How might you adapt these “steps” for your spirit-work in your Y, for moving the spirit-health of your branch and association forward?
- Each Young Man first assumed a special care for certain unconverted friends.
- He would then regularly and by name pray for each one.
- He would speak to them on serious matters.
- He would persuade them to accompany him to church.
- He would urge them to sample the prayer meeting or a Bible study group.
This list is found in chapter six of Clyde Binfield’s book George Williams and the YMCA, where he outlines the many factors that led up to June 6, 1844 and the founding of the Young Men’s Christian Association in London England (pgs. 110-111).
Binfield observes that it wasn’t just the “steps” that contributed to the early and enduring success of the YMCA, but also the character and charisma of the founding men, specifically marking the personal leadership and spirituality of George Williams.
The 1840’s “were ready for this” as Binfield writes, “a decade notable for movement”. And, as George Williams records in his diary “Oh shout God is at work…”
Binfield goes on to comment about the “steps”:
Such a system makes sense of aspects of William’s diary; there was something businesslike in it, at once quite rational and wholly Evangelical.
Yet no system, least of all involving ‘soul welfare’, can work unless the personalities concerned are sympathetic as well as powerful.
It might have required a system to make Williams abstain from gluttony or jump earlier out of bed.
It needed no such thing to make him deeply anxious for his fellows.
With this qualification, it is possible to see a development in intensity and spiritual awareness (which is not quite the same thing) amongst the Christians at Hitchcock, Rogers.
Here’s some of the paragraph Binfield writes about Williams:
…George Williams show[ed] the abundant geniality which impressed all who met him.
There was a genuineness about him which transcended other qualities.
Without this the atmosphere at St. Paul’s Churchyard would have been intolerable.
With it, the activities of the first Christian Young Men became natural, even unremarkable, and entirely acceptable.
There was, moreover, a persistence about Williams which only a strong character and formed intelligence could resist.
The young man was manifestly good at his job and he was no fool, despite the crevices in his intellectual armory.
From the first his ability in harnessing, utilizing, and keeping the abilities of more articulate men, and better organizers of greater men of the world, is striking.
This was partly the good businessman’s ability to delegate authority without abdicating responsibility.
Partly it was an extension of the good draper’s sixth sense – an ability to sum up and mentally to clothe his fellow man.
It was certainly the one thing needful to transmute the activieis at No. 72, St. Paul’s Churchyard into a Young Men’s Christian Association.
With what we learn here about Williams and his steps for building a “healthy spirit” with those who worked near him, what is God’s Spirit stirring in you?
How might you adapt these “steps” for your spirit-work in your Y, for moving the spirit-health of your branch and association forward?
What are some obstacles that seem to be in your way?
What inspires you about Williams and his “steps” of faith?
What kind of transformation might happen in you and those around you if you stepped courageously forward, like George and his friends did in 1844?