the student volunteer movement was one of the great movements in church history i think we've we're only studying eight of them over the course of this course but there are many many more missional movements in church history but the student volunteer room is one of the great ones one of the most consequential in i would argue in world history certainly most consequential in the modern period but ultimately it died it does not exist anymore and there are many reasons why movements end but this one ended in particular because of a debate over the definition of mission the real debate for them i i obviously i highlighted a variety of of layered complexities in 1920 in the 19 teens when things are beginning to fall apart world war one being kind of the big uh dividing point uh in history that accelerated certain trends it sort of caused a lot of anxiety caused a lot of rupture but the real debate that ended the student volunteer movement was the debate over evangelism versus social action i know some of you are going to bristle by me saying evangelism versus social action but the question is not whether we should do one or the other every christian believes that we should every christian that time in that group believed that evangelism mattered every christian believed in the importance of serving the poor the importance of engaging society and working toward justice the question was how do those two relate to one another right is there a priority are they two sides of the same coin uh and we'll unpack this to get a little bit more of the complexity but there are questions right they're asked about their relationship you know is and i'll use our terminology social responsibility others might use social justice social action social concern social gospel uh there's a variety of of synonyms they're not all needing the same thing but they're related for our sake let's just say social responsibility is social responsibility a means to an end right do we in to put it in a class way do we feed stomachs so that vehicles ultimately feed souls or is social responsibility a confirmation of our words meaning we're doing this gospel work in word and deed right social prosperity is the deed part it's it's it's not that we're doing good deeds so we can say the word we're actually doing the deeds because it's the it's the manifestation the incarnation of the world or is social responsibility an end in itself meaning doing that thing serving the poor fighting for justice creating more just institutions whatever have you right that's an in itself whether or not anyone hears the gospel or gets saved that's just separate you know that's that's good enough and i'll never forget um who knows maybe one of you was in that room i was at an early every nation conference many years ago and there was a session i think something on social ministry and a very uh engaging and thought-provoking and provocative speaker who's not with every nation and someone said ask him about this whole question of priority of social responsibility and evangelism and i'll never forget uh i'm uh editing in my mind so no one gets outed um someone asked in that question he said he said to the person asking that question about priority evangelism for social action he said why don't we just serve the poor for the hell of it and the whole group just collective gasp and and obviously he's being provocative right but that's that's that's kind of the sentiment right of uh social action social responsibility is an end in itself like why don't we just do it because and then you know when you think about this question of those two things some people say well they're not you can't even separate they're in for a christian they're inseparable right so there's all these questions swirling they have very significant theological missional but perhaps more importantly practical implications and there are two basic positions within evangelicalism today right there are many many other positions but within even within mainstream evangelion there are two basic positions and in the reading it'll unpack them further one is called you might call prioritism and it argues that social responsibility is a calling for the church for both the church and for individuals but discipleship and evangelism are the primary primary mission of the church our mission is ultimately evangelism and discipleship yes we are called to social action yes we're called from the poor yes we're called there's all these other things but the actual mission is it's narrow it's evangelism and discipleship everything else flows from that then there's a and we can unpack that further but your reading will do that for you so we'll leave it there then there's the position called holism right as you can imagine right the the framework there is that social responsibility and evangelism cannot be separated they are two wings of the same plane to use the metaphor right they are they are equally important they don't want to abandon evangelism but but to act as though social responsibility or social action is somehow subordinate or follows behind or even sometimes of a means to the end of evangelism uh is is problematic for a whole for someone who has the holistic view this is perhaps most prominently um articulated in the the book by richard stearns if he's the was the president of world vision the hole in our gospel i imagine you've either read it or heard of it so i'll just go ahead and say this before we get to our case study because this is an interesting one i'm sure is going to be when i'll have to heavily moderate on uh path right in case anyone gets in a fight online i'll say this both views prioritism and holism are found within mainstream evangelicalism we're not talking about a radical liberal protestantism that doesn't believe in evangelism doesn't believe in the authority of scripture and they only care about social ministry there that exists in christian organizations that care nothing about society we're not talking about that that's on another end of the poll that we're not talking about and we're not talking about kind of a radical fundamentalism we're not saying prioritism means you don't believe that um you should do any ministry to the poor any social ministry it's just a question of prioritism says there's a priority holism says they're kind of on the same plane right then there's those who devalue social ministry and there are those who devalue evangelism both these groups value evangelism and social responsibility it's how they articulate it okay so both views are found within mainstream evangelism we're not talking about the fringes and i would argue that both views are present in every nation churches and even on the ens faculty i haven't done a poll but you can tell by the way people talk though i will say uh as a historian if i were to look at what every nation the founders generation has written and said i would argue that most if not all of them are prioritists they may not take the hat where the priorities had but that's kind of the way the every nation founder generation talks about evangelism discipleship world mission it has a prioritised um bend to it even though obviously they argue for social responsibility as a huge priority but not the ultimate prior so here's the fun part i um i could just talk about the whole time but what i'm going to do is i'll have you read three things for this