Day 3 of 10
The Haystack Prayer Meeting
When Students Changed the World
Scripture Readings
Today's Reading
In August 1806, five students at Williams College in Massachusetts were caught in a thunderstorm during an outdoor prayer meeting and took shelter under a haystack. What happened next changed the course of American Christianity.
The students — led by Samuel J. Mills, a freshman — had been meeting regularly to pray about the state of the world. They were children of the Second Great Awakening, stirred by reports of William Carey's work in India and burdened by the question: What is our obligation to the unevangelized world?
Under the haystack, soaked and sheltered, they prayed and debated. Mills, with the directness of youth, cut through the objections: "We can do this if we will" (quoted in Thomas C. Richards, Samuel J. Mills, Chapter 3). The students made a commitment that afternoon to devote their lives to foreign missions.
Within four years, they had petitioned the Congregational churches of New England, and in 1810, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) was founded — the first American organization dedicated to sending missionaries overseas. In 1812, the first missionaries — including Adoniram and Ann Judson — sailed for India and Burma.
Biblical Connection
The psalm that fueled the missionary imagination of this era was Psalm 2:8: "Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession." This was read not as ancient poetry but as a living promise — God inviting His people to ask for the nations and then go to them.
The pattern had been set in the early church. "While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.' Then after fasting and praying they laid their hands on them and sent them off" (Acts 13:2–3). The church at Antioch did not wait for a committee report or a strategic plan. They worshipped, they listened, and they sent.
Going Deeper
The Haystack Prayer Meeting was not, by worldly standards, a significant event. Five college students hiding from a storm. No publicity. No institutional backing. No budget. But Spurgeon captured the underlying principle: "The missionary enterprise is not the church's afterthought; it is Christ's forethought" (The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, Sermon 1532).
The students at Williams College did not know they were making history. They were simply taking Jesus at His word. The Great Commission said go. The nations were unreached. The question was not whether to act but how quickly.
The ABCFM sent missionaries across the globe — to Hawaii, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, and Africa. The movement it launched helped create the global church we know today. And it all began under a haystack, in a thunderstorm, with five students who believed that prayer and obedience could change the world.
They were right.
Key Quotes
“We can do this if we will.”
“The missionary enterprise is not the church's afterthought; it is Christ's forethought.”
Prayer Focus
Praying for young people in the church today — that God would raise up a new generation willing to go wherever He sends them
Meditation
The Haystack students were just college freshmen. They had no resources, no organization, no denominational backing. They had only prayer and conviction. What is God calling you to begin — even without all the resources?
Question for Discussion
The Haystack Prayer Meeting led to the first American foreign mission organization. What does it suggest about the relationship between prayer and action — and are we more likely to pray without acting or to act without praying?