John Murray: The 'C' Should Stay in the YMCA
[Mr. Murray is headmaster of Fourth Presbyterian School in Potomac, Md.]
Last month, the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) unveiled a new brand strategy to address America's needs, as well as a name change to "the Y." After surveying "a cross section of Americans to learn more about the most pressing issues and challenges facing their communities today," the Y had found that only 51% of Americans were optimistic about the future while 49% were not....
In regard to the YMCA's role in Mott's life, historian Clarence P. Shedd noted that Mott had come to Cornell "to get away from religion." But upon hearing a YMCA-sponsored talk at Cornell by famed Cambridge athlete Kynaston Studd in 1886, three sentences forever changed Mott's life: "Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God."
After graduating from Cornell in 1888, Mott was named executive president of the YMCA. During this time, Christian orthodoxy began to disappear from the curriculum and administration of American universities. Yet it was strongly maintained in the undergraduate body through the YMCA and Mott's work. His inspiration and leadership, and the Intercollegiate Movement of the YMCA fostered a missionary zeal at home and abroad, influencing new generations of young men and women to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as documented in Mott's 1905 book, "The Evangelization of the World in this Generation."
In his book "The Soul of the American University," Notre Dame professor George Marsden demonstrates the impact of the YMCA in an era when more than 3,000 of the American missionaries who went aboard from 1899-1915 were products of the YMCAs and YWCAs. "By 1921, the YMCAs reached their numerical peak with 731 chapters on the approximately 1,000 [college] campuses in the country; they had enrolled well over 90,000 members, or about one in seven, in a student population of about 600,000."...
Read entire article at WSJ
Last month, the Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA) unveiled a new brand strategy to address America's needs, as well as a name change to "the Y." After surveying "a cross section of Americans to learn more about the most pressing issues and challenges facing their communities today," the Y had found that only 51% of Americans were optimistic about the future while 49% were not....
In regard to the YMCA's role in Mott's life, historian Clarence P. Shedd noted that Mott had come to Cornell "to get away from religion." But upon hearing a YMCA-sponsored talk at Cornell by famed Cambridge athlete Kynaston Studd in 1886, three sentences forever changed Mott's life: "Seekest thou great things for thyself? Seek them not. Seek ye first the Kingdom of God."
After graduating from Cornell in 1888, Mott was named executive president of the YMCA. During this time, Christian orthodoxy began to disappear from the curriculum and administration of American universities. Yet it was strongly maintained in the undergraduate body through the YMCA and Mott's work. His inspiration and leadership, and the Intercollegiate Movement of the YMCA fostered a missionary zeal at home and abroad, influencing new generations of young men and women to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, as documented in Mott's 1905 book, "The Evangelization of the World in this Generation."
In his book "The Soul of the American University," Notre Dame professor George Marsden demonstrates the impact of the YMCA in an era when more than 3,000 of the American missionaries who went aboard from 1899-1915 were products of the YMCAs and YWCAs. "By 1921, the YMCAs reached their numerical peak with 731 chapters on the approximately 1,000 [college] campuses in the country; they had enrolled well over 90,000 members, or about one in seven, in a student population of about 600,000."...