Student Convention

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Feb 17, 1898

Student Convention.

The Greatest College Gathering in the History of the Church.

In Cleveland, Ohio, meeting February 23d through the 27th, there will be assembled the convention of the Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions, and will call together representatives from

The Colleges of North America.

Representative students and professors from the denominational colleges, the independent and state universities, the theological seminaries and medical colleges of the United States and Canada, will be present. The larger part of the delegate body will be made up of students and professors in these institutions, many of whom have pledged their lives to further Christ’s kingdom throughout the world.

It is a fact that over fifty of the great missionary boards will be officially represented by missionaries, editors of religious journals, clergymen, professors, and board secretaries. Such young people’s movements as the Christian Endeavor Society, the Brotherhood of St. Andrew, and the Epworth League, will send official representatives.

Nations of the Orient.

A reliable statement is made that in addition to the delegate body from the United States and Canada, representatives will be present from the following countries: Great Britain and Ireland, India and Ceylon, Burma, Laos, Malaysia, China, Korea, Japan, Persia, Syria, Turkey, Papal Europe, Central Africa, North Africa, South Africa, West Africa, the United States of Colombia, Brazil, Chile, and the mission fields in the Pacific islands.

What Is the Volunteer Movement?

The Student Volunteer Movement is widely known as an interdenominational missionary agency, having more than 800 institutions of higher learning in the United States and Canada as its field. It does not independently commission or support missionaries, but works in co-operation with the regular mission boards, and through its efforts hundreds of missionaries have been furnished the boards, and are now laboring in the Orient, Africa, and South America.

Among its objects are:—

1. To enlist the students in the colleges and theological seminaries in prayer and labor for the proclamation of the Gospel throughout the world in our generation.

2. To enroll among the students of the continent volunteers who may be sent by the boards to the different fields for lay or clerical service.

3. To inform, through its extensive system of educational classes, the Christian students of North America in regard to the progress and needs of modern missions. In over 300 colleges there are such classes following the movement’s courses.

4. To arouse students and other Christians to the obligation of immediate financial co-operation with the different boards of missions.