The End Of The Crusades: The Student Volunteer Movement For Foreign Missions

INTRODUCTION
"He said to them, 'Go into all the world and preach the good news to all creation.'"(Mark 16:15). The Student Volunteer Movement for Foreign Missions (or the SVM) immensely carried out this verse when it took forward a generation of college students towards world evangelization. According to Nathan Showalter's book, The End of the Crusade, "by the 1900's [the SVM] had forged links in Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa in a world federation designed to build enthusiasm for evangelization crusades".1 It was founded in 1886 in a conference at Mt. Hermon University. This movement was intact comprehensively in that it involved both men and women in its work.2 Additionally, great names glorified the Lord in these missionary crusades.

However, today, most of the world has pulled away from these important matters. Distractions such as social media and modern technology continue to distract individuals from what God has called them to do. All the chaos is known and grieved over, but movements of change are not initiated as much as they used to be. Specifically speaking over the Muslim religion that overtakes a large part of the world today, there was a man during the student movement by the name of Samuel Zwemer who focused and sacrificed his entire life to seek out the Muslim people in order to lead them to Christianity. By doing so, his movement through the SVM was marked as one of the last main missions towards Muslims or the Arabian area. Nonetheless, the SVM focused on raising those of the younger generation to spread the gospel everywhere it could; above all, it launched an activism for the spreading of the Lords' Word that sets an example for missionary ventures

Motts is considered to be one of the most integrated founders in the SVM. He was a part of the Mount Hermon One Hundred who had pledged to become a part of the foreign missions. Following his pledge, he became the head chair for the Student Movement.6 Mott's was considered responsible for the surge of students sent on these missions. Moreover, after the SVM's establishment, Motts helped launch another student association called the World's Student Christian Federation (WSCF). It was considered the first true student association, and they coined it as an extension from the Student Volunteer Movement. In the WSCF, young Christian students, under Mott's leadership, gathered societies to social justice and peace. Mott's also held a famous conference named the Edinburg Missionary Conference of 1910; in this meeting, "steps were taken forward for institutionalized cooperation between protestant missionary