READING ROOM

This pages contains reports from 2004 visitors to the Archives Reading Room, describing their work in their own words. These reports, slightly edited in some cases to make them fit the format, have been taken from questionnaires filled out after the visit.

Mr. James Scott Bell, West Hills, California

I had met Wayne Weber at a conference on [evangelist R. A.] Torrey at Biola University. I was teaching at a writers conference at Wheaton, and arranged for time at the archives [to go through] the letters, sermons and assorted press clippings of Torrey.

I was hoping to find items relating to Torrey's personal life, e.g. letters and notes, etc, and also, his sermon notes. And I found all of the above. I loved holding Torrey's leather bound sermon notebook in my hands, and seeing the way he constructed outlines for preaching.

I was working on a novel that takes place in Los Angeles in the 1920's, and Torrey was to be part of the story. The research in his papers was enormously helpful in giving greater insight into Torrey's character and work. The novel has been completed and will be out in 2005.









Skip, Carol and David Gillham, Vineland, Ontario

My wife's great uncle [Raymond L. Davis] was an AIM missionary and he was shipwrecked off South Africa on his way to the field on August 10, 1917. Although twenty lives were lost, Uncle Ray survived. We were aware that his photo album was now part of the AIM Collection at the BGC and we wanted to copy a couple of photos of him and his work for our studies. This was accomplished, but we had an added bonus.

Thanks to a helpful suggestion, we were able to discover several articles about Uncle Ray's ministry, a letter and details of his shipwreck from back issues of AIM magazines stored on microfilm. We are grateful for the help in finding these publications as they provided a wealth of information that was new to us.

We appreciate the BGC personnel's knowledge of the available materials and their helpfulness in our research effort. It is good to know that such a variety of historical Christian material is being preserved in the BGC and that it is accessible to the public for research and study.


Mrs. Marilyn Mitchem, Bettendorf, Iowa. In the picture are (left to right) Marilyn Mitchem, Edith Nowack, Donald Mitchem

I am writing a history of Ebenezer Mission, located southwest of Del Rio, in Cocke County, Tennessee. This mission was made famous as the historical setting for Catherine Marshall's best-selling novel "Christy."

Through Internet searches, I learned that historical documents and tape recordings relating to William and Katherine Plantz Nowack, the mission's founders, were located at the Billy Graham Archives Center.

Even though transcripts of these tapes were available online, I wanted to hear them in person and to also study materials and photographs not available on the Internet. Of special interest to me was a photograph of the Nowack family taken in 1918, some thirteen years after they left Tennessee to become independent missionaries in Miyang, Honan Province, China. It is the third existing photograph of Katherine Plantz Nowack I've discovered.

I found everything I had expected to and spent a very pleasant day listening to tapes and taking notes. Although I am not including much of the Nowack's China service in my book, I wanted to find the location of their Chinese mission. I asked Wayne Weber if any early twentieth century maps of China were available, and he directed my attention to the rear wall of the room, where a 1905 large map of China hung. Another researcher there overheard our conversation and mentioned that she is a university professor and expert in Chinese history. Within seconds, she helped us locate Miyang on the map.

I have experienced many of these serendipities in my research and thank God for sending the right people with the right answers at the right moment.


Ms. Stacey Bieler, East Lansing, Michigan

Calvin Summer Seminars in Christian Scholarship offered a three week seminar on Writing the World History of Christianity, led by Dr. Mark Noll of Wheaton College. Thirteen of us met to talk about Christianity around the world in the 20th century. I chose to research "The History of International Student Ministry in InterVarsity Christian Fellowship- USA." Since the Billy Graham Center houses the archives of IVCF, I came to look through files concerning international student ministry (ISM).

I was hoping to trace the role of ISM within IVCF from the 1940s to the present. I was hoping to see how ISM influenced the movement, the difficulties and joys of the ministry, the people involved, etc. I found memorandums, training papers, staff reports, correspondence, annual reports of ISM directors (David Adeney and Paul Little), conference and house party brochures, student lists, American host lists, a copy of Paul Little's A Guide to International Friendship (1959), etc.

I got to see a poster for the first "Urbana" missionary conference, held in Toronto! I got to help another group of patrons find a town in China on an old map. (I'm a Chinese historian.)

I know of no one else writing the history of international student ministry in the United States. I was able to share a rough draft of the first sections of the paper (1940s-1960s) with other Lausanne delegates who were in the section on ISM in Thailand in October 2004. I hope to encourage ministries in North America and around the world to write brief histories so that we can learn from the past, rejoice in God's goodness and encourage more of the church to join us in the strategic mission. I hope that fifteen to twenty articles could be gathered into an edited volume and could be used in missions and ISM training at seminaries and churches.


