One blistering hot, summer day in 1806, five students from Williams College in the far northeastern corner of Massachusetts met for their regular small- group prayer meeting. On this particular day, a late afternoon thunderstorm forced the group to take shelter under a nearby haystack as one of the students, Samuel Mills, challenged the group to prayerfully consider a mobilization of students for worldwide missions. This simple prayer meeting was to become the catalyst for what has been called “the Second Great Awakening” and perhaps the largest student missions endeavor ever: the Student Volunteer Movement. This sense of revival in America coincided with the ministry of leading evangelical voices in England such as John Wesley and William Wilberforce, who has recently gained popularity from the release of the movie, “Amazing Grace.” According to historians who have chronicled this student missions phenomenon, close to 20,000 foreign missionaries sprang out of this student-led revival.

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