It’s about Jesus Christ making a difference in the world. It’s about turning young people on to what mission is really all about–in their schools, downtown or overseas. It’s about helping the Church move out into the world.
The New Wilmington Missionary Conference brings more than 1,500 participants and visitors together every year for just these reasons. Attendees spend a week on the campus of Westminster College in New Wilmington, Pa. to be challenged about mission needs here and around the world. The experience includes listening to speakers, sharing in small groups, praying late at night in the dorm halls, playing sports, meeting new friends, and eating breakfast with missionaries from Mozambique or Manhattan or Malaysia.
This year will be unique–NWMC will celebrate its 100th anniversary in a week-long celebration July 23-30. The speakers will include Ken Bailey, David Bailey, Pat Mason, Harold Kurtz, and PC(USA) Moderator Rick Ufford- Chase, who will lead the commissioning of the Church’s 2005 missionaries in a special Sunday night service. For further information, visit the NWMC Web site: www.nwmcmission.org .
Since 1906, the emphasis of NWMC has been on youth aged 12 to 24, even into this age of videogames and reality shows; record numbers are expected to attend in 2005. And while the focus is on young people, there’s something special for every age. But every age group from babies to adults has planned programs, speakers, and activities.
A Century of Service
The New Wilmington Missionary Conference has its roots in the last third of the 19th century. At that time, there was a resurgence of interest in mission by Christian youth, spurred on by the birth of mission-oriented youth organizations like the YMCA, YWCA, and the United Society of Christian Endeavor. Inspired by one of these youth conventions, an eclectic group of teachers, missionaries, and delegates from the Presbyterian Church decided to create their own missionary conference. They chose as their home base the small town of New Wilmington, Pa.
In those early years, delegates arrived by train, where they were carried into town by horse-drawn carriages. The quiet village of New Wilmington was hard pressed to house the “pile of people” that began to show up each year, with attendees staying in guesthouses, tents, and eventually the Westminster College gymnasium.
Feeding everyone was an equally daunting task. Over the years, the conference built a “collapsible kitchen,” something like a large-scale camping stove, which was re-assembled every year to feed the growing numbers of attendees. That old kitchen saw so much use that eventually the volunteer work crew demanded that a new one be built–and then continued to make do with the old one for another ten years! Things got even worse during World War II, when delegates were asked to bring rations of sugar, butter, and coffee to help “feed the masses.”
Conference attendance continued to grow until eventually it was necessary to build a central meeting location. Named the “Big Tent,” it was, well, a big tent, and it posed some big problems. Year after year, the tent was damaged by wind and rain, then patched and restored; the sagging big top would create “catch basins” that continually threatened to spill out large pools of water onto the heads of the hapless. Under that tent spoke some tremendous men and women of faith, such as J. Knox McClurkin, Dr. Samuel Zwemer, and Julia Lake Kellersberg of the American Mission to Lepers.
Older attendees still remember the Big Tent with great nostalgia, but it was eventually replaced by Anderson Auditorium, a 1,500-seat open-air amphitheater that sits near Westminster’s Lake Brittan. Built in 1957 by (who else?) a team of youth volunteers, Anderson is the “heart” of the conference, where everyone meets several times a day to sing, laugh, listen, and praise. Listening to a gifted speaker in the twilight of a fun-packed summer day, while fireflies gently flicker above the lake, is the kind of moment you simply have to experience to understand.
Long gone are the days of austerity. Today, delegates enjoy meals at Westminster College’s new McKelvey Campus Center. New Wilmington, while still quaint, now has wireless Internet access at Mugsie’s Coffee House, and gourmet ice cream at Isaly’s. Most delegates now drive to the conference rather than take the train, although you can still hear the soft clop-clop of horse-drawn Amish buggies as you drift off to sleep at night.
Changing Lives
New Wilmington doesn’t just provide the message of service; it also provides the means. In 1961, NWMC began its annual “Summer Service” program, which each year selects a team of college- aged students to work for 6-8 weeks in the mission field. Over the years, Summer Service teams have traveled to more than 35 sites in Africa, Europe, Asia, and many locations in the United States, where they have served at homeless shelters, taught English to schoolchildren, and worked in rural hospitals. The Summer Service program is completely underwritten by the Conference, so teams are not required to do any additional fundraising.
As these young adults serve God on the mission field, they not only get the opportunity to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but they learn a great deal about themselves, and often hear God’s call in a personal and unique way.
Through it all, NWMC has maintained its single-minded focus, drawn up in 1906: “a Missionary Conference marked by a strong missionary purpose and a deep spiritual life.” That is perhaps the most remarkable part of the Conference story: through two world wars, the Great Depression, the turbulence of the sixties, and into the computer age, it remains focused on mission. That the conference has never strayed from that path is testament to its strong leadership–and to the leadership of Christ, who also remains the same yesterday, today, and forever.
