haystack.

Here's a fun fact: By 1856, there were 70 colleges in the United States, and 49 of them had a society for the advancement of foreign missionaries. February 19, 1812, that's the date these first American missionaries were sent out, and by the 1850s, there were over 2000 missionaries sent out from America. That is a whole generation of missionaries establishing the critical foundations for the mission movement. Churches, schools, hospitals, agriculture, business, Bible translation, theological and biblical literature translation. When they were in that prayer meeting in the haystack, Samuel Mills repeatedly said, “We can do this, if we will.” There it is, five college students. That's the “Haystack Prayer Meeting,” and I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History.