Dr. Randy Johnson, Assistant Professor, Aviation Management and Logistics Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama

Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) is committed to providing the gospel and humanitarian assistance to more than 588 million people, representing hundreds of people groups living in over 15 countries. To accomplish its mission, MAF owns and operates a fleet of 68 aircraft. MAF operations are most often conducted in hostile and risky environments. While MAF has made significant safety progress by modifying its aircraft to increase accident survivability for its crews, I am working with them to further reduce its crew's exposure to risk.

I came to the BGC Archives to look for MAF organizational papers, safety reports and organizational cultural "clues." There were a number of very interesting letters and corporate communications that informed my research and helped put current MAF directives into perspective.

If the link between corporate communications and aviation safety "culture" can be understood it will prove insightful in providing solutions to create a safer working environment.


Mr. Adams Laats, Doctoral candidate, University of Wisconsin-Madison

More recently, I used the archive to research my dissertation. It's also focused in the 1920s, but my research question now concerns the ways fundamentalists approached the issue of education during the 1920s. Most famously, this involved the campaign to ban evolution from public schools, but I'm finding it had many other aspects as well, hence my working title: "More Than a Monkey Trial: Fundamentalists and Education in the 1920s." Many fundamentalists also worked to mandate the reading of the Bible in public schools, while others worked to construct an alternative system of schools. Also, the debates went beyond the high-school debates that became so famous as the Scopes "monkey" trial in Dayton, Tennessee; fundamentalists battled with secularists and theological modernists for control over higher education, both public and denominational.

The BGC archives have been invaluable to me in this research. I started with the microfilm copies of leading periodicals, such as William Bell Riley's Christian Fundamentals in School and Church, and J. Frank Norris' The Searchlight. I was excited to find microfilm copies of Norris' personal papers, in addition to scrapbooks and ephemeral material from William Bell Riley.

My research is not yet complete, and I'm counting on digging deeper into the BGC archives when I return to full-time research in the summer (I teach high school during the school year). I might be mixing up the BGC archive with the BGC library and Buswell library, but I'm interested in many of the oral histories that I've seen in the catalogue, as well as many of the paper periodicals, such as King's Business, and the microfilm papers of other active 1920s religious figures, such as Aimee Semple McPherson and Billy Sunday.


Mr. John LeMay, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staff, University of Minnesota-Minneapolis

I was at a conference located at Wheaton and another person at the conference told me about the archives so I thought I would check out what was there and do just some quick research into the history of InterVarsity at the University of Minnesota. I was not really sure what I would find, but thought it would be interesting to see the history of our chapter.

I found the history of the chapter back to the beginning of it 1940 and was able to see patterns and numbers of the people involved at the chapter. It was interesting to see that the chapter was able to bring in Billy Graham in the 1950's. It was good to see the strength and continuity of the chapter at the U of MN. It gave me more background about the movement of IV at the U of MN. As I would plan the future, it is helpful to have that perspective.


Mr. Jeff Liou, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship staff, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor

I came to the Archives to learn more about the history of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at the University of Michigan, where I work. Specifically, I wanted to get a feel for what the climate at the University was like as well as what the staff were doing/saying/thinking.

I found a few photos, many records and correspondence, but also audio tapes! I was surprised that audio tapes of phone conversations were included. It has me curious to listen to them.

My research helps me understand more fully how God has been working in recent history through InterVarsity Christian Fellowship at the University of Michigan. Also, it connects me to a "tradition," if you will. Finally, this research has helped me to communicate with passion about the overall vision for InterVarsity to the students with whom I work. When they get a sense for God's faithfulness through the ministries of InterVarsity, they too are filled with passion, vision, and zeal.

Mr. Heath Carter, University of Chicago Divinity School

Over the course of my master's program in American religious history at the University of Chicago Divinity School I have had several occasions to visit the Billy Graham Center Archives. I have never been disappointed.

Last spring I set out to write a paper on the rise of an evangelical left in response to the Vietnam War, and to my great delight found a veritable treasure trove of resources in the Archives' folders on Evangelicals for Social Concern. Among my most interesting finds were the original papers of the "Evangelicals for McGovern" organization and a series of correspondence between Jim Wallis, Ron Sider, Richard Pierard, and the like.

Meanwhile, this past fall I launched into a new project on the social implications of the Moody Memorial Church Building here in Chicago. While I had originally expected to find most of my information at the Moody Bible Institute, it turned out that the Moody Church had turned over all its records to the Billy Graham Center Archives. In those folders I found invaluable pictures of the Lincoln Park area before and after the Moody Church was built, as well as photos of the church under construction.

In short, my trips to the Graham Center Archives have always been productive and enjoyable – due, in no small part, to the astute assistance of Wayne and his cohort of friendly and helpful interns. The proximity of this inexhaustible resource is just one more reason why Chicago is the place to be for someone who, like myself, is fascinated with the dynamics of the American evangelical community in the last hundred years.