case study and they're very very interesting things i hope you enjoy them as much as i did first you're going to read and they're very they're far-flung they're from uh different decades very different decades you know they're almost 100 years apart some of these readings first you're going to read an excerpt from the book rethinking missions that came out in 1932 he was organized by william hawking he's a professor at harvard and he led this multi-year study and they were looking and evaluating ultimately critiquing the fruits of western mission work in asia all right this was a bombshell report that further uh added fuel to the fire in the debate in the student volunteer movement right because there's a significant critique of what they had been doing and there are many in the movie who said yes see look at the hawking report look at rethinking mission this is telling us we need to do something different what we've been doing for the last 40 years is not fully um some might say not fully fruitful i would even say it's harmful right so i'm going to give you an excerpt from rethinking missions it's from 1932 right and and i'll just give you the conclusion just so you kind of know what you're what to look for right here's how they argued they needed to rethink or redefine mission i quote mission the aim of mission is to see the best in other religions to help the adherence of those of those religions to discover or to rediscover all the best in their own traditions to cooperate with the most active and vigorous elements of the other traditions in social reform and the purification of religious expression the aim should not be conversion end quote so this was how the book rethinking mission missions argued and that's what they concluded and i'm going to clarify right william hawking here is not making an argument for holism he's going further he's saying we need to jettison evangelism and no full social gospel right so i'm not saying that rethinking missions is an argument for holism the hole in our gospel by richard stern is an argument for wholism here this is an argument that takes it even further it's it's but it's it's a lot of the same critiques that you see here are the critiques of a a prioritised view of mission and evangelism there's similar critiques that a whole list would give right so just read i'll give you i won't make sure the whole book i'm giving you an excerpt to read kind of get in the mindset of what the debates were at the end of the student volunteer movement that's one reading the second reading is you're going to read an article that's actually just written a few years ago called the case for prioritism is a very current article and it lays out really well the terms the debate prioritism holism it identifies the evangelicals in either camp and it has a i would say semi-helpful table where it kind of shows uh this sort of binary the priorities versus the whole list view of different different things again i'll i'll say it's a binary so there's some false dichotomies there people might take issues certain things but still a helpful way of laying it all out it'll help you kind of see the whole picture and it lays out the terms of the debate lays out the voices and the arguments but ultimately as the article's title says it's making the case for prioritism it's being a strong case and you may say well why don't you give uh the case for both of them um well i i wanted you to read rethinking mission because that's really interesting it's historical you can see the critiques but you'll recognize you hear the echoes of the critiques and i would dare say that the case for holism is perhaps the dominant voice within evangelicalism today that is perhaps the mo whether you've identified yourself as one of those two or you're still thinking through it uh that is the dominant discourse both in the united states and in europe and around the world the case for holism within evangelicalism so in some sense you don't need that argument to be made it's there and i think the case prioritism article um lays out their arguments quite well but then it makes its own argument for prioritism so you can uh engage it as you will then finally so those are two an article a book chapter and then finally i'm going to assign you to read the lausanne covenant articles five and six they're short like think like two paragraphs and those are the statements on social responsibility and evangelism and in case they've used a tiny bit of backdrop lest this case study intro go way too long the lausanne covenant right the lausanne movement was this world mission movement really founded by billy graham and john stott but they carried on the debates from the student volunteer movement about this question of evangelism and social action ultimately billy graham really represents the priorities case it's all about preaching the gospel to the individual and saving their soul ultimately though you do a lot of other work and start really represented this holism case saying you can't separate them you really have to have both and it's not really argued for a holist case really coming out of that that wreckage in the student volunteer where the whole thing split but stott a british evangelical was the chief architect of the lausanne covenant it's an evangelical statement of faith adopted by many many many millions of christians around the world many organizations but read their article on social responsibility that's actually the title christian social responsibility and they're one on evangelism in the church and i want you to read it and just think which view are we seeing here and you may say i don't see either of you i just see a really good biblical statement and i love it great um but i'm going to give you those three readings rethinking mission the case for prioritism and the lausanne covenant articles five and six and it's a lot of reading but it'll give you a lot to think about a lot to discuss i'll ask some pointed questions in response to the readings for you guys to discuss and debate on the path and almost certainly we'll have to have a zoom call this week to hash things out uh somewhat synchronously because i know there's a lot to unpack here and these are questions of of serious import to our understanding of mission series import to every nation um and how we do mission and how um churches kind of decide what to prioritize what to what to devote resources to one of the interesting things about the case of prioritizing is um in that articles it says holism sounds really great until you get on the ground uh and you actually see the decisions you have to make and you always have to prioritize something so that's the question i want you to be thinking about as you read these pieces looking forward to the debate hopefully it's been fruitful for you i hope it's something that we can disagree about well and find still some great points of unity because i will say stott and billy graham the one you might say was a priorities the one was a holist they were evangelists and there's nothing uh i love more than a holist who is a radical evangelist and there's nothing more annoying than a prioritist who never shares the gospel that's a great way to end isn't it let me pray lord thank you for this group thank you for this case study give us wisdom give us humility and give us sobriety as we study these things together amen [Music]