This article was inspired by the wave of social media posts celebrating camp-meetings happening across the United States this season. Seeing those posts stirred a curiosity about the rich history of camp-meetings in the American church, which led to the re-discovery of a remarkable firsthand account of the 1913 Anderson, Indiana Camp-Meeting — one of the most powerful gatherings in the early history of the Church of God movement. That account, found in the opening chapter of Camp-Meeting Sermons 1913, originally published by the Gospel Trumpet Company and now digitally preserved by The Gospel Truth here is so rich with timeless truth that it seemed wrong to let it sit unnoticed on a digital shelf. Three themes emerged naturally from that chapter — divine healing, Spirit-led unity, and global mission — and each one felt as urgent and alive for the church today as it was for the thousands who gathered on that Indiana camp ground more than a century ago.
Written by Timothy Downing, Missionary in Ecuador
“But ye shall receive power, after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth.”
— Acts 1:8
There is a moment in the book of Acts that never grows old, no matter how many times you read it. A small group of ordinary men and women, gathered in an upper room in Jerusalem, receive the outpouring of the Holy Spirit — and within a generation, the gospel has spread across the known world. Not because they had vast resources. Not because they had political influence or impressive buildings. But because they had been with Jesus, and they could not keep it to themselves.
That same unstoppable impulse was alive and breathing in Anderson, Indiana, in the summer of 1913.
People had come from every compass point — East and West, North and South — drawn by the Spirit of God to a camp-meeting that would prove to be one of the most powerful gatherings in the memory of those who attended. But what made those ten days truly remarkable was not simply what happened within the borders of that camp ground. It was the size of the vision that filled the room. Because the people who gathered in Anderson were not thinking only about Anderson. They were thinking about India. About China. About Russia and Germany, the West Indies and Syria, Ireland and Africa. They were thinking about the uttermost parts of the earth — and they were doing something about it.
A Local Gathering With a Global Heartbeat
On the surface, a camp-meeting in a midwestern town in 1913 might seem like a local affair. Tents pitched on a green lawn, a large auditorium filling up with familiar faces, neighbors greeting neighbors. But look a little closer and you begin to see something that takes your breath away.
On one designated day — Friday, set apart as Missionary Day — the entire program of the camp-meeting paused from its regular rhythm and turned its full attention outward. A missionary sermon opened the morning service. And then, in the afternoon, something remarkable unfolded. One by one, missionaries who had returned from the foreign fields where they had labored took the platform and spoke — ten minutes each — of the needs they had witnessed and the work God was doing in places most of the audience would never visit in their lifetimes.
Alice Hale and Robert Jarvis from India. Otto and Gertrude Doebert from Germany and Russia. Charles Hunnex from China. George Coplin and Archie Rather from the West Indies. Anna Cheatham speaking of the need in the British Isles. D. F. Oden describing South and West Africa. F. Fuerholzer speaking of Central Africa. And a brother named Trad, who stood before that congregation and lifted his voice on behalf of Syria.
Stand back for a moment and let that sink in. In a single afternoon service, in a single auditorium in Anderson, Indiana, the voices of workers from India, China, Russia, Germany, the West Indies, Ireland, Africa, and Syria filled the room. The world had come to Anderson. And Anderson, in turn, was being called to the world.
This is what a church looks like when the Holy Spirit has His way with it. The Great Commission is not background noise — a familiar text read at the beginning of a missions offering and then quietly set aside. It is the heartbeat of everything. It is the reason the church exists.
The Commission That Drives It All
Jesus did not whisper the Great Commission. He spoke it with the full weight of His authority as the risen Lord, standing on a hillside in Galilee, just before He ascended to the Father. “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
Every word of that command deserves our reverent attention. Go. Not stay. Not wait for the nations to come to you. Go. All nations. Not the nations that are convenient, or culturally similar, or geographically close. All nations — including the ones that are difficult, distant, and dangerous. Teaching them to observe all things. Not simply evangelizing and moving on, but making disciples who obey — who live the life Jesus commanded, who carry the mission forward, who make disciples of their own.
The missionaries who stood in Anderson that Friday afternoon had taken those words seriously enough to cross oceans, learn foreign languages, and spend their lives among people who had never heard the name of Jesus. They had said yes to the Great Commission in the most costly and concrete way possible. And now they were standing before a congregation of thousands, asking a simple question: Will you join us?
Not everyone in that room was called to board a ship and sail to India or China. But every person in that room was called to something. And the missionary services, by every account, “undoubtedly inspired missionary zeal in many hearts” — not only for the sending of workers, but for the faithful support of those already in the field.
The Quiet Plea That Speaks the Loudest
Of all the details preserved from that Missionary Day in Anderson, one stands out with a quiet power that is almost impossible to read without feeling its weight. Several of the missionaries, in the course of their brief ten-minute talks, mentioned that they received very few letters from people back home. And they urged — gently, earnestly — that the brothers and sisters in the homeland write to them more frequently, sending letters of encouragement.
Letters. Not money, though money was certainly needed. Not more workers, though more workers were desperately wanted. Letters. Words on a page. The simple, human assurance that someone back home remembered you, prayed for you, and had not forgotten that you were out there.
Think about what it meant to be a missionary in 1913. No email. No video calls. No social media. No way to hear a familiar voice or see a familiar face except to wait weeks or months for a letter to make its way across the ocean. These men and women had left everything — home, family, comfort, safety — to carry the gospel to the ends of the earth. And many of them were doing it feeling largely forgotten by the very people who had sent them.
This is a gentle but searching word for us today. We live in an age of instant communication. A message can reach a missionary in India or China or Africa in seconds. We have no excuse — not distance, not cost, not difficulty — for leaving our brothers and sisters on the front lines of global mission feeling unseen and unsupported. A brief, sincere, prayer-filled message sent to a missionary this week could be exactly the encouragement they need to keep going.
