How did the Oriental Missionary Society end the GVC–the Great Village Campaign?
You can read Part I here.
Begun in 1913 and planned to take five years, it almost made the deadline.
But undertaking such a vast task during the same five years of a World War, was a challenge.
Money and manpower always presented problems.
The need for both often sent the Cowmans and the GVC missionaries to prayer.
Isn’t that always what happens?
But not to despair. The Cowmans knew Oswald Chambers and certainly were familiar with his famous quote, “prayer is the greater work.”
Prayer undergirded everything planned and carried out by the Oriental Missionary Society (OMS).
Money needed for the end of the GVC
While the Gospel-tract distribution through Japan was shockingly inexpensive, it did require financial resources.
Every issue of the OMS publication Electric Messages included appeals for money as well as providing a map of the completed work.
With World War I in Europe at its zenith, the Cowmans returned to the United States on a Deputation tour in 1916. (The United States had not yet declared war.)
The tour had two goals: find more funding for the end of the GVC and recruit volunteers to complete the task.
Charles Cowman’s first stop was to an old friend and fellow evangelist, W. E. Blackstone.
After a humorous exchange where the two evangelists stared down one another until Blackstone responded by writing a check for the 2020 equivalent of $375,000.
Going one step further, Blackstone also underwrote the travel costs for ten men headed to Japan, thus enabling the Great Village Campaign to complete the project by the end of 1917.
Cowman didn’t stop just with Blackstone, but confident God would provide the rest, he continued making pitches on the deputation tour.
He carried “proxy missionary certificates” and handed them out along the way. People could sign up–sending funds instead of themselves to the grueling task.
Western missionaries needed for the end of the GVC
One of the western missionaries serving as a GVC missionary starting in 1914 was a student at God’s Bible School.
Cowman sent him back to GBS in 1916 to recruit other students from the school to take a one-year “tour,” in Japan.
Cowman knew God’s Bible School would be a good source for men willing to give up a year of their lives for the sake of the Gospel.
He estimated that with ten westerners and plenty of Japanese volunteers from the Tokyo Bible Training Institute, the end of the GVC could come by December 1917.
Encouraged by the GBS magazine The Revivalist, ten men volunteered.
(God’s Revivalist Magazine continues to this day).
The ten men were:
Lewis Kyles, John Orkney. Rollie Poe, William Miller, Vernie Stanley, Everett Williamson, Paul Haines, Edward Oney, William Thiele, and Harry Woods.
The ten traveled with Charles and Lettie Cowman across the US by train to Los Angeles. After meeting with Blackstone and attending numerous prayer meetings, they continued to San Francisco from whence they sailed in early 1917.
Landing in Japan on January 20, 1917, they went right to work.
As William Miller wrote, “We landed with a zeal and determination to spread the Gospel like Samson’s foxes spread the fire.” (Young Men of the Cross, page 40).
Walking through Japan
Greeted by Ernest Kilbourne upon their arrival, the men were organized into ten teams, matching each American with five to seven Japanese Bible men/interpreters.
The Americans ranged in age from 22 to 30 and served as the leaders—but given their lack of familiarity with the Japanese language and customs, they quickly learned to trust the men who did most of the work!
They trekked between fifteen and twenty-five miles a day. Some days they visited as many as eight villages. With five million houses visited in the previous four years, they had the same number to go.
It was hard work.
“Often after treading over mountains . . . [we have] tired, aching bodies, and blistered feet. Other times we are very wet, having worked in the rain all day.” (Young Men of the Cross p. 44).
The men often went to extremes to ensure they canvassed every house. They encountered lepers, caged men, fast-flowing creeks, frigid temperatures, and a variety of physical ailments.
Conditions altered as the seasons and terrain changed. They trekked through the rainy season, summer heat, fall chill, winter snow, across mountains, through streams, up valleys, and along narrow paths.
One group sailed to a distant village unreachable by foot. Their shoes wore out, they lost weight, rats ran across their bodies as they slept on thin mats.
The corn-fed American men towered above the Japanese and remained continually astounded by the eastern culture.
The Visionary Behind Streams in the Desert
What was the result by the end of the GVC campaign?
Was it even possible to complete the task?
Career OMS missionary Paul Haines later wrote, “a sincere effort was made as far as humanly possible, to reach every home.”
Reflecting later, missionary Woods said the rationale behind
the wholesale and indiscriminate distribution of the Bible was not so much evangelism as seed sowing.
Charles Cowman had a great faith . . . that “the gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believeth.”
(In These Mortal Hands, p. 105)
Charles Cowman himself believed any results had to be left at God’s feet. Only God could determine success.
Blackstone certainly agreed with Charles Cowman, and put his money into his belief. When funds ran low toward the end of the GVC, he wired an additional $8,000. ($119 in 2020 US).
Most of the men signed on for one year and, for the majority, the campaign finished in January 1918.
The Oriental Missionary Standard’s front page blazed the announcement: “Hallelujah! The Japan Village Campaign is finished!”
However, several men needed to remain in Japan. They closed out the final campaign distribution in June 1918.
All ten men eventually graduated from God’s Bible School. Half returned to work for the Oriental Missionary Society as missionaries.
Charles estimated the ten men (and their valuable Japanese counterparts) cumulatively walked fifty thousand miles. (Or the equivalent of twice around the world). They distributed Gospel tracts to thirty Japanese provinces in one year.
Well done, good and faithful servants!
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