December 01, 1990 by Bill Stearns

A New Student Movement!

Despite your media-inspired fears of bloody street battles and racial turmoil, you're strolling arm in arm with about a thousand young people ö blacks and whites and coloreds and every shade of skin in between ö on the main street of Wellington, South Africa. Youâre about 50 miles from Cape Town among the picturesque Boland Mountains, happy to be part of something that never hits the secular news: another "Bless the Nations" conference!Marching in groups of 50, you're holding up traffic, singing and smiling in spite of the cool, overcast July weather. Workers lean out of their storefront offices to wave. Shoppers stare, dumbfounded. You sing "The Battle Belongs to the Lord" as you march past a park where the old men playing checkers scarcely notice your signs that read "Bless the Nations!"

The route of your march is down the same main street where more than a hundred years ago wagons rumbled over the cobblestones to carry missionaries into the heart of Africa.

The Wellington Call

You can scarcely contain your joy at finding in the political and racial pain of this country such a stirring, young-hearted revival. And it's focused on reaching out to the nations!

Just this morning, you with the hundreds of students and their older church leadership recited what will be known as The Wellington Call. You shouted with the South African church:

The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as in Exodus chapter three, verse fifteen has spoken to us as He has done formerly in Covenant with our fathers, to the prophets, disciples and saints of all ages down to the present. Now, through His Word, by prayer and proclamation, God has said weâre to act with urgency and sacrifice to bless the nations to the glory of God with the good news of salvation.

We acknowledge our need for the guidance and empowering of the Holy Spirit, and earnestly pray that Godâs spirit would show us our priorities and obligations, individually and as churches, to the worldâs unreached peoples.

We soberly ask forgiveness, in deep repentance, for our attitudes towards other race and language groups which we fully understand that God does not allow in the lives of His covenant-keeping children. We acknowledge that these sins have seriously hindered and limited prayer and missionary service both locally and beyond our borders.

We accept that the Body of Christ in South Africa, as elsewhere, is made up by all those called out and redeemed, made new and born again through faith in Jesus Christ, from all races, tribes, tongues and nations. We resolve to do nothing which harms this God-given unity, and to take steps to act upon this unity, especially in missionary service to the unreached peoples in the years leading up to 2000AD.

We are willing to accept special responsibility, here in southern Africa, for certain unreached people groups, some of whom are our close neighbors, that we might send them missionaries in faith as a permanent obligation until they have their own Christ-centered churches and leadership.

Should God wish to raise up a "Student Volunteer Movement for World Evangelization" in our land, we wish to offer it our fullest prayer and support.

Thomas Wang, president of the -California-based Great Commission Theological Seminary and editor of AD2000 magazine, was key speaker for the conference. Thomas noted, "From the time I arrived, I sensed a restlessness among the Christians, a desire to do more for God. These Christians have been bottled up for decades, but that's changing!"

Prior to the conference, Wellington residents and students at the local colleges participated in a 40-day prayer initiative to bless the meeting just as God blessed the dedication of the temple in the days of Solomon. They prayed for a sense of the blessing of God's very Presence. "As a result," one observer noted, "the delegates began to associate missions with God's Presence and not so much with inspiring speakers or missionary information.

Now you almost skip, arm-in-arm with believers of different races and different ages down the Wellington street. You can't help but think of God's promise to bless all peoples, to bring individuals together from all peoples, tribes and tongues into one Body:

"You were...separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.

"But now in Christ Jesus you who formerly were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

"For He Himself is our peace, who made [all] groups into one and broke down the barriers!"

Revival!

It is no coincidence that the 1200 mission enthusiasts, pastors and students met at Wellington. The town is the site of the original South African "Volunteer Band," a student-focused mission mobilization group launched in 1890.

After six years of uninterrupted South African Concerts of Prayer, an intense, racially mixed prayer group in that country's student world issued a specific challenge to students at the conference.

As a result, the youth of the conference adopted a pledge of commitment to the cause of frontier mission. Modified slightly from the 100-yearold vow adopted by the Volunteer Band, the 1990 pledge states: "For the glory of God I promise to give my all for world evangelization."

A total of 170 young people signed the pledge while still at the "Bless the Nations" conference. More than 500 more have made the commitment since. Conference leaders expect perhaps 1,000 signatories by the end of the year.

The students organized traveling teams to visit universities and colleges throughout the country to spread the vision of reaching the final frontiers of unreached peoples for Christ.

Dr. Wang pointed out that it was significant that this student mission movement should be birthed at a general mission conference involving older church and mission leadership. "No student  movement," he said, "can stand alone. It needs to be "church-centered and "church-supported if it's to have a future."

New Training Opportunities
The future of this growing South African student movement also needs solid training if these commitments are to eventually result in fully equipped senders and goers.

David Bliss, recently returned from South Africa to the U.S. from duties as director of the Andrew Murray Center for World Mission, says that training opportunities for those in this student mission movement are blossoming. "This past September," says David, "Indian Christians in Durban, Natal Province, opened the William Carey Missions Center specifically to train young people for mission service worldwide. Leslie James, who recently attended the London Adopt-A-People conference, is founder of the Center. James also pastors a church that has ten members serving in Asia as missionaries."

The mission history of South Africa is itself an encouragement to the training of students. In the 1790s days of William Carey, a young Dutch minister at the Cape, Helperus R. van Leer, trained local believers to reach the Cape Malays. He also started South Africa's first series of Concerts of Prayer!

In the 1860s, Andrew Murray, a contemporary of Hudson Taylor, established in Wellington a training center for missionaries and other ministries.

Now in the third era of modern missions, according to David Bliss, there is a new openness along racial and denominational lines. And itâsevident in student tr; ining. "In October," David says, " the Dutch Reformed Church General Synod passed a motion to open its Huguenot College to all race groups and denominations. The significance of this is that the college, founded in 1873 by Dr.David Bliss Murray, Anna Bliss and Abigail Fergason from Mt. Holyoke College in Massachusetts, was originally founded for this purpose ö to be open to all for missionary training.

"Due to strong nationalistic influences about the time of Dr. Murray's death," David says, " the college never rose to its noble ideals. But with the introduction of the Perspectives course beginning last January, it became clear to college officials that the time had come to abandon nationalism finally in favor of Dr. Murray's original mandate."

David shakes his head. "Who would have ever thought that black and white South African youths would be so joined and so motivated! Is this God's timing for a re-emphasis in the student world internationally? Is it the badly needed re-emphasis on life- time service, either in going or sending, so that John 3:16 can come about for all for whom it was originally in- tended?

"Let's pray and see what the Lord of the Harvest may wish to do with this movement by the year 2000!"