Do not underestimate the ministry of a letter. Or an email. Or a voice message. Or a care package. The missionaries of 1913 were asking for something very simple, and it is a request that echoes across the years to us: Remember us. Write to us. Let us know we are not alone.
Prayer That Circled the Globe
The global heartbeat of the Anderson camp-meeting was not confined to Missionary Day alone. It pulsed through the entire gathering in the form of prayer. Twelve hundred and seventy-two prayer requests had arrived before and during the meeting — sent from across the country and around the world by people who could not attend but who believed that the prayers of God’s people could reach them wherever they were.
And they were right. Before the meeting closed, letters had already arrived reporting that God had answered. Healings at a distance. Deliverances from afar. The power of God moving in response to the prayers of a gathered people, reaching out to touch lives in places those prayers would never have been able to travel on foot.
This is the mystery and the miracle of intercession. When we pray, we participate in a mission that has no geographical limits. You may never set foot in Syria or Central Africa. But your prayers can. Your faith can. Your agreement with the purposes of God can reach into places your body never will, and touch lives in ways you will only fully understand when you stand before the throne of God and see the fruit of what you asked for in secret.
Paul understood this. Writing from a Roman prison — about as far from the mission field as a man could be — he asked the churches repeatedly to pray for him, for open doors, for boldness, for the advance of the gospel. He knew that the church at prayer is the church at war. He knew that intercession is not a passive substitute for action — it is action of the highest order.
The 1913 camp-meeting challenges us to take our prayer lives global. To lift our eyes beyond our own congregations, our own communities, our own needs — and to begin praying with the same scope and passion that Jesus displayed when He wept over Jerusalem and spoke of other sheep in other folds who must also hear His voice.
Several Prospective Missionaries Were There
Tucked quietly into the account of the Anderson camp-meeting is one small detail that deserves far more attention than it typically receives: several prospective missionaries attended the camp-meeting.
They came with questions still forming in their hearts. They came with a sense of calling that was not yet fully crystallized. They came to a gathering where the global mission of the church was on full display — where veterans of the field spoke plainly of needs and opportunities, where the prayers of thousands rose on behalf of the nations, where the Holy Spirit was moving in power. And we can only imagine what happened in the hearts of those young men and women as they listened, and prayed, and felt the weight of a world that needed Jesus.
Perhaps some of them left Anderson and boarded ships. Perhaps some of them never made it overseas but spent their lives praying and giving and sending. Perhaps the fruit of what was planted in their hearts that week is still being harvested in places whose names we do not know.
This is how the mission of God has always moved forward. One generation catches the fire and passes it to the next. One gathering plants a seed that bears fruit decades later. One conversation, one sermon, one afternoon of missionary testimonies — and a life is redirected toward the ends of the earth.
Could that be your story? Could the very fact that you are reading these words be part of God’s way of stirring something in you that has been waiting to be awakened?
What This Means for Us Today
The world is no smaller today than it was in 1913 — but in some ways it is more accessible. There are still unreached peoples in every region of the globe. There are still missionaries laboring in difficult places with inadequate support. There are still nations waiting for workers. And there is still a risen Lord who stands behind His commission with all authority in heaven and on earth, saying: Go. I am with you.
So what does faithful participation in global mission look like for the ordinary believer sitting in the pew on Sunday morning? It looks like several things, and none of them require a passport — though some might eventually lead to one.
It looks like praying specifically and consistently for missionaries and unreached peoples by name. Organizations like The Voice of The Martyrs, Operation World and the Joshua Project can put faces and names and needs before you that will transform your prayer life from a general gesture toward the world into a focused, faith-filled partnership with what God is doing in specific places.
It looks like giving generously to support those who go. The missionaries in Anderson were not only asking for letters — they were asking for the resources needed to sustain the work. Your faithful financial support of global mission is not a charitable option. It is an act of obedience to the Great Commission.
It looks like writing the letter — sending the email, making the call, letting the missionaries you know hear from you regularly. Do not let another week pass without reaching out to someone on the front lines and telling them you are praying, you are grateful, and you have not forgotten them.
And it looks like staying open to whatever God may be asking of you personally. Not everyone is called to go. But everyone is called to something. And the first step of obedience is simply to ask — honestly, humbly, with an open hand — Lord, what is my part in Your global mission?
The World in One Room
What happened in Anderson in the summer of 1913 was a picture of what the church is meant to be — a community so filled with the Spirit of God that its vision naturally expands to the size of God’s own heart. A heart that, as John 3:16 reminds us, loved not one nation or one people group or one culture, but the entire world.
The voices that filled that auditorium on Missionary Day — from India and China, Russia and Germany, the West Indies and Syria and Africa — were a foretaste of the scene described in Revelation 7:9, where John sees “a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb.” That is where history is headed. That is the destination toward which every faithful act of mission is moving.
We are not simply doing good work when we pray for the nations, support missionaries, and go where God sends us. We are participating in the most glorious story ever told — the story of a God who loved the world enough to send His Son, and who now sends His church in the power of that same Spirit to bring the news of that love to every corner of creation.
The camp-meeting in Anderson ended. The tents came down. The crowds went home. But the mission continued — carried in the hearts of those who had been there, passed to the next generation, and the next, until it reaches us today.
Now it is our turn to carry it forward.
Take a few minutes right now to do one of the following — or all three. First, find the name of a missionary your church supports and pray for them by name today. Second, write them a brief message of encouragement before the week is out. Third, ask God honestly: “Lord, what is my part in Your global mission?” Write down whatever comes to mind, and hold it before Him in prayer in the days ahead. The world is waiting. And you have a role to play.
