It Happened at a Haystack

200th Anniversary Gathering at the Haystack Prayer Monument

I first learned of the monument on the Williams College campus in 1988 while researching student missions. In 2006, I joined several student ministries leaders from across the nation at the 200th anniversary of the event that led to the establishing of this memorial. Do you know why there is a monument on the small elite college campus in Western Massachusetts? Sadly, even some graduates of Williams College do not know the importance of this monument. What happened there?

In 1806, a small band of students at Williams College in Massachusetts led by Samuel J. Mills, Jr., prayed every Wednesday and Saturday afternoon. Walking home one day after prayer, they were caught in a rainstorm and found refuge in a haystack. Apparently they sensed something of God’s urgency in their prayers that day. Rather than tell jokes or talk about how crazy the storm suddenly became, they gave themselves to continue in prayer for the topics they had been in prayer about that afternood. They prayed for Asia and for missionary involvement among students.

This solemn moment changed history. “Whatsoever we beg of God, let us also work for it,” said Mills. Fervent in prayer and determined to live their lives with integrity, they committed themselves to become the answer to their prayers.

The Haystack Prayer Meeting marked an early beginning of a great wave of thousands of missionaries serving around the globe over then next century, particularly students. Before that time no missionaries had been sent from the North American continent. (Though there is evidence of one former African slave who went to Jamaica. If you know more about this earliest American missionary, please let me know.)

Within four years, the zeal and vision of these students brought about the formation of the first American mission board. Adoniram Judson, the first N. American missionary, sailed for India to work with William Carey. Williams College students continued to go to the foreign fields. The students of the Haystack Prayer Meeting transferred to other colleges to spread the vision and within 3 years, they established student groups committed to world mission in almost every one of the 25 colleges in the young nation. (To offer some historical perspective: In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson sent Lewis & Clark to the Western Frontiers to explore territories recently acquired in the Louisiana Purchase.)

The beginning of a wave of missionary involvement among college students had begun. Over 263 students became missionaries. About 80 years later, this early impulse of student involvement in world missions came into full bloom with the Student Volunteer Movement. This marvelous story began as a few students answered the call to perseverance in pray and corresponding obedience to become the answer to their own prayer.

How then should we pray today?

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