The Haystack Prayer Meeting, held in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in August 1806, is viewed by many scholars as the seminal event for the development of American Protestant missions in the subsequent decades and century. Missions are still supported today by American churches.
Five Williams College students gathered in a field to discuss the spiritual welfare of the people of Asia. Within four years of that gathering, some of its members established the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). In 1812 the ABCFM sent its first missionaries to India. During the 19th century, it sent missionaries to China, Hawaii, and other nations in southeast Asia, establishing hospitals and schools at its mission stations. Many of its missionaries undertook translation of the Bible into native languages. Thousands of missionaries were sent to Asia, and they taught numerous indigenous peoples.
In the summer of 1806, Williams College students Samuel Mills, James Richards, Francis LeBaron Robbins, Harvey Loomis, and Byram Green met in a grove of trees near the Hoosic River, in what was then known as Sloan's Meadow. They discussed the theology of missionary service. Their meeting was interrupted by a thunderstorm and the students took shelter under a haystack until the sky cleared. "The brevity of the shower, the strangeness of the place of refuge, and the peculiarity of their topic of prayer and conference all took hold of their imaginations and their memories."[2]
In 1808 the Haystack Prayer group and other Williams students began a group called "The Brethren." This group was organized to "effect, in the persons of its members, a mission to" those who were not Christians. In 1812, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (created in 1810) sent its first missionaries to the non-Christian world, to India.[3]
In addition, the ABCFM founded a school, the Foreign Mission School, in Cornwall, Connecticut, which opened in 1817. It educated a total of 100 students, drawn from the Hawaiian islands, India and Southeast Asia, and Native American tribes.
Samuel Mills was most influential among the Haystack group to direct the modern mission movement. He played a role in the founding of the American Bible Society and the United Foreign Missionary Society.
The 1806 meeting was the first documented by Americans to begin foreign missionary work. In addition, this meeting is considered to have resulted in formation of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. The ABCFM gave students an opportunity to go abroad and evangelize Christianity.
In its first fifty years, the ABCFM sent out more than 1250 missionaries. Most were from the smaller towns and farm villages of New England. Few were affluent, but most were trained in colleges where they had received a classical education, which included Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. When they reached the mission field, they worked to translate the Bible into new languages, some yet without a system of writing. They built educational systems in their lands of ministry. They were sometimes called upon to advise foreign governments.
Missionary reports were printed in the Missionary Herald, the magazine of the American Board established in 1821. For many Christians in America, the Missionary Herald was their window to the world. Descriptions of native customs, history, economic activities, and geographical features were included, along with accounts of the influence of the Gospel on these far-off lands. In the years before radio, movies, TV, or rapid communications, such missionary reports became primary sources for many Americans of information about foreign lands.
The ABCFM founded schools and hospitals in all the mission fields. Increasingly, its missionaries trained native leaders to continue the work of the ministry.
In 1961 the American Board merged to form the United Church Board for World Missions (UCBWM). After 150 years, the American Board had sent out nearly 5000 missionaries to 34 different fields.
After the American Civil War, Byram Green organized commissioning a monument to honor the five men who founded the movement; it was erected in 1867 in Mission Park in Williamstown, Massachusetts.
In 1906 a centennial gathering took place in Mission Park at Williams College in celebration of the earlier prayer meeting.
In the summer of 2006, contemporary missioners celebrated the 200th anniversary of the Haystack prayer meeting.
Byram Green returns to Williamstown. He told of the original meeting and pointed out the site of the haystack. Consequently, Sloan's Meadow was purchased by Williams College and renamed Mission Park.
1856
Semi-centennial of the Haystack Meeting is celebrated
1867
Marble monument is erected and dedicated on the site of the original meeting
1868
Woman's Boards of Missions established
1906
Centennial anniversary of the Haystack Meeting is celebrated in Williamstown
1931
Merger of Congregational and Christian churches, forming Congregational Christian Church, with the ABCFM
1934
Merger of the Evangelical Synod of North America and Reformed Church in the United States, forming the Evangelical and Reformed Church, with its Board of International Missions
1956
157th Annual Meeting of the ABCFM and Sesquicentennial of the Haystack Meeting celebrated in Williamstown
1957
United Church of Christ established by the merger of the Congregational Christian Church and the Evangelical and Reformed Church
1961
ABCFM merges with Board of International Missions to form the United Church Board for World Ministries (UCBWM)
1981
175th Anniversary of the Haystack Meeting celebrated in Williamstown
1995
Global Ministries is established as a partnership between the UCBWM of the United Church of Christ (UCC) and the Division of Overseas Ministries (DOM) of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)
2000
UCBWM becomes Wider Church Ministries, one of four UCC-covenanted ministries. Wider Church Ministries remains in partnership with DOM through Global Ministries
2006
200th anniversary celebration of the Haystack event in Williamstown
The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was among the first American Christian missionary organizations. It was created in 1810 by recent graduates of Williams College. In the 19th century it was the largest and most important of American missionary organizations and consisted of participants from Protestant Reformed traditions such as Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and German Reformed churches.
Rufus Anderson was an American minister who spent several decades organizing overseas missions.
Samuel John Mills Jr. was an American preacher and missionary from Connecticut. He is known for contributing to the organization of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and to the formation of the American Colonization Society in 1817. The latter was intended to establish a colony in West Africa as a destination for free American blacks.
Byram Green was a New York state legislator for years in the Assembly and Senate, from 1816 to 1824. In 1842, he was elected United States Representative from New York and served one term from 1843 to 1845.
Henry Martyn Scudder was a missionary under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church in America to Japan and South India—to the American Madura Mission and American Madras Mission. He also established the American Arcot Mission, North Arcot of South India—then under Madras Presidency.
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Lewis Hodous was an American Board missionary to China, educator, Sinologist and Buddhologist.
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Samuel Newell (1784–1821) was an American missionary and one of the pioneers of American foreign missions. He served with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in India and Ceylon, where he founded the first American Ceylon Mission station.
Samuel Nott was one of the pioneers of American foreign missions. He was one of the first five foreign missionaries under American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to India, and established Bombay Mission station, the first Americans overseas mission station at Bombay, then-headquarters of the Bombay Presidency.
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Henry Richard Hoisington was an American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions missionary to Ceylon and was one of the first three missionaries who established mission station at Madura, commencing American Madura Mission in South India as an offshoot of the Jaffna Mission in Ceylon, also known as Ceylon Mission.
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Carl Russell Heine was an Australian-born missionary in the Marshall Islands. He arrived in the islands in 1896 as a sailor and settled on Jaluit Atoll, marrying a Marshallese woman. Ordained as a Congregationalist minister in 1906, he worked for the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and what is now the United Church of Christ – Congregational in the Marshall Islands. He was detained by Japanese troops during World War II and executed by beheading in 1944, along with two family members.
Woman's Boards of the Congregational Church was an American Congregational confederation of cooperating, independent women's missionary Boards. Each was associated with the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM). The four Boards were: Woman's Board of Missions, Boston, Woman's Board of Missions of the Interior, Woman's Board of Missions of the Pacific, and the Woman's Board of Missions of the Pacific Islands. The first three of these Boards cooperated with the ABCFM in Mexico, Spain, the Turkish Empire, India, Ceylon, China, Japan, Africa, and the Micronesian Islands; the fourth Board cooperated in the Hawaiian Islands and in Micronesia.
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